Ott Planetarium Releases Third Open Source Star Show
The Ott Planetarium have released Space Shapes, its third open source planetarium show. Space Shapes targets students, age 4-6 and explores round shapes in space.
The Ott Planetarium is pleased to announce the release of Space Shapes, its third open source planetarium show. Space Shapes targets students, age 4-6 and explores round shapes in space.
Space Shapes was created by participants of the June and July 2010 Blender Production Workshops hosted by the Ott Planetarium at Weber State University. The source files are available for download at weber.edu/planetarium/luna and are shared under the Creative Commons Attribution License.
Blender development is driven, in part, by the Blender Foundation’s open movie projects. The Ott Planetarium uses the open movie concept to develop skills in their workshop students. The workshops are led by Ron Proctor, the Production Coordinator for Ott Planetarium.
“These collaborative projects provide an opportunity for our students to jump into production with both feet,” says Proctor, “Space Shapes was created by a handful of students in the space of a few weeks. That’s an amazing achievement, especially when you consider that most of these students were using the software for the first time.”
The Ott Planetarium is part of the Center for Science and Mathematics Education at Weber State University. The Ott Planetarium has been in operation since 1969 and has been producing original programs with Blender, a free, open source 3D software, since 2006.
Space Shapes (along with all of our other two open source planetarium shows) has been translated to Turkish by Asaf Yurdakul of Medeve Planetaryum.
http://vimeo.com/16772441
Lovely! Cute and informational. Just the ticket!
Now… is the dome round like a sphere or round like a pancake? :D
Some problems with the shaders on the planets, particularly the moon. Everything just reflected the light too uniformly. Otherwise okay for the most part.
There are a couple of free “planetariums” for the desktop: Stellarium and Celestia. The latter can get really resource hungry if you download and install the optional textures and models.
Well done! The pancake-moon orbit scene looks fantastic
It was so very beautiful . Well done work .
Thanks everyone!
Not bad for a bunch of beginners, eh? :)
@Chrome Monkey: Still not bad, considering that it’s only the first or second week of using Blender for most of the students. :)
Ott Planetarium’s new website: ottplanetarium.org