I am working my way to an Animation/3D Computer Graphics degree at Purdue University (I'll be a sophomore in the fall), and the other day I got a call from a friend in the film production program at North Carolina School of the Arts. Apparently he is working on a short film script that involves quite a few SFX involving fighter jets and various other elements. He gave me a list of FX shots and asked me to collaborate with him in order to bring these shots to reality.

At first I was a little hesitant, because being able to composite CG elements with live-action elements requires a very high level of quality in modelling and materials/texturing. But I was up for the challenge, and I thought this could be a very good learning experience. So at 11:58 PM I got a random splurge of inspiration to dive head first into this project. I hopped in my car immediately and drove to the store to find a plastic model kit of a jet to use as a reference model.



I came back a while later with an f-16 model that looked like it had enough detail to allow me to model it with the necessary accuracy. Hahaha. Im actually holding the box upside down... it was fairly late at that time

Hopefully over the next few days I'll have a chance to get a huge chunk of the basic modeling out of the way. I am very curious to find out where this project will end up.

Today I bought a 1/2 gallon of pineapple juice, stuck a straw straight into the jug, and sat down for some modelling time. After a few hours I was able to hammer out the complete BASIC anatomy of the plane (except for the cockpit area).





From here I have a ton of tweaking to do. There are a TON of details necessary in order to transform this into a model that can pass as photo-realistic. Basically if this were for an animated short film I would barely need to add any more detail, but since this needs to be at an insane level of realism, I look forward to some strenuous/tedious hours of work ahead modeling minuscule antennas and other extremely minute details. Ouch. The materials/textures work is going to be extremely lengthy also. Wow. I have a ton of work ahead of me.

Nothing too impressive yet, but give me some time...Im getting there

Woah. Cooool. Keep us posted!

I know nothing about this, but it looks pretty awesome to me. Good job.

I haven't got around to doing a whole lot of work over the past couple days, and the work that I have done is fairly slow and tedious. Basically I have been adding small details and structural refinements to make it more realistic. Here are screen caps of the rudder to show you what I am talking about.

Before:


After:


Basically I have to do this same process for every single piece of the airplane. Hooray (?)

I haven't received any storyboards or other pre-vis material, so I am not really sure how much detail I will need for the shots. If the planes are going to be in the far distance, I can probably leave off some of the microscopic ventilation ducts, etc. However if I have to do a close up of a missile blowing off the wing...every one of those tiny details is mandatory. I'll give my director/friend a call and see when he can provide me with some storyboards, and I will probably share those with you

Hey, cool, you went ahead with the production diary (can't think of another term for it).

Very cool stuff.

Really looks like you know what you're doing. What program(s) are you using?

For the the modelling work you see here, I used the amazing free shareware program Blender.
For solid inorganic modeling I really think that Blender cannot be beat and has the best interface. It is most definitely my preferred method of operation. It has as much potential as any other 3D graphics software.

As far as organic modelling and particle FX, other animation packages are a bit ahead of Blender, but Blender is catching up
So for that reason I will probably use Lightwave to do the materials and particle system FX (exhaust, flames, etc.) of the jet.

Great Stuff!!!

My model is currently detailed enough to be adequate for all of the shotslaid out in Draft 1 of the script...HOWEVER, unexpectedly the director revised the draft entirely, and now the script includes shots that are probably out of my league.

I don't want his story to be impossible because of my skill limitations.../
But its one thing to have a jet fly by overhead and drop a handful of bombs.
I can do that. Thats manageable.

Its a completely different thing to have a character jump on to a plane as its taking off and smash the cockpit glass and strangle the pilot midair.

YEahhhhh.... you're gonna need to talk to the director about that one.

You sont have to necessarily create that. I'm sure a blue/green screen and some props will do the trick.