Greetings everyone, I'm doing an application based on the Solar System (not to scale) and I would like guidance on how to start. I already modeled and textured all the planets in Blender. The project is an interactive application so I would have to show the Solar System with all the planets rotating (at a rate of 1 min:earth year) and the option to choose a planet, which then the camera zooms in and statistics pop out from the left. That's about it! Can someone direct me towards something useful?

I would appreciate as much help as possible since I'm doing this from scratch alone. I'll try and make this in high resolution graphics and I'll need to create an animated Sun. I also need to include an interface with a timer and all, but that's not my concern right now.

I think first I'll have to set the rotation times and speeds but I still don't understand how to code it.

Thank you =)

Edit 1: I'm up to the point where I have all the planets ready (except the animated Sun). When I click 'Start' nothing happens. Is this because of high resolutions? Planet textures vary from 2K to 10K.





Basically I'm looking on ways to create the same result as http://www.sunaeon.com/#/solarsystem/ where the Solar system starts and the user has the option to click the planet, zooming the camera next to the target and animating a 2D stats screen, pretty much like the photo below.

If you’re doing an animation, you start animating by selecting “Playback Animation” from the View menu, or pressing Alt-A.

ldo wrote:

If you’re doing an animation, you start animating by selecting “Playback Animation” from the View menu, or pressing Alt-A.

Um, actually I want this to be interactive. An application.

gaio wrote:

I think first I'll have to set the rotation times and speeds but I still don't understand how to code it.

If you are happy with circular orbits, you could use an empty object for each planet. Put all these empties on the sun object.
Then parent each planet to its empty (e.g. make JupiterEmpty object to be the parent of JupiterPlanet) object.
Using the logic bricks, make the each empty rotate at the revolution speed of the associated planet, and its child planet will follow.

Notes:
- you can tilt each empty as necessary to cater for differences in the orbital planes;
- you can tilt the planets as necessary to cater for polar axis inclination;
- with the same mechanism you can add planets: in this case you place the MoonEmpty at the center of the EarthPlanet object.

...I made a fast demo based on the above concepts with three planets, one satellite and one sun. You can download it from here:

http://www.4shared.com/file/jfSIWwYy/file.html

Note that scales and revolution speeds are completely arbitrary.
In addition, rotations around local polar axis are missing.

mb wrote:

...I made a fast demo based on the above concepts with three planets, one satellite and one sun. You can download it from here: http://www.4shared.com/file/jfSIWwYy/file.html Note that scales and revolution speeds are completely arbitrary. In addition, rotations around local polar axis are missing.

I appreciate this! This is amazing and exactly what I'm looking for.. I have an issue with the game not loading because my textures are 10K, I hope the issue is resolved as soon as I lower the resolutions. I'm aware of the scale and movement of the planets, my intentions are to create a visual model of the Solar System, I'll just set the Earth rotation around the Sun (1 year) to be completed in 1 minute, then set the other planets in relation to the Earth's orbit. Thank you all for your help, just one more thing! I want to add the ability to click on the planet so that the camera moves near the selected planet.

Again,
THANK YOU =)

PS: I'll include new renders and the .blend file when I have something good to show!!

Quick question? Why is it so difficult to texture a UV sphere? I even tried creating a UV Map on a plane and then making it a sphere, but when I start the game engine the planet is terrible. I don't get it why by just applying the texture on the sphere, it fails to render properly.
Hope somebody can help.

Why do those planets look exactly like the George Wilson plums I bought from Fruit World a few days ago?

Yum...

ldo wrote:

Why do those planets look exactly like the George Wilson plums I bought from Fruit World a few days ago? Yum...

Hehe Here's an update on the GUI.

Can someone suggest a way for this issue I'm having? I want the camera centered on a planet and when a button is pressed the camera animates to the selected planet (and centers it). I managed to move on with my project but at this point I think I'm stuck.

Thanks in advance,
g

Edit: by the way, I fixed the textures by using squared ones (1024x1024)

Basically, my question is how to make the buttons in the heads up display work and go to the selected planet? .blend file below


http://www.sendspace.com/file/qv5x3r

gaio wrote:

Basically, my question is how to make the buttons in the heads up display work and go to the selected planet? .blend file below http://www.sendspace.com/file/qv5x3r

Hi Gaio:

I think you have it almost done. In fact, there must be a lot of ways to do it.
I think the good one is sending a message from the button to the camera, each button send the message for his planet, earth sends "earth", mars send "mars", just the name... when the camera receives the message you can do anything you want, i think you should track the camera to the object and move it to it. There must be no problem to make it go to it.
Another way can be changing the parent of the camera. Probably the position change instantly but it can be better depending on how you have the planets distributed in the scene.

I hope it helps, if I have some time maybe I´ll try to do it...

I think you are doing a good job, keep it on....