Help animating in 2.5

Solarsystem.blend (1.97 MB) I’m making a solar system for school. I am trying to animate the planets orbiting around the sun. I have them using a circle as a path. I started out animating them at different speeds… but I can’t figure out how to loop each individual planet at a particular speed. So like for mercury… I have it going faster than the others, completing it’s cycle first. Instead of it stopping, I want it to keep going in a loop at the same speed, while the other planets go at their slower speeds. Help me out?

I would probably parent the planets to a circle, then just have the circle rotate at a constant speed. Unless you want to go all out and emulate the eliptical orbits, which I would do by animating the planets in and out…

Okay, i will try that. How do I delete all the follow path constraints without deleting the planets?

delete the path. Delete the constraint on . The planets will be fine.

Okay. How do I rotate the circles at different speeds so I can make them keep going on?

Like daren said, parent each planet to the planet it orbits around ( ie parent the Moon to the Earth ). Then simply rotate the earth.

here, take a look at this…

solarSystem.blend (499 KB)

I did this, but how do I animate it so it keeps going? All I know how to do is make it go around once. I want to animate it and make it keep going.

did you see my blend file? you select the last keys in the F-curve and in the channel menu -->>exptrapolation mode–>>linear. This will keep the last motion going indefinately. (in this case, keep the rotation forever)

Sorry, I’m new to this stuff. Can you tell me how to animate from the beginning please? I have no idea what I’m doing. Haha. So let’s say I have just the planet parented to the circle. What’s next, step by step? Sorry for my noobiness. :b

no problem
once the planet is parented to the circle,

  1. select the circle, and Press the i-key and insert a rotation keyframe
  2. Fast forward many frames (drag mouse in the timeline, or press the right arrow MANY times) (24 frames is one second, so determine how long a single orbit is, ie, if you want the planet to orbit once every 4 seconds, fast forward 96 frames.)
  3. rotate the circle 360 degrees (the planet should move right with it)
  4. Press the i-key and insert another rotation keyframe

now scrubbing through the timeline, you should see the planet rotate one rotation and stop.

  1. Go into the F-curve editor, and select all keys (A-key)
  2. in the channel menu, select extrapolation mode–>>linear

now that rotation should continue indefinately.

Repeat process for entire solar system.

When I select the circle, press “i”, and click rotation, I move to the frame I wanted and rotated the circle 360, press “i”, and click roatiation. But when I play it in the timeline… it doesn’t even move. What am I doing wrong?

do it in four steps then. Rotate it 90 degrees at a time

Okay that worked. Now how do I make the planets different speeds?

Never mind, dumb question. Thanks for your help!