The problem I have is that I was using a directional light for the planets to begin with but now that the planets are orbiting the sun the lighting no longer works and looks terrible, I have also tried to fake the lighting using Dot Product in the materials but I can’t seem to update it on the fly. (I have 5 planets orbiting the sun at different rates and then there are moons orbiting those 5 planets so the dot product might end up quite complicated.)
Just to confirm, the orbits aren’t the problem the lighting is.
Any ideas or possible solutions would be a massive help and are all greatly appreciated.
P.S.
Spotlights or pointlights wouldn’t work due to the scale of the solar system.
Logically it really seems like a point like is what you want since the star is your source of light and should radiate in all directions, not a single direction like a directional light. I don’t understand why the scale of the system should make any difference in your use of a point light.
the scale means that the shadows struggle to be rendered at a distance that is need for the game, thanks for the idea, I’ll have a play with the pointlight
I agree with @QSBen. If you’re building something like a solar system for use in a space game, maybe you could fake the image by building the solar system in miniature and use a scene capture to get the result for display. You don’t have to render everything at the same scale.