Modelling for Animation

Time to dive in at the deep end and create my first animation. It's going to be a long road but I've been playing around at tutorials long enough.
So after a visit to Duxford Imperial War Museum I came back with around 200 reference photos and I've started to create the first model which will be the start of the animation. A Spitfire MarkI
Rough box model
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Amazing how as soon as you get that elliptical wing shape it's already recognisable even in rough form. I divided up the mesh to work on different areas separately.

Next I had a go at the cockpit but not happy with it. Wrong shape and I've screwed up the edge flow at the front. So I left that and started shaping the nose area of the fuselage. Coming along quite well.

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I'll update as I go. Realised I've messed up separating the whole tail pieces though. Some of those areas are fixed parts of the fuselage and some need to be rigged to move (the rudder and elevators) So I'll need to re work that area too.

Great start! Good to see the move from tuts to animation! On a side note, I just recently made the move from the couch to the tuts!

Xraygunner wrote:Great start! Good to see the move from tuts to animation! On a side note, I just recently made the move from the couch to the tuts!

good one.

@strangebloke...looking good, i'm looking forward to seeing where this is going.

Thanks all.

Where is this gong? Clue, I'm British, I'm a WW2 buff, I'm modelling a mark I Spitfire from 1940, I have many reference photos of a 1940 Messerschmitt 109.....
I think we can all see where I'm heading

Main fuselage now correctly shaped front to rear. Thanks to blueprints I found online which have cross sections all the way down. Very handy.

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Done some work splitting out the rudder and elevators but not finished yet.

Xraygunner you've made a lot of comments that you can't seem to get going on your own stuff. I've got a suggestion for you. I've been caught in the trap of just doing endless tutorials and not taking the plunge to start my own stuff. Why not try what I'm doing now? I bought this tutorial a while ago.

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But instead of copying what he's doing I'm following it and using the techniques to model what I want to do. The Spitfire. It's a great way of easing you way into creating your own stuff. There will be bits that are different (I've mad a cock of the tailplane because mine has moving parts and his doesn't) but they are small pieces of the puzzle and it's not as intimidating as trying to start something from scratch on your own.

Jump in mate if I can do it so can you

Thanks for the encouragement. I will be doing exactly that very soon, but I really did just get off my figurative couch about a week ago now. I've renounced gaming for a while and I'm feeling pretty good about it. Keep going!... this is really giving me reason to keep learning as well!

I'm providing inspiration? Cool

You have to promise you won't get discouraged when I get stuck and start asking for help though!

OK. I'm here now. Elevators are done (although I've just noticed I need to make sure they aren't touching the main body for when they are rigged.) Rudder is partly done but I need to split the circled part of the main body off and join it to the top geometery as it all needs to move. I really should have had a better look at this before I started splitting it up. Oh well it'll all work out eventually.

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Tonights task is to finish the rudder and extrude off the main body to rebuild the stationary part of the tail. I'll be needing a lot of extra edge loops to get the curves in various places too.

Time for a quick update. I decided to stop posting every single vertex I created and wait until I'd actually made some progress

Tail section is now OK. I've removed the bulges from the nose, they shouldn't be there on a Mark I, seems the blueprint was incorrect.

Biggest headache was the fillets that join the wings to the main fuselage. They are one weird shape! Had a couple of goes but it just didn't match the reference photos. Think I've got it now though.

If you spot anything wrong let me know. I've been staring at this so much I may have got used to the shape and miss any mistakes.

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Work commitments have kept me away for a while.
I did delete and re-create the cockpit. Not shaped it but the edge flow is much better.

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But I ran into some problems with holes appearing in my mesh and broken edge loops. Long story short I've decided to go through the tutorial I mentioned above and actually follow it to create the vehicle.

By the time I've learnt what that has to offer I should be able to come back to this and do it better \ right. It's a looong tutorial though, over 15 hours! But hey I'll certainly learn a lot.

Been quiet around here lately so I thought I'd stir this thread up again. I'm still plodding throught the vehicle modelling tutorial. Nearly finished and I've learnt so much I think I may end up starting the Spitfire again from scratch. Maybe, not sure will look it over when I've done.

For those who haven't seen it there's a brilliant blend file for showing off your models. Go to Blendswap, go to the most downloaded section and get the Simple Three Point Light Setup. Append your model and change the textures to the Matte one that comes with the three point blend. Render and enjoy.

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Not finished yet, some parts not subsurfed or lined up but it's looking pretty good.

Whoa! Diggin' that!!

yep yep like it

Thanks. Just copying the tutorial so not really any skill of mine in it.

Learning tons though. The Spitfire should be asy after this.

Wow, you're doing good. I still have yet to take a real crack at that tutorial, makes me think maybe I should give it another go. How much time would you say you put into it to get it to that point?

Thanks. Very nearly finished now. Onto the last video. Or I was until my main PC packed in for the second time in two weeks. Sigh.

I started it in late November. Worked on it 3 or 4 evenings a week, but didn't do much over Christmas week. I couldn't really say how much time I've spent for sure. There are 15+ hours of video and I've often only got through 10 or 12 minutes in an entire evening due to back tracking constantly to see what he did. And I was pretty slow on the interface at first.

Looks like this now.

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Finished this today. I can recommend it, you'll learn a lot. Including how to get out of mistakes, he does make a few during the course. It's also a good introductions to creating a model from concept art or blueprints, which is exactly what I'm doing with the Spitfire. Will get back onto that tomorrow.

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OK busy weekend so only just got back on this but I'm determined to start making progress.

I did do some research and find out exactly what model of Spitfire I should be modelling to be historically accurate. As a consequence i've had to delete and re-do the canopy for the third time but at least it's the right shape now. Got the bullet proof glass added too (hard to believe in the early weeks of the Battle of Britain they were sent up with no bullet proof glass and minimal armour plating to protect them!)

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they did that to keep the weight down and improve performance

Very true. Until they realised how many precious trained pilots they were losing. Planes could be replaced, pilots couldn't.
So they upgrade to the Mk1A which is what I'm modelling.

Don't know if you saw this, but this was on BlenderNation:
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Yodaman921 wrote:Don't know if you saw this, but this was on BlenderNation:
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The Polish copies of his books are great too. Lots of good pictures which are definitely worth a look if you're not willing to spend on the English version.

Wow no I hadn't seen that. Thanks to both of you.

I was going to learn Polish ... but spending $30 was easier They are mine now.

And I think we can be fairly sure I'll be starting this from scratch using the techniques in those books.
They are excellent. Thanks again.

Hey, any news on this front?

Hi Xray

A little bit. I moved flat shortly after the last post. This kept me busy for a few weeks. After that I had to deal with a couple of rather painful health problems and an ongoing battle with the water board.

Somewhere in the middle of all that I did use the techniques in the Ebooks to model the propeller. It came out quite nicely.

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But then I realised it won't be in the animation anyway as I plan to show it already in flight.  Still it was fun to see how it was done.

I'm doing a couple of tutorials to get myself back in the swing and remember all the short cut keys I've forgotten. Then I'll be back on this.... hopefully. Thanks for you interest.

Lookin' good! So, do you have a rough outline or teaser to the animation?