How can I make a Rotating Earth?

Support Animation related help
1

I’m trying to make a rotating Earth. It would be like an inch diameter, cartoony, and not too detailed. Trying to get the continents to look right as it rotates is pretty darned hard. Is there some sort of transformation that would make this easier?

BTW, this is my first day using this, so please be gentle.

2

One idea on top of my head is to use blend method by separating the circle and flat map representation of the Earth.

  1. Blend the flat map to “Overlay” over the circle
  2. Move the map in left-right or right-left to simulate a rotating planet Earth

This tutorial by YOW Khemardi could help you get acquainted with how one layer can be blended to the layer below. BTW, the video demonstrates a star revolving around the circle or planet.

Hope that helps :slight_smile:

3

This does help. Thanks!

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4

I would buy an actual globe, eg from a dollar store, take pictures of 6 different phases of rotation, import them to Synfig, and use for tracing splines of the continents at keyframes.

5

Don’t forget the Spherize layer :wink:
(Map: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_map)

Earth1.zip (355.7 KB)

Note:
You can try with different map projections, with another spherize/horizontal layer under, continuous map…
This is just an incomplete test :wink:

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