An Awesome Blender Space Animation

Hi, instructables people; today i’m gonna show how to create a fabulous and awesome space animation using the one and only BLENDER.

You can see the video on youtube of this animation.

For this project i used blender 2.79.

Step 1:

And now the steps: (obiously the author think that you already have blender in your pc, if you don’t have blender, in the last part of this instructable i’m gonna let you instructions for to get blender).

OK, let’s get started, so open blender and remove the cube(press in your keyboard the x button and confirm with enter).

Step 2:

The begin of the animation is a text like the star wars, first of all is pressing shift + a to open the menu, and select the text option

Step 3:

a text will apear in the 3D viewer, move all the axis to lie down over the grill the text like in the image(i did it on that way).

Step 4:

Next is to get the camera view, click on the view menu(the menu in the same bar of the “Object Mode” box, will appear another menu, select the option camera(is above of the Tool Shelf checkbox), and you got it the camera view.

Step 5:

Then you can move the text from the one to another location and control what do you want to see in the camera, for this step is necessary to put the text outside of the view of the camera, only press the text with the right mouse button and move the text outside of the view of the camera, when you got it, it is time to add some of animation, check the time bar(is below of the “Object Mode”), now in the 3D view(where is the text and the camera view) press with the key “i”, then will appear a menu, select the “LocRot” option and in the time bar in the green vertical line will appear little yellow line, right now you add some of animation(start a animation cycle), the next is to move the text to another position outside of the camera view, then in the time line just click the left mouse button in another position in the time line, and repeat the previous steps to add a end the animation cycle(press “i” and select the “LocRot” option).

Step 6:

The next step is add an Ico Sphere, only press the keys shift + a and will appear a menu, select the Mesh option and later will appear another menu, in that menu select Ico Sphere.

Step 7:

Once you got the sphere is necessary in the Add Ico Sphere menu(left down corner) change the value in the subdivision box to 8, for to make a perfect sphere.

Step 8:

Is necessary add a material to the sphere for to add the planet texture, then click in the materials icon on the properties menu and press the new button for to add a new color.

Step 9:

Now, press in the white box below of the legend “Diffuse”(Diffuse option), for to add a new color in the sphere.

Step 10:

Now, press in the white box below of the legend “Diffuse”(Diffuse option), for to add a new color in the sphere.

Step 11:

then on the type legend there is a combo box with some options, the default option is image or movie, don’t move that option; next in the image option press in the open button for to open the file(the links to the textures are in the last part of this instructable), and select the image.

Step 12:

Is necessary in the mapping section, select in the coordinates box the Global option, and in the projection box select sphere, due to if you don’t select that options you will get weird results.

And there you go, the planet earth.

For to make all the planets you can follow the steps previously mentioned in each one.

Step 13:

The next is adding the space, therefore make sure that none object is selected. Then go and click to the texture icon on the properties menu, and click over the blue world icon, and press the new button for to add a texture.

Step 14:

Once again in the “Type” legend, select the option “Stucci”, next is in the Stucci menu click on the “Wall In” button, also click in the “Hard” button, and change the value in the size box to 0.001; the four lasts steps are in the Influence menu, untick de checkbox Blender and tick in the Horizon checkbox, as well as change the color under the legend “RGB to intensity” to black.

Step 15:

The third is to add black to the space, go to the Colors menu and tick on the Ramp checkbox, then will appear a new bar below of this checkbox(Ramp), move the control(is like a black little house) towards the right until the control be close to the another control(the white control or house), and then you got the black space to see it just click F12 to see the results(actually in the Preview menu you can see the results).

The fourth and the last step is click in the world icon, so in the World menu there are various color box, Horizon Color, Zenith color and ambient color, turn to black all of them, and once again there you go, the black space.

Step 16:

The animation of the camera with the planets is the same process mentioned previously in the animation of the text, the only change is that you must to positionate the camera in the places in front or near of the planet and then add a keyframe(press the key “i” in the 3D view and select “LocRot” option)

There is another detail, is about the lamps and the ilumination of the scene, i used only 2 sun lamps, potitionated near of the sun(one pointing below of the sun, and another pointing towards the planets), and that worked very well for me.

Step 17:

One last step, is to get the video, in the properties menu go to the first icon is render(an image of a camera) click on there and go to the “Output” section and change your directory path, select to your computer(i choose the desktop directory due to the default is “/tmp”), and below the legend “Placeholders” select the video format, i always select “Avi raw”(works for me) you can select other format, an the last is only click in the animation button for to get the video, you must only wait because blender is compiling the video.

Step 18:

The link to get all the planet textures is the next:

https://www.solarsystemscope.com/textures/

And for to get blender, just go to https://www.blender.org, click in the download section and get your version for the operative system that you have(linux, mac, windows); if you have windows just install, that process is very easy, if you like me have any distro of linux, download the package, uncompress it and open the executable file(double click in the purple icon with the legend “blender”), and you got blender at least.

Well that’s all for today folks, see’ya later and have good time.