Aircraft - Après Moi Le Déluge (After me, the flood)

[wave of light]

Hi guys,

I'm currently working on my UV, texturing and lighting skills, so here's my latest work in progress....

Two Spitfire MkXIVe (thanks Bill!) escort Lancaster B (QR-M), MkIII No. 61 Squadron PA474 "Mickey the Moocher" across foreign borders.

To do:

1. Redo vector version of "Mickey the Moocher" painting for side of fuselage, as I only have a low res, angled version.
2. Add more detail to upper wings, including grim and smoke stains from the four engines.
3. Look at adding more bloom.

And any other comments/fixes you guys throw up.

EDIT: Below are two attached images. First one is what I started with, the second is the latest render.

Regards,

Ricky.

[Phoenix]

Cool. Wasnt that a nuclear bomber?

[wave of light]

Originally Posted by Phoenix

Cool. Wasnt that a nuclear bomber?

Hi Phoenix,

I don't believe they were ever armed with nuclear bombs. They are best known for the 617 squadron 'The Dambusters' and the bouncing bomb, used to destroy large dams in World War II.

I live close to Derwent Dam in Derbyshire, which is where they practised their bombing runs (see below).

Cheers,

Ricky.

[BillS]

Its going to be a neat render when its done... right now its way to well lit on the camera side. With the sun where it is in the BG image, the planes would be more of a silhouette. I imagine that the lighting is more render test right now though.

[wave of light]

Originally Posted by BillS

Its going to be a neat render when its done... right now its way to well lit on the camera side. With the sun where it is in the BG image, the planes would be more of a silhouette. I imagine that the lighting is more render test right now though.

I must admit, it's a difficult one.

The model was the cheapest Lancaster I could find, none textured version (needed a lot of cleaning) and the lower fuselage isn't really accurate, so having a shot from above was a must. However, I loved the background image, but soon realised that at that angle the side of the Lancaster would be very dark, and I didn't want to spend too much time on the UV texturing, only not to be able to see any of the artwork/decal.

At the moment it's two DPinfinite lights, with a small amount of ambient lighting. I will have a play, but I don't want the resulting image becoming too dark.

Also, I think I will also change the rotation of each set of Lancaster propellers, as they all currently render at the same rotation. I presume that wouldn't be the case in real life?

Cheers,

Ricky.

[wave of light]

Whilst I'm re-doing the Mickey artwork, I had a quick thought re. the lighting. I've reversed the background image so that the lighting comes from the top left of the image and moved the angle of the DP lights accordingly. This allows me to show the fuselage and details.

Thoughts?
(N.B I've turned off AA and MB for a quicker render)

Cheers,

Ricky.

[BillS]

That works much better for what you want to show of the plane. It is a nice BG image isn't it.

[wave of light]

Originally Posted by BillS

That works much better for what you want to show of the plane. It is a nice BG image isn't it.

It is, and for the life of me I can't remember where I got it from. I know it was a google search, so if the photographer responsible for taking should ever see this thread, please let me know and I will add you to the credits

I've finished the Mickey texture and I'm now doing smoke, dirt etc.

Update soon.

Ricky.

[Rigel]

Yes, the sun on the left works much better.

[wave of light]

Originally Posted by Rigel

Yes, the sun on the left works much better.

Yes, I'm very happy with the change of background.

Here's a quick test render, now with decal and smoke stains. Furthest left stain needs to be moved over a little to the left. Plus I need to look at adding in rivets, etc.

Going to try and add a little bit of smoke from the engines, using hypervoxels (which I've never done before).

[Woody]

Nice work thus far WoL.
A few suggestions to keep in mind for the final, which I'm sure you have already considered:
1. Global lighting - some warm light should be bounced back at the underside of the aircraft in your scene for more of a global illumination. Whether you actually use GI or Final Gather is up to you. You can do a respectable job with standard lighting and save a ton on render times.

2. Atmospheric perspective - Be sure to output a depth pass for your final composite so you can easily do some defocus of the background aircraft and lessen the contrast for more atmospheric depth.

[BillS]

Before we get to far along with the weathering and grunge.. There are some colour issues on the old girl. I've had the distinct honour of going for a ride in this one...



The dark colour on the lower part of the fuse has a greenish almost tint to it. I don't know if its from the lighting or not but it should be blacker. You may want to drop the diffuse setting on it so it doesn't pick up colour from the lights.

The brown on the camo isn't bad... maybe a touch to saturated.
The green is seriously off. Here is one of the most accurate colour charts that I've found.

Digital RAF WW2 Colours.pdf

And the camo layout.


The red on the text seems a little to saturated also.

The smoke stains... a little dark for my taste but that is more a personal thing

[BillS]

hmm..didn't expect it to embed it.... I zipped up the pdf.

Digital RAF WW2 Colours.zip

[wave of light]

@Woody: Cheers Charles for your suggestions. Yep, I'm going to have a look at the second light I have in the scene (which may also be linked to the colour issues Bill is talking about) and I'll look at adding either a bounce card or a fill light so that the fuse picks it up.

Re. point 2: Is it better, easier, etc. to do two passes, one normal and one for the depth pass or render all in one go with DOF?

@Bill: Thanks man, knew 'the plane man' would come to my rescue at some point. Before we go into detail just let me say you are a very lucky man to have flown in one. The closest I came was when we were camping in the Lakes (Wastwater) only to be 'buzzed' by one in the early hours of the morning (practising for the local Airshow) . I have never been so scared in all my life. The noise was immense and the ground actually shook!

