Procedural Orbit, Oscillator, And Hover Animation
These geometry node setups let you quickly add some simple animations into your scenes. They're easy to configure and since they're based on math, they always work exactly the way you expect them to.
1. Hover animation
Creates an animation in which your object periodically floats up and down according to your specified parameters.
Values to configure:
Starting height - the rest value of the animation, your object will move around it.
Amplitude - determines how much your object moves away from the starting height, both up and down.
Period - the length of time over which the animation repeats itself, in frames. You can animate this value to create a hover animation that speeds up or slows down.
Phase offset - changes which phase of the animation will your object be in at the start of your timeline.
2. Oscillator
Creates an animation in which your object periodically rotates around a specified axis and pivot point according to your specified parameters.
Values to configure:
Axis - sets the axis of rotation.
Pivot point - point around which your object rotates, relative to object origin.
Starting rotation - the rest value of the animation, your object will oscillate around it.
Amplitude, period, and phase offset - work the same as for the hover animation
3. Simple orbit
Sets your object on a customizable orbit around another specified object.
This setup lets you configure orbit radius, period, direction, as well as other parameters associated with planets, such as rotation period, rotation direction, axial tilt etc. I recommend playing with this setup to test all the possibilities.
Adding moons
The orbit node setup also allows you to add secondary objects orbiting around your primary one. To do that, you have to go into the geometry nodes tab.
To add a moon, simply connect the Position output of the Planet node to the Planet position input on the Moon node, the connect the geometry output of the Moon node to the Join geometry input. Then you can configure the values in the Moon node. The Planet and Moon nodes work mostly the same, with the only significant difference being that the Planet node works with the original geometry, while the Moon node introduces new geometry into the node tree.
You can also add multiple moons to the same planet
Or add more objects orbiting around your moons
Showcases:
This is an animation I made using the hover and oscillator node trees:
This is an animation I made using the orbit node tree:
Known issues:
Problem: The orbit node tree breaks procedural materials on "moon" objects.
Procedural materials often use Object coordinates. Moon objects in the orbit node tree have their geometry added to another object, so the object coordinates are incorrect.
Solution: Bake textures before using the node tree.
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