Solar System Construction Set

DESCRIPTION
The Solar System Construction set is all you need to create museum quality animation and graphics of any planet in the solar system, and a few that aren't.  All the planets (and Pluto) along with most of the major moons and the sun are included in low, medium, and high resolution objects and image maps. Multiple scenes are set up that can be used as is or modified to a specific need.*

The planets are textured starting with the up to date NASA images with just a touch or artistic license. Cinematically constructed outer space depictions  are waiting to be rendered. On-disk training is included to instruct you on how to modify the scenes to your needs, change the timing, resolution, or even introduce your own objects into the mix.

The Solar System Construction Set is the easiest way to add fantastic production value to any project, from web graphic to theatrical presentation.

Moons

The Solar System Construction Set contains all the major known moons and are textured to best of our knowledge of there actual appearance. In some cases, actual photographs are used as the basis for the texture maps. In some cases, blurry photographs are used as reference for texturing. Scientific accuracy was maintained as much as possible, and creativity and imagination helped fill in the gaps. When appropriate, the moons are provided in low, medium, and high resolution.
Though these are moons, there is no reason not to use some artistic license and put them to work as alien planets. Scenes are provided that have the moons 'solo' for just that purpose. There are several scenes in the set up directory that place moons in orbit around their perspective planets. (The Galilean moons of Jupiter, Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, were named by Simon Marius soon after their discovery in 1610. They are some of the coolest looking objects in this collection.)

All the moons are built from a 1 meter sphere, and all the planets are built on a 10 meter sphere, regardless of their relative size. All the solo moons have the same motion and lighting. They can also be loaded straight from the objects directory and added to a scene.
The 'Blue Ice Moon' is a fictitious moon created by trying to do something else, but the results were interesting enough to save and include in this collection.

• Blue Ice
• Callisto
• Deminos
• Diones
• Europa
• Ganymede
• Iapetus
• Io
• Oberon
• Phobos
• Phoebe
• Titainia
• Titan
• Triton
• Umbriel
  

Umbriel

Io

Planets

The Solar System Construction Set contains all the planets and Pluto. They are textured to best of our knowledge of there actual appearance. The solo scenes of the Planets are pre-lit in a compromise between scientific accuracy and artistic interpretation. (In space you have a super strong key light and very little ambient or fill light.)
The scenes mostly start with the planet full in the frame and the camera pushes in closer. The set up directory has more complex scenes utilizing the material included in this collection.

• Earth
• Jupiter
• Mars
• Mercury
• Neptune
• Pluto
• Saturn
• Uranus

Saturn

Mars

Set Ups

This is where the fun starts. Using the digital assets provided in this collection a number of scenes have been set up. Knowing from experience that there are certain things clients always ask for, a number of straight forward 'bread and butter' shots have been included usually things they have seen in movies. There are also scenes that have been inspired by the great artist Chesley Bonestell, though the science may be dated, the artistic integrity still stands.

The scenes included are set up and ready to render, but it is suggested that they be used as a starting point. Add stuff, removes stuff, modify paths, and adjust the lighting, the solar system is your playground now.

• Earth Asteroids Corner: A happy shot of the Earth and Moon is disturbed by the arrival of a group of scary asteroids.
• Earth Corner Sun: A sun consisting of a composite of lens flares peaks out from beneath the lower left corner of the earth. You can swap out the earth using Object Replace function with another planet. If you want to replace it with one of the moons, you will need to scale the moon object up by a factor of ten.
• Earth Pan Up: A hyper realistic representation of the earth, starts low then slowly pans up to the crest. Great place to insert a logo or product.
• Earth Push In: Starts with a wide shot of the earth, then the camera moves in then dives through a cloudy spot of the globe, effectively a fade to white. This can be the first part of the traditional 'camera dive from space' shot. After the fade to white, fade back into a satellite map of the desired area, or a aerial map of the clients location.
• Eclipse: The moon passes in front of a Hyper Voxel sun, and a number of lens flares describes a ring around the edge. This took a long time to set up and seems to work best with Lightwaves Classic camera.
• Orange Nebula: This was an attempt to recreate the Horse Head Nebula. Not totally successful, but did get in the ball park. A warning, it takes a lot of horsepower to render and will vary depending on what type of processor is being used.
• Jupiter Moons: The Galilean moons march across the face of king Jupiter.
• Jupiter Titan Surface: A fanciful depiction of how Jupiter would look while viewed from the surface of one of it's lesser moons, Titian. This uses several procedural textures to displace a subdivided plane to achieve a jagged Titian surface.
• Meteor Samples: Four different meteors to use. These make use of subdivision surfaces and displacement maps to get the meteoric look. Use 'Load from Scene' to bring theses objects into a new scene, in order to retain the displacement settings.
• Mimas Saturn Scape: A fanciful depiction of how Saturn would look while viewed from the surface of it's moon Mimas. This uses several procedural textures to displace a subdivided plane to achieve the Mimas surface. Several of Saturn's other moons can be seen in the shot.
• Moon Earth Asteroid: An asteroid enters from deep space, past the moon, and bears down on an unsuspecting earth.
• Earth Moon Classic: This scene recreates the iconic Apollo shot of the earth as seen from the moons horizon. There is also a background texture generated star.
• Planetary Align: All the planets lined up behind the sun in more or less relatively accurate size, as the camera zooms past them all.
• Saturn Moon Rings: Saturn is the most photogenic of all the planets, here is another scene showing off it's rings and moons.
• Sputnik Earth: Sputnik passes by the earth. Sputnik only lasted a few months but it's an iconic image, and it flashes.
• Sun2Earth: Pulling away from the sun, past Mercury, Venus, the moon, and a satellite, the camera pans down to the earth.

