Test Animation of a P51 Mustang

[Tralfaz]

This is a test animation of the P51-D Mustang I built for Exercise 10. I wanted to see how the propellors would look spinning as well as play around a bit with the motion blur. The movement of the plane is not quite as smooth as I would like (still need lots of practice). The third plane moves a bit too fast when it dives.

 

I have posted the model for download in the Exercise 10 post (it is down a ways on the page). Feel free to use it however you like.

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showt...3215&st=120

 

C&C always welcome...

 

Thanks...

Al

 

[attachmentid=21254]

P51Mustang.mov

[NancyGormezano]

Fun! - great background - motion blur looks really good, great sound track.

 

The turn/dive motion on the first plane looks more exagerrated than a real plane, not quite accurate - might be a fun exercise to make it look really cartoony, at some point after you achieve what you're going after.

 

It's terrific to see a new user? doing so well. Your stuff doesn't look new to animation.

[robcat2075]

Good looking planes!

 

If we saw some specular reflection (from the light of the sun) on them that might make them seem a bit more real.

 

They do move a bit too spritely, more like a kite rather than a heavy plane.

[Tralfaz]

Nancy:

 

Prior to using Animation Master, I was using a free program called Anim8or for a couple of years. It is a great program, but was lacking a couple of features for some films I would like to do.

 

The first film is a Star Wars fan film. Anim8or models and test animations on it can be found here...

http://www3.sympatico.ca/al.dinelt/fanfilm/index.html

 

The second film is called 10-100 and is based on a mural that I did around 30 years ago. Again, tests were done in Anim8or, but it was going to be very difficult to animate the characters for the film.

 

Once I get through the exercises and become better with A:M (in both modelling and animating), I hope to do these two films using A:M.

 

Robert:

 

I think what I need to do is concentrate on just one aircraft and get the timing correct on it. Trying to crame 3 aircraft into a short 6 second clip is just too much. Do you know how would I go about adding specular reflection to the aircraft?

 

Thanks...

Al

[jpappas]

Al,

 

To add Specular reflections (these are the bright glints things have from light sources):

 

1. in your Light's Options, you need to turn on Specularity. If you have an outdoor scene like this and you're using more than one light, you should only have Specularity turned on for the light representing the sun. The idea is that you don't want specularity coming from your own fill lights, etc., you want to have specularity only for lights in your scene that represent real lights.

 

2. in your Models Surface Attributes, set a Specular Color (white is fine), set the Specular Size to some value, stick with a small size probably between 10-25% since metal is reflective you want a small specular size. Then set the Specular Intensity to some value depending on how pronounced you want it. You can give different Specular settings to different groups, so the cockpit material could be more Specular than the body of the plane, etc...

 

When you do this you will see a very uniform Specular reflection in your render which, while it looks good, doesn't actually occur much in real life! Objects that have a very smooth surface are usually plastic, so this is often a reason why CG renders in general can look plasticky. To get past that, you could create a grayscale bump map decal for your object which helps break up the perfectly smooth specular appearance, or, you could actually create grayscale specular size and specular intensity decals.

 

-Jim