Airplane

Hello everybody!
As a sort of ‘thesis’ I have to make this year, I chose to make an airplane, driven by green energy ( solar energy and hydrogen fuel cell) named Mantax.
My plan is to make a short 3D animation of this airplane. Now I was modelling it and I realised the animation wouldn’t be that easy as I was hoping. I am a bit familiar with the animation screen and the Insert-key ( loc, rot, scale) and that’s all. So now I already have my airplane and the 3 propellers ( 2 joined for the VTOL( vertical take off and landing) and 1 for the propulsion) but I don’t know how to move the airplane followed in place by the propellers and also make the propellers turn at the same time.
So now’s my question: 1)‘Can somebody tell me how to do this :o?!’
2)'How do I create a better metallic look?
3)'How do I create a glassy effect?
I’ll put my blend file also in this posts for the one’s that want to try it. If you manage to do it please send it back to me, or post it , but with the explanation, so I can learn something.
I really would appreciate it if you would give me some hints or give it a try.
=> All hints are welcome!
Here you have some pics:
http://i14.tinypic.com/8adv24m.jpg

http://i3.tinypic.com/6l2elcp.jpg

Blendfile:
http://rapidshare.com/files/70405891/untitled.blend
When it’s completely finished and when I figured how to make a movie of this, I promise you to post the final result!
Gz Willywilleni

mmmm, i would download the blend file so i could have a look at it and see if i could help but the link isnt working for me :(.

in the meantime you should make the propellar bigger.

Parent the propeller to the body of the aircraft. Select the propeller, hold [shift], select the body press [ctrl]+[P].

Parent (ctrl+P) the propelles with the airplane. Now when you move the ariplane, the propelles will follow.

Edit. I was too slow.

this tipe of aircraft is called blended wing body, and are normaly powerd with jet engines inside the fuselage.

Google sertch ‘blended wing body aircraft’.

That is a great design.

yes I know but my ‘thesis’ is about green energy and jet engines drink fuel like I drink soda’s so i wanted to take the airplane to a next dimension, where these light airplanes can fly just with propellers.
Tx for the hint to make the proppeler bigger.
for the other posts: if you parent them,is it still possible to rotate the propellers in th air without rotating the whole airplane. so I can rotate them how I want to?
Tx all for the posting ! Keep posting pls. The more help, the better!
Gz Willywilleni

Hey
So far so good,
I seperated the two proppelers and made the propulsionpropeller sligthly bigger. and parented all of them to the airplane.
So happy as I was, I started with the animation…:stuck_out_tongue:
So i started of 0.04s, I-key , Loc Rot Scale to the Airplane and all the propellers. Now I moved the green bar to teh right to 2seconds , to simulate the engine going faster so I redid it, the whole I-key-thing (changed the rotating of the propellers a bit) and then i pushed Alt+A to see what it looked like. Amased as I was, One of the 2 propellers was missing. Found in on the same spot as teh second proppeler( it looked like one). So I don’t know what I did wrong but I just did the basic I-key-thing and my animation fails. What the heck is going on?:confused:

A quick search on blender nation (and lots of links later) and I arrived at this site: http://www.blender-materials.org/index.php

I wish I’ed known about this sooner for some of my own projects…

Keep up the good work.

Hi WillyWilleni,
The props do not need to have the Scale and Loc keys inserted as their loc will be inherited from the parent, in this case the plane, the props only require rotation about a single axis and as such the unaffected Ipo’s could be deleted.

Consider a path for the plane as this yeilds smoother effects and greater control for aircraft flight.

I created this little animation with a path with my craft parented to it, the props are parented to the copter and have only Rot keys, the copter has no Ipo keys and the path has loc and time keys.

http://gallery.mudpuddle.co.nz/albums/semel/copter_2.mov

Path Ipo’s
http://img209.imageshack.us/img209/5800/pathgn8.th.jpg
Propeller Ipo’s:
http://img209.imageshack.us/img209/2420/rotorpmr0.th.png
Copter Parent details:
http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/956/copterpathsetupht7.th.png

Hope this helps.

Well guys/girls,

it’s finished, it isn’t much but the basic flying idea is blended. My thesis is also finished, but it’s in dutch, so i don’t think many people can read it. So hereby i post my blend file and my short movie (3,7 MB). Remember, i was a complete n00b at blender so don’t judge my lighting or something. Positive comment, always welcome! Negative: shout it to your computer but don’t post it in this topic please :smiley:

Blend file:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=YSFYVUS5
Movie:
http://rapidshare.com/files/89616930/Mantax3.wmv.html

Gz Willywilleni