Sem. 2 Week 8: Continuation of Solar System & Start of Supernova

During this week I have been continuing on with solar system Ident from last week which I aim to get done by next week before the Easter Holidays.

Recap of last week:

What I have done so far on the "Solar System Ident" is made the Sun and planets via using simple spheres, animating the planets via motion tween for each planet going around a 2D circle to show the orbits and applying a suitable background image. (Shown below)

Later that week I began applying maps and textures to each planet to make them look more realistic. An example texture is shown below (Venus).

My Progress:

What I have done this session is continued with applying maps and textures to each of the planets. I am finding it difficult with the 4 gas planets as I don't know how to best simulate their atmosphere, Jupiter in particular. The tutor has suggested that create my own maps for the Gas planets on Photoshop. I will consider doing that at some point later in the week.

This week I have also done some more work on making the sun look more realistic. I eventually deleted the sun all together and replaced it with an "Omni" light to best represent the sun. I was shown how to do this by both my tutor and a fellow class mate.

The result of the "Omni" light being used instead of the sun can be seen below in the second draft of my "Solar System Ident".

Personally, from looking at the above image, I think this Ident coming along quite nicely.

Supernova:

What I have done for the "Supernova Ident" so far is creating a Sphere to represent the star that will be exploding, added some lighting effects to the star to make it look the part and added a textured map as I did for the sun for the "Solar System Ident". A rendered image of my progress is shown below.

You will also notice that I have used the same Background image for this Ident. This is because I feel that it is appropriate for the topic I am doing and so will be using it for all 3 Idents.

What I plan to do for the "Supernova Ident" is exactly as it sounds, an animation of a star exploding. I have been suggested the best way to do this is via particle animation. I may look into doing it and ask the lecturer for some help.