Eclipse

Earth Corner Sun

Sun

What does the sun look like? Think about it and you will realize what a hard question that is to answer. To represent it graphically requires a bit of artistic license. These scenes represent a number of approaches to portraying our nearest star.

• Scary Sun: This is a combination of geometry and Hyper Voxels. It is a unique look and it has a lot of nice subtle animation when rendered to a sequence.
• Solar Flares: This is the result of an attempt to create economical solar flares on the sun surface. It uses both geometry and Hyper Voxels to create a lot of boiling and undulating movement.
• Sun Lava: This is a close up on the surface of the sun presented as a rolling boil. There are also some Hyper Voxels placed on the surface for a bit of extra texture.
• Sun Lava Wide: A wider view of boiling sun.  The edges are showing more detail, but the center is washed out with the intensity.
• Sun HV Heliosphere: This uses Hyper Voxels to create a be blobby super hot rim.
• Sun HV Push Flares: An edge on view of a yellow and orange sun. Tiny tendrils of solar flares can be seen around the rim and hold up while the camera zooms in.
• Sunset:  This scene uses Skytracer 2 to create a time lapse version of a sunset with clouds. Not many play with Sky Tracer these days, but there is a lot of life left in the background generator plug-in.
   

Scary Sun

Sun Lava

TE scenes

TE scenes make use of the Texture Environment plug-in in the backdrop tab of the effects panel. These are procedurally generated environments that have a lot of useful properties. They are unique, cover the full 360 with out seams, and will show up in reflective surfaces that have the 'use background' option activated with out using ray tracing.

While technically the background textures are resolution independent because they are generated procedurally, there is a definite sweet spot were they work best. The scale of the texture can be altered to fit the particular project or personal taste quite easily by adjusting the 'scale' setting of the Texture Environment tab.
Unfortunately, load from scene does not work for Texture Environment settings. The most convenient thing to do is to load the TE scenes one at a time, open the Viper preview window so it renders the back ground, then double click on the Viper display to copy the current TE settings to the preset shelf.  That way, when you want to add one of these back grounds to a scene in progress, simply add the Texture Environment plug-in in the effects panel, open the pre-set shelf, and double click on the desired back ground to copy over the settings.

• Edge of Space: A blue gradient horizon of sky and wispy clouds that transitions into the blackness of space and stars.
• Purple Clouds:  Deep space with stars and reddish purple space clouds.
• Purple Nebulas: Deep space with stars and nebulas.
• Ribbon: An edge on nearly monochromatic space cloud/galaxy.
• Stars Only: Randomly generated stars with out any other effects.
• Subtle Nebula:  Randomly generated stars with thin purple clouds spread about.
• Thin Atmosphere: High altitude clouds with just a hint of stars.
• Wispy Space Clouds: More obvious stars with wisps of white clouds. A very sci-fi retro looking.

Edge of Space

Purple Nebulas

*Electric Crayon Studio endeavors to make the planetary bodies as scientifically accurate as possible, but does not recommend that be used for actual interplanetary navigation.

REQUIREMENTS

• Lightwave 6 or higher
• Lightwave 9 or higher recommended