Once I had obtained the information that I needed to start building my solar system model I began constructing it in Blender. By building it in Blender it meant I could export it to the correct Collada format for the FLARToolKit. I therefore began working out how I could build the model for it to be proportional in size and distance. I used the Blender grid to work out proportional sizes based on the information facts I had found so that every 10 squares in terms of distance counts as 1000 million km, and every square in terms of size counts as approximately 35000 km. Therefore the ratio of the model is 35000:100000000 km or 35:100000 km. It is a shame that my model cant be completely in proportion so that it represents the solar system precisely, but the enormity of the distances between the planets in comparison to the sizes makes this impractical for the project. This is the second best option and should hopefully still be quite representative.
As well as sorting out the sizes to be proportional I will also have to decide on how I want to represent the speed of the orbits as this will have to be represented in seconds or minutes rather than years. The model therefore currently looks like this:
As well as having to change the size and distance to be at a ratio to each other, I have also had to shrink the Sun so that it is NOT proportional to the size of the other planets, as it is too big up against the rest of the model to be practical if at proportional size. There is still a lot of work to be done on this model including particles, textures and animations and so these are the elements I now have to tackle.
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