Help please for realistic airplane

[dayxh (Dallas)]

Hi there!

Would one of you lovely animators, who all have more experience than I do, please be able to help me?
For context I am a flight instructor, our company wants to make teaching/explanation videos. This one is about Visual Flight Rules – aka how pilots have to see things when they’re “flying visually”, but my boss says “the airplane turns are too fast, and thus not realistic”.

https://youtu.be/nltxMFFRAAM

I’m well aware the climb at the end needs to be redone haha (that was animated with keyframes instead of paths).
But I honestly can’t think of how to make it “more realistic” without just really slowing the scenes down, which would add a lot of silence, or to just use one long scene over the many verbal examples.
Please help me out? I’d love to hear ideas as well as feedback!

Also here’s the curve i’m using, maybe i can reshape it somehow?

Thanks

PS my boss is really nice and I love him! I can definitely tell him “what you’re asking for is not possible” and he’d be down. I just wanna try first, in case it is possible

[magpie (Will)]

Double check what they actually mean, and/or look for actual flight reference. I suspect that they mean that the corner of the turn has too tight a radius. Most flights don’t have dog-fight type manoeuvres. Adjustments to the plane direction tend to be more gradual.

[revolt_randy]

I think you really need to slow things down. Really slow them down a lot!

The audio on Youtube, watching it from my computer, is horrible. I can’t understand what is being spoken. Not a complaint, just advice…

So one part I did understand was ‘If you see another plane, avoid the other plane’. Here’s how I would approach that. First, establish what is going on. Airplane is flying straight, viewed from the back of the plane. Fly like this for a bit (2-3 seconds). Then slowly bring in the 2nd plane, out of focus at first, then coming more in focus. At this time, the audio ‘if you see another plane’ should play. Then slowly take corrective action (avoiding the other plane). Then add in the 2nd part of the audio - ‘avoid the other plane’. All told, I would think that animation should be a 20-30 second video clip. Fill in the silence of the audio with maybe background noise? The sound of the engine, sound of the wind, etc…

@magpie

Most flights don’t have dog-fight type manoeuvres. Adjustments to the plane direction tend to be more gradual.

I agree with this. Look at the curve in the screenshot you posted. Isn’t that a pretty extreme turn for an aircraft like that?

But that’s just my thoughts…

Randy

[NiklasWerth]

y’all know I’m open about animation not being my strong suite, but I concur that you may have to just slow it down some, even if that means cutting some of the overall viewed flight progress to fit the narration.

But aside from that, introducing secondary/tertiary motion could help too. prior to the yawing, rolling, and pitching, we should see some fins/ailerons or a rudder rotating just prior to, and during the course change right? You might also speed up and blur the propeller?

if you haven’t already, you should also check out your animation curves.

while hovering over the timeline, press ctrl+tab to switch to curve view (i guess its actually called the graph editor, and you can get there from clicking that lil button in the top left and selecting that too.)

From there you can get a better idea of what the actual movement is like on individual axis. for an airplane already in flight, I might expect a pretty linear start on the curves, and then a gradual bezier into a rotation and out, and then more linear.

Bezier curves are the default, and you can adjust their handles like any normal curve (the one you’re using for the path for instance)

but, it can be fun and interesting to press T on some keyframes, and try out some of the other interpolation methods.

While beziers being the default is cool for some things, one really common beginner animator mistake is using them for something that shouldn’t speed up, and then slow down in its movement. I can’t quite tell if you’re doing that in all of these? the second to last one appears to accelerate rapidly after turning which makes me think maybe? But I think you might also be moving the camera simultaneously, and mixed with the positionally static HDRI background, that can produce odd apparent motion in an object. If you’re gonna keep the HDRI’s, make sure you don’t move the camera at all (rotating is still fine, just no transform), since the background can’t change positions. Otherwise, if you want the camera to move too, you’ll need to make an actual 3d background for the scene to have real parallax.

I hope that was helpful and coherent. It is bedtime and I will be promptly passing out almost immediately after I click the reply button.