"Reactor" <rea### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
>
> That sounds pretty similar to what I've been looking at in terms of movement.  I
> wanted to take it a step further by making the control surface orient themselves
> and making vapor trails appear at the right times (by computing curvature &
> speed, then placing media containers if the path curvature falls within a
> certain range).
> I've already cut up and parametrized the control surfaces so that they can be
> animated by supplying a value in the range [-1,1], but I haven't done the
> landing gear yet, which will be slightly more complex, but not significantly
> so.  One issue that I have encountered is the loose tie between frames and real
> world time.  I want things like the aircraft navigation lights to flash at a
> specific real-world interval, but some scenes may require additional frames for
> motion blur averaging.
>
> What are you doing for the engines?  I started by using an emission media, but I
> wasn't satisfied with the appearance.  I am considering using a partially
> transparent textured cone (or more than one).
> Also, if you are still considering a mesh-based approach, I may be able to help
> if you are using Wings.
>
> -Reactor
>
> P.S. Attached is an untextured view of the model in progress. The mesh file is
> about 1.4 MB, stats on a P4 3.0GHz (single core):
> Peak memory used:          35522439 bytes
> Total Scene Processing Times
>   Parse Time:    0 hours  0 minutes  0 seconds (0 seconds)
>   Photon Time:   0 hours  0 minutes  0 seconds (0 seconds)
>   Render Time:   0 hours  5 minutes 32 seconds (332 seconds)
>   Total Time:    0 hours  5 minutes 32 seconds (332 seconds)
> CPU time used: kernel 10.88 seconds, user 313.52 seconds, total 324.39 seconds
> Render averaged 1109.77 PPS over 360000 pixels

It looks like you are much further in to your project than I am.  I haven't even
thought about control surface alignment or variable contrails.  I would love to
know the equations for determining this stuff.  I may not have sufficient math
background to understand it instantly but that would make animation of the
plane look so much more realistic.

I had thought about using lights on the aircraft before and what I planned on
doing when I got there was just use a constant frame number to real time ratio.
 And if I wanted to add motion blur to parts of the video I was just going to
use VirtualDub (http://virtualdub.sourceforge.net/ - I have an older version)
which has a filter that does motion blur for you with no extra time spent
rendering more frames.  However, I'm sure that rendering more frames and
averaging them would probably create a better result.  I just don't want to add
extra time rendering my animation if unnecessary.

The engine effect for my jet was done using a fairly turbulent bozo patterned
emissive media with a cone shaped container.  Right now it isn't the best, but
it is a start.  If you like I may be able to render some closer up views of the
flame.

I appreciate the offer for help with Wings but I don't think I'll pursue mesh
modelling for this plane.  However, I could use some help figuring out how to
lower poly counts on the mesh generated from my isosurface with Wings or
Blender (if you use it).  Basically my mesh is generated from the isosurface by
sampling every n (specifiable) units in a 3D grid like fashion.  This mesh
generation approach requires that you generate a very fine sampling in order to
get some of the details in the isosurface but afterward I'm stuck with a 2
million vertices mesh that looks terribly blocky.  I've tried to use blender to
reduce the vertices count but I can never seem to get the mesh rudders smooth.
Hope this makes sense. :)

I really like your aircraft.  I can't believe how smooth the mesh for it is.
Did you use radiosity to light the scene?  Anyways, that is an awesome
aircraft.

Yadgar - I never knew contrails formed like that.  Thanks for the tip!

Bridgeofstraws

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