Hy, I might not be the only one that asks this questions but as I am at the beginning, please bear with my lack of knowledge.
First one - I have a planet and a ship, for example. How could travel to the planet and never reach it (or to zoom it while I´m reaching closer until I reach at a certain level of detail). Either of two solutions would be enough to give me a point of start.
Second one - the ship I have is huge and made of a lot of pieces that can animate (rotation, moving … explode) so I made a group to be able to move this monster but this changed my axis. Is there a way to encapsulate it in a empty object that would make the ship inherit the new object´s axis position?
You could export each piece of your ship into a separate FBX file. Make a folder called Ship, then import your pieces into that folder into their own folders for organisation: Ship->Hull, Ship->Thruster, etc. Open the static mesh editor for the main piece which keeps everything connected - like the hull. Create sockets where you want to attach the other pieces - you can use the preview mesh feature to perfect the placement. Create a blueprint and add everything into a hierarchy, so hull first then attach the thruster to the hull - this way if you apply a rotation to the thruster it will be in local space, remember to set the appropriate socket for it.
about 1:
I think the best way is use an skybox, but you are saying that you have a 3D Mesh representing your planet right?
The only think I can imagine right now is move the planet with your ship on event tick. That means that de planet location could be for example the ship location + desired distance.
Also you can decrease the “desired distance” based on you ship position on world for get the “Zoom” effect.
The pieces joining process was never a problem because when I export them, the references to their positions are not zeroed so they just go easier to their places configured in Max, but what I did not know was that the sockets can be added to a static mesh without a skeleton. Thank you for pointing that to me MaxL.
Sockets are definitely what you want to go for with all the ship parts, then you can rotate them about their axis without affecting the parent object at all. There are some good tutorials around on turrets and making a tank that should show some good examples of this.
For the planet personally I would just make it huge and a long long way away so that you would never be able to reach it anyway, just set your playable area a long distance away from the planet.