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Task Guide: Animating a Planetarium Exoplanet Transit Bumper

These guides describe the documented upstream workflow. XiMotion integration and installers are still in development; Alpha is free. Availability in a XiKey release has not yet been verified.

Scenario

You are creating a 10-second 4K title bumper for a science museum planetarium dome show about exoplanet transits. You need to draw concentric orbital vector rings with Trim Paths and Repeater shape operators, parent planet markers to a 3D Null Object, sculpt smooth orbital acceleration in the Graph Editor, and animate the secondary moon orbit with keyframes.

Step-by-Step Workflow

1. Create the Composition and Shape Layer Orbital Rings

  1. Create a new composition (Ctrl+N / Cmd+N) at 3840 × 2160, 60 fps, duration 10s, with a deep space #080B14 background.
  2. Choose Layer ▸ New ▸ Shape Layer. Add an Ellipse path (900 × 900 px) and a dashed cyan Stroke (2.5 px).
  3. Add a Trim Paths operator to the shape group: keyframe End from 0% at 00:00 to 100% at 02:00 so the orbital track draws itself onto the dome screen.
  4. Add a Repeater operator (3 copies, Scale 135%, Rotation 30°) to generate three concentric harmonic telemetry rings from a single path.

2. Parent 3D Layers and Refine Velocity Curves in the Graph Editor

  1. Choose Layer ▸ New ▸ Null Object, enable the 3D Layer switch on both the Null (Orbit Hub) and the planet shape layers, and parent the planet layers to Orbit Hub.
  2. Add a Camera layer (Layer ▸ New ▸ Camera…) with Depth of Field enabled so the foreground transit pass softly blurs the distant starfield.
  3. Keyframe the Y Rotation of Orbit Hub from -45° to +115°, open the Graph Editor in the Timeline, switch to the Speed Graph, and convert the keyframes to Easy Ease, pulling the incoming tangent handle to create a dramatic slow-in transit across the central star.

3. Animate the Secondary Orbit and Render

  1. Animate the companion moon’s rotation with keyframes. Use a faster rotation cycle than the main orbit and preview the relationship.
  2. Add Glow to the central star, preview with Space, then send the composition to the Render Queue. This is a flat-frame animation; dome projection requires a separately tested delivery workflow.

Sources

Upstream version checked on 2026-10-14.