Project 1: Solar System

2/5/2020

This is my work for Project 1. The tasks for this project were to familiarize ourselves with Maya, and to follow a tutorial included in Introducing Autodesk Maya 2016 by Dariush Derakhshani.

Part 1: Follow the tutorial

This is my animation after following the steps from the solar system tutorial.

Part 2: Modify the model how I want

Change 1: Orbital Rings

I decided to add orbital rings around the sun to indicate the path of each planet. This gave the animation more of a solar-system-model-like appearance. To do this I just created multiple torus' and reduced the section radius.

Change 2: Random Placement of Planets

It was too structured with the planets all starting initially in the same row, so I moved them around. I then randomly changed the planets' initial locations so that they appeared more scattered around the sun.

Change 3: Textures on Sun & Planets

The planets seemed really flat, so I decided to add textures to the sun and planets. I simply used Maya's 2D and 3D textures, and altered the colors. However, it was difficult finding textures that matched some planets.

Change 4: Surprise Visitor

To make the animation a little more interesting, I created a spaceship that visits for a few seconds! To do this, I used the skills I learned from following the tutorial in part 1, including rotations and grouping. I also used vertical translations for the ship's movement.

Animation Before Smoothing:

Final Animation with Smoothing: