Is there a step by step instruction on how to rotate a planet made in Blender 2.68

Support Animation and Rigging
1

I completed Andrew Price’s tutorial on how to create planet Earth and now I’m
wanting to rotate it on a tilted axis. Is there a step by step tutorial out there
that can walk me through this?

Then the next step is to get the planet revolving around the sun, but first things first.

2

Move the 3d curser to the centre of the planet
Add an empty object
Animate the empty rotating
Parent the Earth to the empty (Ctrl+P)
Rotate the empty to the angle you want the tilt

Earth rotating around sun
How accurate do you want ? Circular or elliptical path, variable speed
Option 1:
Add a curve for the orbital path (for an elliptical path)
Add a follow path constraint to the empty object to follow this curve
You can keyframe the constraint offset to control variable speed if required

Option 2: (Simpler circular orbit)
Add an empty to the position of the sun
Parent the Earth empty to the Sun empty
Keyframe animate the Sun empty

3

Thank you, Richard.

Add empty object? What is that? How do you create it?
And you say to animate the empty object. That is what I’m wanting to know how to do, step by step.
And how do I tilt to the angle I want?

You’re talking to a guy who’s been using Blender for two weeks now and every step is a process
to learn which I’m trying to do.

Michael

4

Add an empty http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Modeling/Empties

Demo: http://screencast.com/t/nJv8SprOcvCw (low framerate doesn’t show the sphere rotating very well but it is)

You need to start learning the basics. See lots of tutorials here http://cgcookie.com/blender/

5

Thank you Richard. Replicated what you showed in your mini tutorial and got it to work. Now I just have to transfer that technique to the planet object I created. Another question: Would I then create another empty axis and parent it to my cloud sphere to have it rotate at a slightly different rate? Can that be done?

Thanks again. Really helped. I’ll let you know if applying this technique to my planet, which has three spheres (ground, cloud and atmosphere) works.

6

Answered my own question and did it. Imagine that!