Orbiting moon intersects with planet visually but not physically (Video)

Development Rendering
, , , , ,
1

I’ve got a “Heavenly Bodies” system in the works for a project I’m working on. Early days, however I have a couple of moons orbiting a planet which orbits the world root, as well as an orbiting 3D star/sun. You can see this in action in this video:


At 25 seconds in, the moon appears to go through the planet, however they are actually hundreds, if not thousands of units away from eachother. This is all happening at pretty close to actual scale.

For example, the sun/star is “1252530432.0 / 12525 km” away from the root, and the planet (and orbiting moons) is "103771376.0 / 10377km " away from the root.

Main reason for the distance/scale is just to get is as close as realistic as possible. Just wondering whether there is any way to solve this rendering issue with the moon going through the planet. Also not sure what’s causing the sharp horizon line in the atmosphere, anything I can do to stop/remove that too?

Thanks!

2

Hey Skulburn -

So in answer to the Moon Rotation, you should set up the moon to use a scene component as its rotation origin which is in turn parented to the Earth mesh. Without seeing you blueprint, I would say that if that is what you have set up you have a Local versus relative rotation issue. That is where I would begin to track down the culprit.

The Horizon line is probably created by the Atmospheric Fog or the BP SKysphere if you are using the included ones. You should be able to soften that edge up a little bit but even at its softest it will still create a noticable horizon line.

Thank You

Eric Ketchum