3D Solar System

Posted on 21. May, 2008 by Jerzy Drozda Jr in Blog

3D Solar System

This subject is as old as the Earth itself. How to create 3D planets? Simple. Just apply CC Sphere onto a texture, right? Wrong! If you want to make it cool you need to do a couple other things as well, which I’m going to show you in this upcoming tutorial.

[Watch the tutorial]

By the way – speaking of planets and the universe… I’ve been having this idea for a long time and I’m closer to realizing it than ever before. I want to create a in-scale solar system in 3D, that you could fly through with the camera, maybe even set up a date and see the alignment of all planets. This upcoming 3D Earth tutorial is just a small piece of a bigger project. I know I’m crazy, but I just want to see if I’m capable of doing something like this, and is AE capable of doing it as well.

If I’m going to do this, than it’s going to use my upcoming product to achieve the effect. The product is a CustomEffect designed to easily set things in motion. Stay tuned. It’s coming. Soon.

Tags: 3d, experiments, ideas, Tutorials

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14 Responses to “3D Solar System”

Simon Bonner

21. May, 2008

I remember, wow, 20 years ago I had a programme on the ZX Spectrum that you could input a future or past date and it would plot the alignment of the planets. Took about a week, though… Good lord, I feel old!

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Maltaannon

22. May, 2008

Well… I honestly don’t know how much time it’s going to take to calculate the position of the planets, but I’ll surely give it a try. Sounds like an interesting experiment, don’t you think?

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Vinnie

22. May, 2008

here’s a link to the site with the Earth texture maps, hopefully it’s the same place where you got yours. http://planetpixelemporium.com/earth.html

Anywho, awesome tutorial once again!!

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Maltaannon

22. May, 2008

Yes. I already found it in my bookmarks :) How stupid of me not to check them before. Thanks anyway. There are more sites with great high-def textures. Anyway I’ll post a project file to that tutorial soon, and it will include all the used textures. Glad you like it. Cheers!

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Tim

22. May, 2008

Will you be making a mac version installer for custom effect?

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Maltaannon

22. May, 2008

Yes. It’s already developed. Just need to run some test on a mac. If you’re up for it use the contact form in the Contact section and drop me an email. Also make sure to have Skype installed, so we could test it out. That would really help me a lot.

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Mark

22. May, 2008

I want to know that how my Genius-M thinks on a project,

Its just amazing, just amazing

thnx mark

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Thorsten Meyer

22. May, 2008

Hi Maltaannon,

another great video tutorial you share with us.

http://www.strongmocha.com/2008/05/22/advanced-3d-solar-system-after-effects-tutorial/

Cheers,

Thorsten Meyer
http://www.StrongMocha.com

DFX (Digital Effects) VFX (Visual Effects) Photo Food Travel

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manost72

22. May, 2008

Great work there Maltaannon!Thanks for being so helpfull to the AE community outthere!Keep on rocking!
I always wondered how sun could be made inside AE (it’s surface, explosions and all) so i hope that adds an idea for a future tutorial.
Thanks again for your amazing effort!

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Bobalong

21. Oct, 2008

Hey great tutorials :) I just want to say that there is an Open source 3D program that has the whole solar system mapped out, you can apply any textures that u want to the stars/planets/moons/objects anything! and u can also make yr own solar system. infact u can pretty much do anything to this program as its open source
From the first page:
Welcome to Celestia
… The free space simulation that lets you explore our universe in three dimensions. Celestia runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.

Unlike most planetarium software, Celestia doesn’t confine you to the surface of the Earth. You can travel throughout the solar system, to any of over 100,000 stars, or even beyond the galaxy.
All movement in Celestia is seamless; the exponential zoom feature lets you explore space across a huge range of scales, from galaxy clusters down to spacecraft only a few meters across. A ‘point-and-goto’ interface makes it simple to navigate through the universe to the object you want to visit.
Celestia is expandable. Celestia comes with a large catalog of stars, galaxies, planets, moons, asteroids, comets, and spacecraft. If that’s not enough, you can download dozens of easy to install add-ons with more objects.

Website: http://www.shatters.net/celestia/

Btw im nothing to do with the makers/promoters of this program, my friend showed me and ive just downloaded and it looks great :)

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Maltaannon

21. Oct, 2008

Yeah I know about that. There’s also Stellarium. But using software like that is not the point here.

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gigi

12. Nov, 2008

man this write here sucks because i have to do a project an they and this stuff dont say any thing i need to now

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16. Jul, 2010

It was a very nice idea!

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