Make an object infinitely far away?

Question

I have a moon object and I'd like it not to be affected by parallax for the camera. I want it to look as if it's infinitely far away, without just moving it really far away in my scene. Is this possible?

Does this answer your question? How to add "celestial objects" (extremely distant images) that behave correctly — RUben, Dec 26 '19 at 14:37
No, not really he didn't get much of an answer for the part that mattered. — max, Dec 26 '19 at 15:03

Leander · Accepted Answer · 2019-12-26T15:36:10.103

14

You could make the moon move relative to the camera.

Select the camera and ⇧ ShiftS snap the cursor to it. Then add an empty at that position. ⇧ ShiftA
Select the moon. ⇧ Shift select the the empty and parent the moon to the empty ⎈ CtrlP.
Select the empty. Add a Copy Location Constraint. Choose the camera as the target.
Fake lighting by the moon with a sun lamp. The sun lamp type sends parallel rays, which simulate an object which is infinitely far away.
You may encounter that the moon is casting a shadow (from the sun light) or emitting light (if you're using the cycles render engine). To prevent that in cycles, you modify the moons visibility settings and disable all options except camera.

If you are using EEVEE, simply move the sun light between all object and the moon, which has to have the furthest distance to the camera.

Due to the relative offset, the moon is always at the same position.

edited Dec 26 '19 at 15:36

answered Dec 26 '19 at 14:47

Leander

26,725
2
44
105

Thanks a lot for the detailed answer, this works perfectly. What does step 4 do exactly, and how do I do it? I'm new to blender – max Dec 26 '19 at 15:22
I have added the last two steps. Is it clearer now? – Leander Dec 26 '19 at 15:36
That's perfect, thank you. – max Dec 26 '19 at 16:19
Ahh.. so the location of a sun lamp does make a difference in EEVEE. Learned something today. – Robin Betts Dec 26 '19 at 17:10
Won't this break if you have any kind of reflective or bounce lighted materials? Or shadows? – MooseBoys Dec 27 '19 at 18:43
Not really. As I mentioned in (4) and (5), remove all influence of the moon to the rest of the set. The set and the moon will have their individual separate lighting anyways. – Leander Dec 27 '19 at 19:04

Make an object infinitely far away?

1 Answers1