Chrono Blender sun/moon cycle for background scenes

Get it on OGA

Finally, it is done. Took two days, and I had to tweak a tricky setup. I learned that an object with .05 alpha color or higher can be set to “cut through” background objects. You can either cut one object, or all objects (depending on settings). Child objects whose parents don’t have materials will cut through all objects. You should be able to copy the moon, tweak properties, and have multiple moons. Textures are bad, but replaceable. Just don’t touch the material settings.

ChronoBlender sun/moon cycle for background layer
add this setup as a background layer
make all layers with objects active

This setup allows the moon to use transparency to
block the sun, like an eclipse.
Moon fades away as the day goes by
Moon has phases via the sun
Sun rotates counter-clockwise
Moon can have rotation offset to allow different
orbits (multiple moons)
Sky Fades to show stars
Sun’s parent must have sun material
Moon’s parent must have sky material
All materials are set properly
Any deviation could result in the moon cutting
through all objects.
Textures in the materials should be replaceable

You don’t need to zip a .blend, just do pack all files , then select compress in the file save dialog menu

I know, but I like to include Gimp’s xcf file, in case anyone is interested in the texture sources. I should pack files, but if I forget, then I would have to re-upload.