Requirements
In this class exercise, we are asked to model the solar system. Following are some specific requirements of this exercise:
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Animate all planets and moons: rotate around the sun, the corresponding planet and its own axis
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Read chapter 2 of the textbook (optional)
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Rotate at different speed
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Shade all planets and moons
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Use a broad selection of primitives
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Keep the scene clean
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Playblast the animation
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Upload the results
Readme
I finished all requirements of this class exercise, including reading chapter 2 of the text. Just follow steps in the text and we are done. The only technically non-trivial part is grouping so that all planets and moons can rotate independently and correctly around their corresponding planet and/or the sun. I used a wide range of primitives like cube, cylinder, cone, pyramid, helix, platonic solids, etc., not only to conform to exercise requirements, but also to make the self-rotation easy to observe. Finally, I put everything into a top-level group SolarSystem since it is a recommended practice in a good textbook “Rig it Right”. The resulting video is in qt format (.mov) because in this format I can choose advanced video coding standard like H.264 to reduce file size, which is not available in avi format. In addition, I set the frame rate to 30 fps as required.