orbits

[Andr3wHur5t]

i am trying to make a dinamic soler syatem in le edtor and have no idea how i would make a orbit falow a orbit that falowess a nother orbit that falows another orbt.

 

sun->plnet->moon->moon's moon

[Rick]

parent things to each other. Put a pivot in the center of the sun that is the parent to a planet. Then when you rotate that pivot the planet will go with it around the sun. Then put another pivot in the center of the planet and make that the parent to the moon and when you rotate that pivot the moon will do with it, etc etc. This will probably require some lua scripting though.

[Andr3wHur5t]

ok i do that, thanks

[Laurens]

If you parent your bodies you will only have geostationary orbits (and movement in perfect circles) which celestial bodies do not. Ofcourse, if you are not looking for that kind of realism than parenting works fine.

[Pixel Perfect]

The fact that the pivots are parented to the sun or the planets does not preclude having independant rotational speed of the satelite objects to the objects they are orbiting as you can develop maths fairly easily to rotate an object about a given point in space (i.e. the pivot points). However, as Laurens points out you wont get elliptical orbits using this method alone.

 

I had a play around with the idea of a solar pool game in the early days of Leadwerks and had planets on a pool table with orbiting satelites that you could roll down the table as the moons revolved on a constant plane.

 

[edit] I found a vid I made of it at the time:

 

Old Solar Pool Demo

 

I abandoned it at the time because of problems with the physics and moved onto other things.

[Jardar]

by paranting a planet to the pivot of the sun would keep the planet from spinning right? You would get a planet orbiting the sun but with only one side facing the sun at all times correct?

maybe a way to solve this would be to place a pivot in the sun, a pivot in the planet, and ball socket the planet to it's pivot? Thus you could in addition rotate the planet as it is orbiting the sun?

I could be wrong, perhaps making no sense, and perhaps it would be better to use animated textures to make the planet "look" like it is rotating instead.

Anyways that was my thoughts on the matter.

[Rick]

Just rotate the planet model if you want that to rotate. The pivot you place inside the sun is rotating which rotates the planet around the sub. Then just rotate the planet. They the be rotated at different speeds.

[Paul Thomas]

To mimic our moon use pointentity(moon, planetpivot)

 

Doing a solar system (or multiple solar systems) would be really fun to play around with in LE.