WOW man.....thats a bloody ripper model mate!!!! I agree with dave..this will look s**t hot when its painted!!!!!! good job mate

cheers bullet

Cheers guys, Yeah the plan is to set up some animation with this over the sea. Modeled a load of ct guys with dive gear and will have them jumping out. They are all rigged and ready to go once I get the textures set up. Also looks like I will be able to post some of the animation work I am doing up here as I am allowed to put certain parts in my portfolio once complete. Once this beast is done I will then be going over everything to set up textures and will post progress as I go.
The hope is to get all of this stuff looking as close to real as possible.

Thanks again for the kind words, much appreciated.

That looks cool Leon. It's wierd, this should have almost been the current SM challenge as Im gonna (try) and animate mine too. No humans though. Just a take-off or something, following the apache animation tutorial on here.

I like your renders of this by the way, the indigos and blacks in the shadows. They're really rich and the contrast really helps show the model well. Looking forward to seeing how this comes along.

That black hawk is amazing!

I modelled one some time ago and had a right old time with the engines, absolutely superb mate!

Can i ask you...please please please, how did you set up that amazing render ??????

Cheers Guys,

At work at the mo but almost finished and should have some final renders of the modeling side this evening. The setup simply involves using maya's physical sun on this Paldav. As long as you are rendering with mental rray you should find an option for creating this in the render settings. I am using Maya 2011 so all of the conections are automatically set up but not sure if this is the case on pre 8.5 maya. Let me know how you go and will do my best to explain further if you need it.

Ok still more to do but is mostly complete. Always the final details that seem to take the most time.

http://i222.photobucket.com/albums/d...onlabyk/1b.png

Larger version

http://i222.photobucket.com/albums/d...labyk/1a-1.png

I think this is one of the best models I have seen on this forum.............dave

Wow that is quite a statement Dave. Much appreciated, but do not think it is that good as I have seen many models that exceed this in here. Glad you like it though and hope I can get the textures to a very high standard as that is what will really make this and the hummer pop. Also the soldiers should look great as am gonna be using proper light set ups at work. This will enable me to get all of the ref shots without any shadows allowing me to zproject the textures very quickly. All of this will be shot on a cannon 5D, allowing me to get mega high res pics for the texture process. Will upload some of the soldier stuff and weapons in the next day or so.

Ok here is a render from 1 of the shots in a short piece of animation I have been putting together. Unfortunately none of the stuff in this animation is going to be textured and just uses simple materials as I needed to put something together. looks ok as I set everything at night so there is also a lot of night vision which helps hide the lack of texturing. Will add more once complete along with wires etc.

http://i222.photobucket.com/albums/d...pture1copy.png

Also any of you guys got killer skills with shave and haircut. Am trying to set up the body feathers with it as I feel they will move and interact a lot better, although they are currently looking rubbish. I tried plugging a texture map from the body into it but it did not have the desired effect. I really need to be able to select a area of feathers and plug a texture into the feathers in that area. I could then work this across the entire body, but am not sure how or if there is a way to go about this.

http://i222.photobucket.com/albums/d...abyk/Falco.png

If anyone could give any advice it would be much appreciated.

Cheers

Mate the only advice I can give..........DONT STOP. That chopper is bloody awesome and is certainly in the top 5 from what I have seen since joining SM.

The soldier etc are just plain shit hot man...I mean that....fantastic work.

cheers bullet

Lovely work Leon, I was thinking of your problem and thought of ncloth looked on the net and found this dont know if this is what you are after......................dave

Edit:When I get some time I will try and make a tank track with ncloth as a test


http://vimeo.com/7221901

Ok will post the 1 min animation in 2 weeks time as I have just finished some other shots that were needed which are now rendering. For the bird the wings are all set up and rigged as I got a freelancer to assist with this and he kindly captured the whole process from start to finish so I will hopefully have a good understanding of the ins and outs of it. Also got mb feather for xsi and am going to use this when I get back in the office to set up the body and smaller wing feathers.