Now, on with the detail:

I will download your chart and play with the correct colours. I must admit I just grabbed them from a screen dump.

Yes, you can clearly see from your photo that the lower half of my plane has colour issues. And I will check the red too.

Smoke... I had a quick look at the colour maps on your Spitfire and I can see that that the smoke has a lot less opacity. I was going for a 'she's done a lot of missions' look, but I think toning it down a little may also stop the final shot from becoming too dark.

Your reference picture shows some of the inaccuracies with the model, but then again, for £12, I couldn't argue. Who knows, after I've finished Lewis' excellent car tut, I may have a crack at the old girl myself.

Back soon.

Ricky.

[BillS]

Someone was smiling on me that day. Every year at the Hamilton Airshow they used to sell rides. They were anywhere between $500-$1000 depending on how many signed up to go. All the proceeds (over the cost of fuel etc) went back into the restoration projects that are constantly going on.
http://www.warplane.com/
But every year on the last day there is also a gate draw. Tickets were $10 and you could win a seat. I almost $hit myself when they called my name. You think the noise on the ground is bad... I couldn't hear for 20 min after we got out... and I didn't stop smiling for a few good hour after that

The smoke stains.. Like I said that is a personal thing. What you can do to give you more freedom to play with them is to do the following. Trace out the smoke as you did but put it on a white background and save it out as an alpha map. In the diffuse channel add a procedural/value. Change the colour to a dark grey/black. Put the alpha over it in ... alpha mode. That will cut away all the value procedural except where the alpha lets it through. Now you can change the darkness and opacity and never leave LW.

[BillS]

Here is an example.. Load it up. Set the colour of the "smoke" by increasing the Value in Diffuse. Higher is darker. Then you can fade it out by lowering the opacity.

ValueExample.zip

[wave of light]

@Bill: I bet you were in heaven. Oh man, i cannot imagine the noise on board. I've just been reliving the 'buzz' with my wife and we honestly thought a plane was coming down. She "grabbed our sons and held them for dear life".

I will add your smoke tips to my list of changes.

Here's a quick render with colour changes for RAF red ID, RAF blue ID, dark green and dark earth. However, I haven't corrected the lower fuse green issue.

Cheers guys once again for your expert input.

EDIT: Cheers Bill for the examp, must have missed that post due to refresh.

Ricky.

[BillS]

That's looking better all ready!

[wave of light]

Originally Posted by BillS

That's looking better all ready!

Yes, thanks to your colour charts it looks a lot better.

I'm full up with cold and flu like symptoms this morning, so don't know how much of this I will get done today as I feel like poo.

Ricky.

[wave of light]

Weird thing happened Bill when I tried your diffuse trick. I don't know if it's something I'm doing wrong but this was the result. I even copied across your texture settings, then replaced your png with mine, still the same result (see attached).

I've also noticed that I will need to relax some of the UVs around the top sides of the plane, so I will need to go back to Photoshop again.

[wave of light]

A quick late night update... trying to incorporate most of the comments above.

Goodnight.

Ricky.

[BillS]

Some things to look at.

is it set to alpha mode
How was the alpha saved. It should just be a 24 bit image with no embedded alpha. I don't even change it to indexed since that will lead to banding.

If you could post a shot of the texture editor, I'll see if I can spot something off.

[BillS]

When it comes time to light the scene.. you may want to give this a try. The BG image would work great for it.

http://www.foundation3d.com/forums/s...ad.php?t=11308

[wave of light]

Cheers Bill, I will get back to you asap, once I've dealt with a rather urgent matter.

Well, the gods must watching me, as I woke to "Secondary Master Hard Drive Failed. Press F1 to resume". As part of my business plan to go freelance, I've spent most of the last month setting up a QNAP NAS drive with mirrored raid on my local network (accessible from the internet as well), so that if anything were to happen to client's files, I would have the first tier of a decent disaster recovery setup. Literally two days ago I move all the content from the now dead drive (which contains all my Lightwave work, plugins, you name it) to the NAS .

I've be spending most of this morning looking at offsite backups from the NAS to my website.

Ricky.

[wave of light]

Ok, before I go any further with detail, please take a look at this latest render, using Bills method for lighting a scene with LDR images. The same image that is used in the comp shot is the one mapped to the sphere. I think it works quiet well.

I've added a little bloom to draw the eye to the lancaster and to brighten that area.

Ricky.

[Rigel]

Looking much better.

The spinners, rear upper turret and nose glass look too much like mirrors though. You probably need to decrease the reflection on those channels.

[wave of light]

Thanks Rigel for your comments. Yes, I agree since swapping over to the lighting setup Bill suggested, a lot of the surfaces are too reflective. I will sort them out and re-render.

Cheers,

Ricky.

[wave of light]

OK,

Here's a better render. I've changed the textures for most of the glass. I've also set the prop blades to spin/render at slightly different angles.

I'm now ready to do the detail on the wings, fuselage and DOF... unless anyone else has any further comments to drop in.

Cheers,

Ricky.

[BillS]

Looking good. I think the light is a little to bright for the background as it is now. Your loosing some of the sense of foreboding that the BG plate gave it. But that's a pretty simple fix. Nice ripples on the fuselage. Its little things like this that will sell the final image.

[wave of light]

Originally Posted by BillS

Looking good. I think the light is a little to bright for the background as it is now. Your loosing some of the sense of foreboding that the BG plate gave it. But that's a pretty simple fix. Nice ripples on the fuselage. Its little things like this that will sell the final image.

Here's another render with reduced lighting. It's only a small change, do you think I need to go any darker?

Ricky.