The Sol System for the Extra II DVD

[MMZ_TimeLord]

Okay, so here are some shots from a fly-through animation of the Sol system model I'm putting the finishing touches on for the Extra II DVD.

 

All the image maps are either from JPL, NASA or one of their observatories. They are free for public consumption and reuse as we see fit. (Yes, I will have the appropriate End User License file in the project.)

 

So far I have all the 9 planets, the sun (Sol) as well as all of the cataloged and named satellites of each planet. There are some newly discovered satellites that have only been cataloged and not officially named, so I will leave those out for the time being.

 

Each planet model has a pose for the axial tilt as well as a pose to turn on/off the 'render as lines' for the moon/satellite orbits. Same goes for the orbital model of the whole system.

 

Only the larger and oldest discovered satellites of Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune will be modeled. All the smaller ones will simply have orbital paths modeled, but no actual satellite models constrained to them.

 

Another big task I have is how to create the asteroid belt... I will be pondering that over the next few days.

 

Anyway, here are the initial shots with all orbits rendering as lines...

(now that my Jury Duty is over I gotta get back to work on TWO)

 

...from the farthest planet inward...

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[Eric2575]

Very cool Jody!! I love stuff like that. Now all I have to do is model the Imperial Shuttle and we've got a movie

[Rodney]

I've already told Jody this but I think its worth repeating here in public forum.

This solar system is going to be popular with students (not to mention their teachers) using A:M.

 

...and Sci Fi fans too.

[NancyGormezano]

That is very definitely interesting - wow, terrific stuff!

[KenH]

Very cool project. You should do a flyby animation to accompany it. Is the earth moon really that big?

[Bruce Del Porte]

A very cool project

[Kamikaze]

This sound so great ! I've always enjoyed those space fly throughs, will keep an eye on this...

 

Mike

[MMZ_TimeLord]

Well... here I am again... latest WIP is a full flythru video...

 

Two primary issues I have with it...

 

1. VERY Shakey camera pass, pluto model and orbit spline shakey/breaking. Some of the orbit spline problem can be seen on Uranus's orbit as well. (I believe it's due to limitations of A:M's precision. Don't know if this can even be fixed. I may just have to live with it or try to make a work around.)

 

2. Every now and then there are rendered frames in the animation that have some serious artifacts. The reason for this is completley unknown to me.

 

The Orbit lines, Axis bars and rotation arrows are all turned off or on with a User Propery in each model. There is also a user property for planets that have it to turn on their appropriate axial tilt.

 

Enjoy!

 

Sol System Flytrhu # 1 (CAUTION! File is over 8 MB in size!)

[Stuart Rogers]

Well... here I am again... latest WIP is a full flythru video...

Wow, that's quite a tour!

1. VERY Shakey camera pass, pluto model and orbit spline shakey/breaking. Some of the orbit spline problem can be seen on Uranus's orbit as well. (I believe it's due to limitations of A:M's precision. Don't know if this can even be fixed. I may just have to live with it or try to make a work around.)

I wouldn't be surprised if this really was the case. Many years ago I wrote a program to simulate n-body problems with objects on an interplanetary (and, ultimately, intergalactic) scale, and I found that I couldn't work with 'normal' measurement units as it would always end up with rounding errors, overflows, and underflows - I had to use, for example, 10000km as my basic distance, and mass in terms of milliEarths, and time in hours to keep the numbers sane. This, of course, meant I had to redefine the gravitational constant too.

 

If precision is the problem here, scaling the whole thing down might help, but I suspect it might not. If not you might have to resort to compositing a render from a scaled-down 'orbit lines only' choreography with a full-scale 'planets only' choreography.

[NEKOSEI]

I am *VERY* much looking forward to getting my hands on these models, as we *need* Mars for the Wolf 359 project, and it would be awesome if we could use that.

 

I've used your high-rez earth before, and just love it.

So I can imagine how good the others will look.