My Academic Assistants:
top: Octavia
bottom: Ambrosia
Animation 1
The Tutorial from the Introducing Maya Textbook
Things I changed for the second animation:
Encased the scene in a sphere, this sphere has a space texture with an reversed normals to show texture on the inside. Texture from Solar System Scope.
Gave the planets 2k textures from Solar System Scope and Pluto Texture Map .
Created an offset for all the planets so they don't spin in a line.
Made Octavia a texture and applied her to a sphere.
Second animation