Decaff's Garage

[decaff_42]

@ turbofan
Thanks for the address. I'll have to shoot him an email.


Okay, With the exceptions of a few minor details at a later point in time (cockpit, etc) I'm declaring the basic fuselage done.


Fuselage Related Things to do:
-Antennae
-Cables
-Bomb Bay
-Bomb Bay door
-Landing Gear Bays
-Landing Gear doors
-Lights
-Flaps
-Control Surfaces
-Decals
-Some panel lines (maybe)

[FrenchTOZT]

Liking this.

[iqmal_97]

[decaff_42]

Getting started on the cutting and animating of parts. First up! THE RUDDER!!!!!



EDIT!

Got the shading thing figured out. Yay YS blender scripts that work!

Currently working on cutting and animating the various parts
More pictures to come later

[Honey Badger]

Y DON"T ANY OF MY SCRIPTS WORK!!! Same Python Scripts Error I got a year ago. LOL. Looks awesome, Decaff. I can't scratch model in anything except Google Sketchup and even then, it's pretty much very simplified versions of my house.

[decaff_42]

MANY THANK BADGER!!!

So as I mentioned here, i ran into a bunch of problems with accuracy and other wonderful things using the tutorialed method of animating things found in our tutorials.

Using Armatures is so much easier and, for me, intuitive to use. In creating all the animations for the plane, i only ran into one glitch that took literally 10 seconds to figure out a 5 second work around.

Anyway, more pictures I promised:

I've color coded the animated parts for my own sanity and for easier viewing by all ya wonderful people.




A good old traditional wireframe view:


Here's what the main gear doors should hopefully look like when the gear is down. (animation stopped)



TO DO LIST
1) Propellers (I have an idea of how to make them, just not sure about animating them yet.) If anyone could tell me how to animate them, that would be lovely. I just need to figure out what key frames are needed to create the animation.

2) Landing Gear-I have yet to decide how I will make these and in what detail. I may have to borrow some pieces from other planes to get a starting point. I also want to experiment with animating them with Armatures to see how complex the animations can be made.

3) Lights-Again, I may need to cannibalize some parts

4) Still need to make wing fences...should probably get that done next.

5) Cockpit (wimper)- I think the cockpit will be the hardest part of the plane. It will need a fair amount of detail given the rest of the plane. My one attempt to make a cockpit modification (a Mig-25) ended with miserable failure after I put in 3-4 hours of work. If anyone has made a cockpit before, some tips would be greatly appreciated!

6) Tail gunner/observer- I think this will be much easier than making a cockpit, as it will be less detailed, so I can use it as practice for when I make the cockpit.

7) Other details, like decals, antennae, etc.

[Gunny]

Its looking really good decaff.I am really going to enjoy chasing this with an F4.

[Nath]

Cannot Wait. If you put some counter-rotating propellers on that I will instantly download it and love it forever.

C

[lorDuckFeet]

Incredible work, I hope to wait to fly it.

[decaff_42]

Added the wing fences


Added the tail gunner's position. I'm thinking about adding a person in there. not sure yet.

[tigershark]

epic work decaff_42 i hope to fly with it with my su-27 i have been working on.
i am hope i am going to try to download it first

[decaff_42]

well I just hit a bad stumbling block.

You know those armatures that I was so happy I found? They don't work with the dnm export scripts.

back to square one trying to animate parts.

-- Mon Nov 12, 2012 1:13 am --

Can anyone help me set up the empty objects to a align with the flaps? Unlike the rudder which is along the vertical plane, they are angled downward, aft, and to the side.

Whenever I try to set up an empty for anything not on a global plane, it doesn't work out and mis-aligns when I try to move it from 0,0,0 back into it's proper location.

I'm posting the files I have so far into the dropbox for those who are good at animating.
I REALLY NEED HELP with this. It is frustrating to the extreme and I am quickly exhausting my options and attempted get-arounds.

-- Mon Nov 12, 2012 5:28 pm --

Okay, so i was stressing out last night, got frustrated, and followed the immortal advice of Gunny: Take a break.

Got up this morning, went to class, and afterwards did a few searches. One post in the murky depths of the internet suggested to use crtl->shift->P to create a parent without inverse.

This differs from the tutorial here, as it allows me to rotate using r->y->y like with the armatures, but I have to position the axis of the empty object correctly along the rotation axis I want. Also I did not rotate the moving surfaces that are roughly perpendicular to the tail, (ailerons, elevators, flaps, etc) vertical, instead I made them horizontal and then inserted the empty object.

This I can do. All I need to do now is get the gear doors, and bomb bay set up to get back to where I was with the armatures.

[Gunny]

Adapt,Improvise,Overcome.Well done.

[decaff_42]

I haz contra-rotating propellers!



Because I made the propellers 3-d and the back one is a flipped around front propeller (to provide forward, not backward thrust) It is easy to animate these guys. (for once )

Next I look to tackle landing gear.

[Turbofan]

Wow, you're just "flying" right along on this one (kidding). In all seriousness, nice going. And all this in Blender with trial and error, nice work!

[decaff_42]

Well I may have flown myself into another wall...

What it looks like in blender:


What it looks like in YSF:


Any thoughts?
To me it looks like everything but the propellers was inverted, normals and coordinate wise.

[Flake]

you're right.

edit your mesh and invert the normals. there is a short cut for it.

[decaff_42]

Okay I fiddled a little, and by selecting each part and adding this:



I get this:




Was that the normals editing that you were thinking about?


I'm also thinking that perhaps I need to make each object a srf and then import them into the right position. The objects constrained by empty objects are all in their proper locations. and orientations with the exception of the port aileron. Not sure what's up with that sucker.

[Honey Badger]

That's uhhhh...interesting...but can it blend? (see what I did there?) Seriously, do the animations at least work?

[decaff_42]

only the ones that are not linked to the empty objects. I'm currently trying to combine the different meshes so that at least the base model is there.