Solar System

Solar System made in Unreal Engine 5. Every planet has the correct angle and rotation and the correct distance from the sun.

Camera - The camera is attached to a spring arm that has its origin point in the center of the currently inspected planet. Depending on the planet that is currently inspected the spring arm gets different values in zoom speed and minimum and maximum length to fit the size of the planet. Using mouse input the user can travel around the planet and zoom. All movement has a delay applied to it to make the experience smoother.

Planets - To light up the planets, vectors between every planet and the sun were used to light up the planets through pure math instead of from a light source. This is because using a light source would not be optimal for the huge scale the solar system uses. This method is also used to tell the earth that its darker side should use a different texture to show city lights during nighttime. The clouds on each planet are moving with the help of a panner node. On the earth, there is a more dynamic cloud system that uses different noise textures that moves the opposite way to the clouds which makes it seem like the clouds are actually changing even though the cloud texture is static. The density of the clouds is also achieved by blending the cloud texture with a black texture to tell the material how much of the clouds should be shown.

Heat distortion - Heat distortion is achieved through a post-processing volume where a water texture is moving in front of the camera when entering this said volume. This is a very simple but effective way to achieve a heat effect.

Textures from: https://www.solarsystemscope.com/textures/