In the mean time I started working on a chinook. Here are some wires and what not so far.

wire

Rotor Wire

Rotor wire 1

Front Wheel

Quick render, sorry it is a bit blown out but gives an idea. I will be creating the full interior for this also as well as a lot of details on the exterior that will hopefully get this looking as good as the black hawk.

http://i222.photobucket.com/albums/d...labyk/chin.jpg

Ah, missed the last few posts in this thread. Looking great Leon. Im really eager to see some of the animations.

edit: I was discussing with my Dad about the spindle on my Hind that you said could maybe do with some more detail, and we got to talking about the Chinook, and how incredible it is how the rotor blades intersect each others arc of rotation.

edit2: You're good with AFX arn't you Leon... is the rain in the still from the night time soldier animation from AFX. I was flicking through and having a play with some of the presets in there, the rain, smoke, lightning, raindrops...etc.

Bugger me you dont muck around Leon!!!! mate that is good.....I think I have worked out the background...still cant replicate the clay look though on the model. Just discovered (curious) physical sun etc and mucked around with the properties...nice effect eh?

Mate keep it up...I know where to come if I want a chopper done now!!

cheers bullet

Cheers Ben, The animation I will be putting up is not great as there are no textures etc as mentioned + a lot is key framed which I kinda suck at. We are getting a full optitrack system at our work place though which will enable us to do full body animation with motion builder and facial animation with face robot. This will be up and running by mid Jan so I am hoping to have all the vehicles and characters textured to a very high standard by then so we can create some killer stuff. Got a lot of work to do but hopefully the final results will be worth it and am really looking forward to having some cool kit to work with.

Nice model again Leon are you going to do any AFVs.............dave

No plans for any yet Dave but will keep you posted.

Here are some wire of other bits and bobs.

:). That sounds super cool.

P.s, I'm a beginner with animation myself, so you'll get no eye-browing from me there. Roll on January

CT mask Wire

Armor wire

Face Wire

Boots Wire

Weapons Wire

Cheers Bullet,

I just use a lambert shader to get the clay look. Also make sure final gather is on and think you might also need caustics and gi checked.

Cheers for the kind words guys much appreciated, long way to go and hope that the final stuff is as good as I am aiming for.

Just read your edit Ben,
by AFX I assume you mean after effects in which case the rain was added by our compositor with fusion using some stock footage. Also added some lightning in a couple of the shots to try and make things look more epic. Will try to go into more detail about the methods he used once I get the animation up as it will not make much sense without seeing it. Have started to realize though how imperative compositing packages such as after effects and fusion are though if you want to create great work. Also the main passes that we use are z depth pass, shadow pass, object normal pass, beauty pass and then often render out objects in solid color so they can be manipulated easily.

As said I will try to go into more detail on this when I get the final renders.

Ah right. And yeah, agreed. I dont know too much about after effects, or compositing, but am getting more familiar with AFX and am learning Nuke aswell, and yeah, for some types of work...essential.

And also, yeah, the solid 'matte' object pass seems to be a staple of all the compositing style tutorials and reading I have been doing.

Some more progress on the Chinook.

http://i222.photobucket.com/albums/d...abyk/Nook1.jpg

http://i222.photobucket.com/albums/d...byk/Nook1a.jpg

http://i222.photobucket.com/albums/d...abyk/Nook2.jpg

http://i222.photobucket.com/albums/d...abyk/Nook3.jpg

http://i222.photobucket.com/albums/d...abyk/Nook4.jpg

If I EVER get that good....I know I have died.

Very nice model leon...really bloody impressed mate.

cheers bullet

HAHAHA cheers bullet.

Makes life a lot easier when you get paid to do this stuff and are then able to put in a lot of hours. Hope to the exterior finished later today and can then move onto creating the interior.

Thanks again matey, really appreciate the kind words.

What settings do you adjust when you set up physical sun/sky Leon? Really like the renders.

Hi Ben,

These are straight off the bat but the settings to change are in the hypershade under utilities

Mia exposure and the gamma value is a crucial one

There should be a load of documentation on this in the maya help files if you are really stuck.

Bahahaha no worries mate....they are sincere words I might add. Yeh it would be nice to do it for a living...sadly my 3D are roads, pipes etc etc LOL...not as much fun I can tell you.

cheers bullet

Done some more work on the exterior and started on the interior. Just a few small details still to add to the exterior.
Hell of a lot of work to do on the interior, is going to require a lot of extra modeling. Think it will look a lot better once there are people and clutter such as bags, ropes and what not on the chairs and walls.

http://i222.photobucket.com/albums/d...k/exterior.png

http://i222.photobucket.com/albums/d...k/interior.png

http://i222.photobucket.com/albums/d.../Interior1.png