Hi guys, I’m new to Blender and right now I’m trying to make a solar system sort of animation.
I’ve tried to manually move earth around the sun, but that would take me like 4 hours to do or something.
So how do I make an object orbit another object? Can you lead me step by step through the process, since I really am a noob?
Another question: Is it also possible with the camera (the rendering one), and making it face the same point the whole time?
What you can do for the orbit is add a bezier circle (shift-A, Curve->Circle). This will be the orbit path. Then for the planet that needs to stick to that orbit, add a Clamp To Constraint and set the target to the orbit path. Then check the Cyclic to make it continuously loop around the path.
For the camera question, add a Track To Constraint and make the target either an object you want it to look at or add an empty to use as the target so you have a little more control. You could do the same as the orbit for the planet too if you want it to fly around the scene too.
Another way would be to parent the orbiting object to the central one (or an empty at that same position), move the child object a fair distance away, and then set up the parent to rotate. The child will rotate with it, holding its facing direction (i.e, if you point it towards the parent, it will continue to do so as it orbits). It works for me.
How do I parent objects and set the child to rotate it? I can’t find any tutorials or buttons?
Nevermind, I just made an empty object and parented it to the sphere and made a sphere on top of the empty object.
Thanks for helping.