How do you make an object travel in a circle in the 3d world editor?

I've created 5 different objects in the 3D world editor and I'm trying to get 4 of them to revolve around a centered one. How do I define the trajectory so they will complete a full circle in a given amount of time?

Answer 1

[Mischa Kim]

Open the VR sink block that represents your model and check "translation" of all of the four rotating objects in the VRML tree. See this video for more detail. There are now four corresponding inputs visible on the VR sink block that accept position vectors (x,y,z) as input values.

Note that for a circular motion about the coordinate center the orbit period is given by

T = 2*pi*sqrt(r^3/mu)

where mu is the standard gravitational parameter and r is the orbit radius. For a given orbit period and radius you can then compute position vectors by using basic orbital dynamics.