Tuesday thread

[madman]

Ok so I was wanting to comment in the Monday thread but it was closed! So I made a Tuesday thread

Originally Posted by Taw Makto

One of my volunteers and I got a great start to the week working on a display deck for a helicopter drone at the museum. It's supposed to look like part of the deck of a Navy destroyer. I spent ALL last week welding it's frame together, only to have the top develop a distinct bow, kind of like a shallow hill. I'm not all that experienced when it comes to sticking metal together. Anyway, we worked the problem today and when we left it was ready to get it's decking applied first thing tomorrow morning. Looking really good! The drone is currently hanging from the rafters in one of our hangars, and it has to come down soon since it's a bit in the way of some new construction. I don't have a great big monkey on my back, but it would be good to finish as promised.

Otherwise, at home I got a lot done on the airplane model I'm making for X-Plane, and just finished zipping around a bit in northern Brazil after getting the laundry done, eating supper and watching an awesome episode of House.

The Amazonian terrain is awesome, and would likely be what Pandora looks like from the air. This is probably where I'm (someday) going to put together a landscape that reflects Hell's Gate, Hometree II and, of course, the Tree of Souls and Hallelujah Mountains. I surrendered to common sense and realize I'm not going to be able to do full terrain for the entire moon!! Go figure.

Mondays usually blow chunks 'cause of having to go back to work, but then again, it's usually my best day of the week since I'm recharged. They call that a dichotomy.

wow Steve you sure know how to have a good Monday!! I'm dien to see a pic of that ship!

You have some amazing projects in the works. I'd love to hear more about your plans! Keep us all updated tsmukan.

[Taw Makto]

Thanks, Jon. I try! This is the ship... GrizzlyJet. It's in my albums among other stuff.



I've got all of the Rhino surfaces reduced to polygon meshes, and I think the count is around 50k at this point. It will be interesting to see what X-Plane does with all that polygon goodness. I might do some reduction in AC3D, but not too much. I don't want to loose any of those sexy compound curves. Ahem! The animation process that attaches various parts to rotation and translation axes is going to take all day Saturday. I've got to match up all the flight controls, flaps and spoilers, and then make the landing gear suspension work.....and retract. Very complicated. I'm in heaven... can't wait!! Eventually I'll be able to take movies of the beastie flying around - and will be sure to share.

[madman]

wow that is really neat stuff! So you are designing an aircraft for a flight simulator? Are you able to make any plane you want?

[Taw Makto]

Thanks!

X-Plane allows one to create the aerodynamic shapes and wings of just about any shape aircraft, from flying wing to helicopter to wide body jumbo jet. It then will break that shape down into it's components and analyze them as you fly. It isn't perfect, but it's very close to a real time wind-tunnel. Therefore, what the flight simulation does is a close mathematical model of what the same aircraft shapes would do if they were built and flown in the real world. X-Plane After you've created what I call the flight dynamics model, you can then overlay that with a more pleasing and accurate visual representation of the aircraft. Some flight models are pretty doggone good, but they lack fine detail. I'm a CG artist among my other skills, so I want my plane to look as real as I can get it. I've been evolving the design for quite some time, but anyone can make a simple plane in less than an hour. It's hella fun!!

[madman]

wow again lol. That is very cool. Now I understand. I think I saw someone in another thread asking you if you were going to build any Avatar planes. Do you have any plans to do that?

[Taw Makto]

I was going to do a Valkyrie, but I backed away. It might still happen, but I have so doggone many other projects going it's not funny. My next 3D project is going to be to test the idea of floating mountains in X-Plane. It won't be hard from a modeling standpoint, but getting them to look right as one flies towards them will be a challenge. Objects have a habit of just popping into existence when you get a certain distance from them in X-Plane, so I need to plan the terrain approaches carefully to make the whole idea work. So....no Avatar aircraft. Just great big rocks!!!

[Human No More]

Originally Posted by Taw Makto

Thanks!

X-Plane allows one to create the aerodynamic shapes and wings of just about any shape aircraft, from flying wing to helicopter to wide body jumbo jet. It then will break that shape down into it's components and analyze them as you fly. It isn't perfect, but it's very close to a real time wind-tunnel. Therefore, what the flight simulation does is a close mathematical model of what the same aircraft shapes would do if they were built and flown in the real world. X-Plane After you've created what I call the flight dynamics model, you can then overlay that with a more pleasing and accurate visual representation of the aircraft. Some flight models are pretty doggone good, but they lack fine detail. I'm a CG artist among my other skills, so I want my plane to look as real as I can get it. I've been evolving the design for quite some time, but anyone can make a simple plane in less than an hour. It's hella fun!!

Sounds interesting