Flying Thru Space Effect

[bkrawage]

Hi group,

I was wondering if anyone can give me a few pointers for creating a flying through space effect. I have to create the illusion that something is moving through space towards earth and then the earth must come into view, rotate and stop over north america.

Any pointers on how to do this would be most appreciated or even a sample or two.

Thanks,
Brendan.

[OwenAus]

I tried to get the planet rotating effect but failed, so have nothing to offer except, maybe, an approach that you might be able to get working.

Have a circular mask.

Have the surface of the planet represented by different image or shape strips (rectangles) stacked north to south.

Move the strips under the mask, those closer to the poles at different speeds to those closer to equator.

Best effect would probably be many 1 pixel high strips

Anyhow, tried and did not succeed, but I think there is some sort of solution in sliding rectangle(s) with surface features under the mask. Like a variation on the magnifying glass approach. The pain is the different rotation (slide speed) N pole to equator to S pole, and keeping the continents hanging together.

Sorry if that was just a waste of your time.

[bkrawage]

To have tried and failed is better than not to have tried at all. Thank you for the effort and its never a waste of time. I am sure you will use the knowledge you gained sometime in the future.

[OwenAus]

True, and thanks.

Another thought. There are heaps of animated gifs of spinning globes in the clipart libraries around the web.

What if you grabbed one, used your paint program to hive off the frames and then converted them to jpg. Then stick the jpegs into frames, zero tweens?

[johnie]

Originally posted by OwenAus
True, and thanks.

Another thought. There are heaps of animated gifs of spinning globes in the clipart libraries around the web.

What if you grabbed one, used your paint program to hive off the frames and then converted them to jpg. Then stick the jpegs into frames, zero tweens?

That would do it.

Basically you would have the circular mask for the earth and then just use the scale transform to make everything get bigger to create the illusion of flying in space.