Saracen Renders

[Psawhn]

I've already posted these in the Loading Screens thread, but I would like some feedback on these.




I modified the saracen .blend file and textures a bit. Among the features I added are:


Thruster fans, landing gear, and fan/gear/weapons bays.


Vectoring vanes for the main thrusters.


Topside thruster fans, and the open panels were closed in for aerodynamics.

The fans were inspired by the X/F-35 JSF. Combined with those and the rear vanes vectoring thrust downwards, the craft can do a short takeoff (just like documented in the wiki/ufopedia).

Hopefully I can make some more scenes, like a hangar equipping scene, and a takeoff/landing scene.

[Winter]

I've already posted these in the Loading Screens thread, but I would like some feedback on these.

I modified the saracen .blend file and textures a bit. Among the features I added are:


Thruster fans, landing gear, and fan/gear/weapons bays.


Vectoring vanes for the main thrusters.


Topside thruster fans, and the open panels were closed in for aerodynamics.

The fans were inspired by the X/F-35 JSF. Combined with those and the rear vanes vectoring thrust downwards, the craft can do a short takeoff (just like documented in the wiki/ufopedia).

Hopefully I can make some more scenes, like a hangar equipping scene, and a takeoff/landing scene.

Overall I like the stuff you changed, and . . .

HELL yes. That image is simply awesome.

The other one is a bit boring, I'm afraid. Maybe a different pose, like looking up at a flight of 3 Saracens far, far above?

That would also make a great perspective for viewing a PHALANX/UFO air battle.

The Saracen model already had landing gear, textured and everything -- what happened to that? It should be in SVN somewhere.

Regards,
Winter

[Hoehrer]

HELL yes. That image is simply awesome.

Full ack

The Saracen model already had landing gear, textured and everything -- what happened to that? It should be in SVN somewhere.

Yes, it's even the default view in the blender file (and there is an exported saracen.md2 and saracen_interceptor_flying.md2 file), so from the looks I guess Psawhn exchanged it with something different?

Overall very good work Psawhn - shall I add the new/changed model to svn if that is ok with everybody?

Werner

EDIT fixed bad sentence

[Psawhn]

You can add the files to svn if you want.

It's taking forever for them to upload to my webdisk for some reason, though... when they're up they'll be in this directory:
https://webdisk.ucalgary.ca/~djetowns/public_html/misc_files/UFO_AI/saracen_render/

[Hoehrer]

Many thanks, I've added the files to svn.

When I have some time I'll try to create a new static low-poly version (with and without landing gear, but especially the latter is a lot better now ) out of it.

Werner

PS: Love your detailed work in the rigging btw.  

[Psawhn]

Thanks.

I should add that it is by no means finished. There's potential for a lot of greebling/texture work inside the bay areas, perhaps with optimized internal bays for the landing gear. Plus, I've realized that the rear wheel bogie assemblies are probably too heavy for a fighter, so I'll probably replace them. On top of that, I have possible plans for fleshing out the cockpit, too.

I've also tweaked the images slightly.



Here is an image looking up at a flight of Saracens, but I'm not too happy with it. It looks even more boring than being behind the roar of the engines in the first one.



I've tweaked the heat distortion from the engines a bit, they didn't look quite pronounced enough. (I like the heat effect in the first picture the best, though.)


Edit: I didn't quite like that look, the heat blur is too, uh... 'tiny.' I broadened it out some, I think:

[sitters]

Can you make an heat track on the air with an distortion filter, maybe looks nice.

Willem

[Psawhn]

I don't think I quite know what you mean by that. I experimented with letting the heat effects go on long trails from the craft, but there was no visible difference that I could see on the sky.

However, it did seem to throw the contrails around a bit, and after some basic tweaking I got this:



Using the heat effects to distort the contrails makes it a bit better, thanks!