John Griffin, Spring 2020
Project 1 - Solar System
2/5/2020
The first step of the project was to complete the tutorial in chapter 1 of the textbook. in the video below is my completed tutorial.
The next step in the project was to modify the tutorial animation, to add some new bonus features. The 3 new features that i added was to re arrange the starting position and speeds of the planets, add in an asteroid belt, and lastly to add it a rocket that flies onto the screen and lands safely on earth.
The rearranging of the plants was very easy. All i did was rotate the pants around their orbits to a new starting location. I didn't look up any real information as to were they would be, i just tried to spread them out across the solar system. The speed was equally easy to adjust. I adjusted the total rotations that the planets made in their orbits. For example a earth rotate 1080 degrees, where as mars rotates 1440 degrees (or more simply put, i extra revolution).
The next change i made was to add in an asteroid belt. I used the platonic solid as a model for an asteroid because i felt it represented the rough appearance better than a sphere. My goal was to make it look like each asteroid had it own path, and for the asteroid belt to be a chaotic mess of unpredictable flying rock. Rather than assign an orbit to each individual asteroid, I created 3 semi equal groups of asteriods I then assigned each group a different rotation speed. I think this, combined with slight differences of the depth of each asteroid, created the effect i was looking for.
The last change I made was the addition of a rocket. I created a rocket model using a cylinder and a cone, and then added circular planes to act a rudders. From there the animation was not too difficult. rather then animated the rotation angle as with the planets, I changed the actual x y position of the rocket. The only problem i encountered was the shading of the rudders. for some reason 3 of the rudders would remain black. My guess is that it has something to do with the lighting, but i couldn't figure it out.
These 3 changes came together to create the masterpiece that you may view below. Enjoy.
