MHD-Int Kepler-16 — The Circumbinary "Tatooine" Planet at True Scale
Requirements: Blender 4.2 LTS or newer. Scene generation and Cycles renders tested on 4.2 and 5.0.1. EEVEE has not been tested. Uses numpy, which is bundled with Blender. 8 GB RAM recommended.
Quick start (no scripting):
- Unzip the download.
- Open Kepler16_MHDINT.blend.
- Press F12 to render the current frame, or Ctrl+F12 to render the animation.
Change the camera: go to the Scripting tab (the script is already open inside the .blend), set ONLY_SWITCH_CAMERA = "eclipse" and press Alt+P. This does not rebuild the scene: it switches the camera and shows the objects that belong to that view. Camera keys: overview, tilted, binary, eclipse, eclipse_A, planet, planet_sky.
Rebuild with your own settings:
- In the Scripting tab, edit the settings at the top of kepler16_v1.0.py. The main ones: the duration and speed of the animation, the slow-motion factor at each event, labels and orbit lines, RESOLUTION (all with comments in the file).
- Set ONLY_SWITCH_CAMERA = None and press Alt+P. The scene is rebuilt from scratch.
Read the data: select an object named MHDINT_… and open Object Properties → Custom Properties. Values carry their source and say whether they are measured, computed or illustrative.
Performance: rebuilding takes a few seconds. A Cycles render takes 1–2 minutes on a laptop CPU.
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