How to Create a Solar System Model in Blender

This is an interesting project for anyone looking to improve their blender skills, and is an intermediate level project where you create an interesting solar system with bright textures and space themed environment. To follow along you may need some prior experience in Blender and know how to complete basic actions, and will need to download some textures for the planets and space background.

You need to have downloaded Blender and have a computer with decent specifications to be able to run smoothly and render anything graphically intensive, with a mouse being recommended to make viewing the project much easier. These images will be used as textures for the planets so just download them for now.

To Start, open up Blender and create a new file, then delete the starting cube and add a UV Sphere. Now go to the modifiers tab (the blue wrench) and add a Subdivision Surface modifier to smooth out the sphere, changing the magnitude depending on how smooth you want it, but the better it is the longer it takes to render.

Duplicate the previously created sphere for all the planets of the solar system, and adjust to the size you deem fit for each planet, use reference images if necessary, or even just make up the sizes as you go and use whatever looks best, as later on in this guide I adjust the sizes anyway.

Now that you have the planets in their spots, you can go into cycles in render mode, then add a texture to the sun and give it an emission for now, but this will be changed later, then add a light inside the sun with a radius that reaches just before the last planet, and adjust the brightness/power as you see fit.

You can either use the provided textures for detailed planets, or even just give each planet a solid colour. When texturing the larger planets, you can use the Jupiter texture as a vector to give planets like Neptune a little more depth, and especially Saturn. Do this in the Shading tab where you can use a node based system to easily edit and add things, by just dragging and dropping the images then connecting the nodes. If you want shadows on your planets, ensure you use the Principled BSDF.

To create rings, add the torus object then apply the settings as seen in the picture to change the shape to fit the planet, and you can choose whether you will give Neptune rings. Once you have fit the rings to the planets, you can choose to give them a glass texture which works well with the lighting as can be seen in the most zoomed out picture, but takes longer to render.

To create a better atmosphere (or lack thereof) for your planets, download a HDRI of a space themed background, for example from this website: https://www.spacespheremaps.com/hdr-spheremaps/ or from anything you find online. Once you have found one you like, simply go to the shader tab and select world, then drag in the HDRI and connect it.

If you would like a simple render, change all the objects' origins to the centre as can be seen in the picture, then rotate them to your desired position to show their rotation, with aesthetic shadows on the back, even though in this version the planets aren't very visible. To make them more visible, size them all up then move onto the next steps.

In this layout, I sized up all the planets to make them much clearer, and this is where the textures are important. To do this align the planets then make them at slightly varying heights, and place the camera just to the side of the sun to get a good perspective. You may need to change the clip distance of the camera for this, and to do so see the image.

Once you have found a layout to your satisfaction, click the render button in the top left after following the settings in the picture, depending on the quality you desire, with more samples pretty much meaning more resolution and detail, but a high number is not very necessary for this render. Once completed, you are now left with your beautiful rendition of our solar system!