When I was 8 years old, for a science project at school, I made a Solar System from wires, styrofoam balls, and paint. Today, 8-year olds all around the world will be able to make virtual Solar Systems in VR, especially if they read this chapter! This project creates a Cardboard VR app that simulates our Solar System. Well, maybe not with total scientific accuracy, but good enough for a kid's project and better than styrofoam balls.
In this chapter, you will create a new Solar System project with the RenderBox
library by performing the following steps:
Setting up the new project
Creating a
Sphere
component and a solid color materialAdding an
Earth
texture material with lightingArranging the Solar System geometry
Animating the heavenly bodies
Interactively changing camera locations
Updating the
RenderBox
library with our new code
As we put these together, we will create planets and moons from a sphere. Much of the code, however, will be in the various materials and shaders...