Creating a sun orbiting a planet

[I.a. B.]

have you looked at some of andrew kramers 3d planet tutorials? there are a few of them that could help you. at videocopilot.net

[Austen Mathieson]

Hi friend,
I did this effect myself and used the movement of the sun to give the illusion of the camera… but two major problems will come up, the first being the stars in the background must move if the camera is supposed to be sweeping say 360 degrees therefore you need multiple solids/star backgrounds in 3d space and line them upas a 3d say hexagon room (that’s just one way, I’m sure there are others) The second problem is you need the have the planet spin 360 degrees or whatever amount you want also giving the illusion of camera movement. This is how I did mine and it turned out perfect.

So basically I left the camera and animated the rest… until I eventually moved the camera after the sweep had finnished.

Hope this helps.

Austen Mathieson
Austentatious Productions

[Sam Moulton]

don’t know if this will help but the last time I checked planets rotated around suns.

I’d set up the layers in 3D space with auto orient to camera turned on. Parent the planet and sun layers to a null at the center of the sun, then use a star field background thats several times wider than the comp as a 2D background that’s animated by either using the offset effect or by simply animating the x position to make create the parallax effect of moving stars.