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Showreel Graphics Blog: Eurofighter Typhoon and F22 Raptor animation |  |
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The Old switcharoooo After battling with Animation Master for a while I've decided to continue development of this project in Blender. The lack of a pipeline betweeen Animation Master and any other application has really killed development. Also I really want to learn Blender and continue to hone my poly modelling skills rather than my spline modelling ones. I may wheel out Animation Master for any character animation and camera match the footage.  Project Index Is it finished? Well not quite.. To quote Churchill "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." It's not quite as importent as all that but you get the idea. So the PHP script Terragen and Animation Master have been tied together to make this animation. This scene is the Eurofighter taking a look around a crater surrounded by moutains. A crater because it means we don't have to have so crazy sized terragen scene. This is actually the smallest terragen map.  Project Index First bit of animation getting there! OK I've got the translation script between Animation Master and Terragen working so I have a pipeline. I'm now actually animating the plane. First plane to be animated is the eurofighter. 
Click the image to see the wireframe animation of the plane flying. Project Index Eurofighter Spin Animation Here is a render of the new Eurofighter spinning against the Terragen background. It looks maybe a little too bright but it gives you an idea of the kind of quality I am trying to achieve with this dogfight animation. Click the picture to view the animation 
Also my PHP script which coverts a baked action file form Animation Master to a Terragen camera position / target script works well. It's web based so at some point I will make it available for visitors of the site. It takes a position action of any obeject and converts it to a path to make a fly through. For more complex action e.g Targets on a path and the camera is on a path. You convert both then use a combiner script to produce the terragen script I will hopefully post the first animation I am happy with very soon. Project Index Remodelled - Eurofighter Looking at how the F22 modellled turned out. The Eurofighter looked pretty ordinary in comparison so I've remodelled it pretty much from scratch again. Here it is partly textured and looking much sharper. 
 Project Index Partly textured F22 I'm texturing the F22 using photos available on the Net as reference. www.f22fighter.com has some great reference material available. It's starting to come together. Also just a note allot of pictures claiming to be the F22 are the IF22 which is the prototype which has a number of structural differences. And confused me a bit as my model didn't semm to match the photos.  
Here's is a screen grab of me constructing the the texture.   Project Index The Result so far OK here it is. This is the test run, I've put the Eurofighter into the scene on a path it's been damaged and is being chased down by a missile just a tube right now nothing too detailed. The camera is fixed and the I've exported the Action for conversion. Note you have to bake your action using as tollerence of 0 so you get and keyframe for each frame. As you need a value for each frame for the terrragen script. The sound is from a Lear Jet sample off the internet   
HERE IT IS OK we have the Set the Players now I need to just find the time to finish this.  Project Index That Camara Data After much head scratching and a few late nights. I have written the AM "Action File" to Terregen output generator in PHP. It basically loads each line on the .act file into array and filters through it leaving you with the values you want. PHP then echos out the values formatted into the Terregen script format. The action files camera data is reversed so it if you import the values in as they exist in the file you run into problems. So I had to write a bit of code to reverse the values of the data. Currently I this script only covers camera rotation although it can be use to extract any XYZ data out of the file with tweeking. I hope to release this on my website at some point Project Index Terragen Test Render Here is the first test render of my Terragen world. Looks ok but a bit washed out. I'll probably keep it a little dull as the the veiwer should stay focused on the planes  
This second is just another I am playing with, you can produce amazing images with terragen, but the more water you have the more render time. Plus with camera matching you will need to think about reflections. Project Index Terragen !!!!!!... I do like this application. For the price and what you can get out of it it's rather useful. The idea here is to match the Animation Master renders to out Terragen ones. Although you could create the scene in AM it is a rather pointless exercise if you have another application which can do the same in a fraction of the time. Also splitting the scene down into layers you don't need to render everything again if you make a change to a model. More about Terragen can be found at http://www.planetside.co.uk/ After allot of research the only way to do this is by using camera matching software expensive. Animation Master is a great tool for the price but the lack of pipelines betweeen it and other apps kills it dead for a llot of people. Well after looking at the syntax of action files AM (Animation Master) produces I have decided to write a PHP script which will output a Terragen script file from AM's camera movement. I learnt PHP last year while working on a number of web sites for people. Project Index Eurofighter model The Eurofighter is basically modelled although it is a little rough around the edges. I would like to rig the avionics if I had time.  
Next up Terragen test. Project Index F22 Getting there The F22 is nearing completion. I still need to model the cockpit cowl and tweek the tail fin bases. This image was rendered with one downlight set at 20% intesity with low resolution Z-bufferred shadows plus 3 others arced around it. The afterburner flames are still being developed. I think I will rig them with a loopable action and give them some movement.  Project Index Level of Detail The complexity of these models will be enough for them to stand up to scutiny in the animation but not good enough for a close up view of a specific component of the plane. Any high detail part needed will be modelled seperately to the base model. Project Index The Players The dogfight: the two planes battling it out will be an F22 and Eurofighter Typhoon Here is my start on modelling the F22 
The source material for the model was collected from around the internet. These plans were used as a starting point http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=374962 These are RC plans so are not 100% accurate so I will use photos to correct the wing thicknesses and so on. The Eurofighter will be based on a Revell 1:44 model which cost £3.00  Project Index New scenes Scene 1 : Dog fight: This will be created with Animation Master and Terragen. This part of the showreel is to cover commercial work which is unvalable to the public which I created while working on aerospace CBT project. Originally 3D Studio Max was used to create similar work. These included visualisations of the Eurofighter being repaired instructions to ground crew and pilot etc..but missing the the fun bit a dog fight. Scene 2 : Indian / Queequeg: A character also modelled in Animation Master and rigged using The Setup Machin (TSM). Scene 3: Car: Sketched out and rendered using Paint Shop Pro 8 with the Help of a Wacom Intuos Tablet, then Poly Modelled in 3D Studio MAX. Project Index And so it begins....... OK Here it is. I'm finally getting around to recording how and why I'm doing varios drawings and animations for my showreel and so on. The purpose of this blog is to give others an idea of how I've constructed parts of the project. I hope it will be useful as a resource to anyone who is thinking of creating similar things. I will also use the instructions my self as it's pretty tough to remember all the solutions to problems you've come up against when creating in 3D. And so it begins.......  Project Index |
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