Chapter 6. Solar System

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 material
• Adding an Earth texture material with lighting
• Arranging 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...