Future VTOL Heli-thing

[Howard Day]

Hey, guys. I know I've not had much activity round these parts recently, but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy. I'm taking a bit of a break from the WC Pioneer stuff - there's only so much low-poly work a man can stand - and I'm doing some high-res subdivision surface stuff. I've always had difficulty with the hard-edge to smooth-edge of complicated sub-div mechanical modeling, so I decided to do something as challenging as I could. I settled on a "Stealth Helicopter" - fun because of all the dog-teeth panels all over the place - and went with something a bit more interesting than a straight-up helicopter, something more akin to a mix between a RAH-66 Comanche and the Orca from Command & Conquer.
Most of the primary modeling is done - with the notable exception of the cockpit interior, some small panels and vents on the main fuselage, and the landing gear. All the fuselage panels open up - landing gear doors, weapon bays, and access panels. The textures on the wing thruster shrouds are mostly done, though I need to texture the central bits.

Here's a 360 quicktime:
http://www.hedfiles.net/~hday/VTOL.mov (62 MB quicktime, 1600x800)

Let me know what you guys think!

[biotech]

Looks sweet, I also get shades of Hawkmans spaceship in there from season 2 Buck Rogers.

Love the exhaust, care to share how you pulled off that look?

[Ozylot]

That looks like it would be some serious fun to fly. Very cool!

[Howard Day]

Biotech - sure, it's pretty simple actually. There are three parts - the engine model (with a self-illum map with a horizontal gradient - a in-engine flames model, with is pretty much just the little glowing orange wedges. These are not set to additive, but are very bright. - and a flickering external flames model, with is a very faint animating texture set to be additive. The flickering texture moves along the texture's Y axis at a rate of 4000 units every 400 frames. The last model also has a .5% post-process blur applied to it.
I'm also using my fake HDR trick so this whole thing is brightened up 400% after being rendered (the initial global lighting level is set to .25), so that how I'm getting those nice bright spec highlights on a highly motioned blurred object ( the fan blades) and the blur around the engine flame look like a heat distortion.

I'll post a max file later tonight.

[Tovette]

Very sweet looking! The vid must be down because I can't download it.

[biotech]

Thanks for that explanation, I cant wait for the file.

[Howard Day]

That movie link should be fixed now. Apologies.

[bagera4000]

vary cool

its classed a hover jet

[Howard Day]

"Classed?" No, it's a VTOL. So, Biotech, here's your MAX file - it's probably going to be pretty disappointing.

[Coolhand]

looks awesome howard, and some great looking renders there too. might i suggest design wise that you beef up the entire tailplane to about twice its current size though, its looking disproportionately small compared to the rest imo.