On 4/27/2017 5:37 PM, Bald Eagle wrote:
> Stephen <mca### [at] aolcom> wrote:
>
>> I started a month ago working on an Earth - Moon orrery animation with
>> Saturn in the background.
>
> Oh my - that ought to be a fairly complex project  :O

It is more of a Blender learning experience.

> I somehow haven't thought of tackling one of those yet - though my apple peeler
> is closely related  ;)

Actually not so much so. I've taken so long because when I made an 
accurate gear train. You could not see the detail when it was animated. 
So I cite Artistic licence and will pockle it. ;)

Hmm! an apple peeler. That sounds interesting. If you have a partially 
peeled apple that would be more difficult. I would say.
Images? :)

> It brings to mind the one in Pitch Black, and the truly awesome one in The Dark
> Crystal.

I wish I watched films, I feel out of touch. :)

> and then there's _this_ guy:
> http://zeamon.com/wordpress/?page_id=526
>

Yes, that is nice. I would not mind having one of those at home. :D


>> Nothing to show yet as I'm modelling it in Blender and haven't rendered
>> it with PovRay yet.
> Ah Blender.   Lots of buttons.  :D
>

And shortcuts. Thank goodness it is my fingers that do the remembering. :)

>> One problem is that the image maps I have are uniform across the the X
>> axis. So show no rotation on the planet or rings. :(
>
> I had done a quick seach for povray saturn, and there may be some older Saturn
> ring projects you might make good use of.
>

The image map I used for the rings was a cut down version of Bjorn 
Jonsson's from when PovRay only had a maximum of 256 entries. That 
limitation has been removed. So when I write the PovRay textures I'll 
have better textures. His planet textures have more detail.

> Good work - nice job on the gears  :)   Are they 'simple' gears or true
> involutes?
>

The planetary gears are true involutes but they are a lot of work so for 
speed the others are simple, for the moment.

-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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