NASA ARES glider

[Fake]

I am modeling the NASA ARES glider. The idea is for the model to be as close to 100% accurate as possible, as i am not just making the model for the sake of it. I am making the model so i can run it through Gerris flow solver (or openFOAM, but i don’t know how to use that at all.). I’ll use the output from Gerris to put it into a program (DATCOM+ ?) which turns it into jsbsim files.
Anyway, here it is. Done in 2 days or so.

(the image is so big because i like to set my current work as a desktop background)

The views i used (as a background image, you know) are:
side = http://fake.yolasite.com/resources/blender/ARES/side.jpg
top = http://fake.yolasite.com/resources/blender/ARES/top.jpg
front = http://fake.yolasite.com/resources/blender/ARES/front.jpg

Note that these pictures arn’t mine, they’re NASAs.

[RickyBlender]

how did you do the mesh ?
did you use Subsurf ?

can you show the wire mesh !

froma a more general point of view what does it do in life?
gliding is nice but what the goals here for this plane?
gliding on mars ?

and what is that program Gerris ?
is this free and what does it do ?

but now you need to do some Teturing to give it a better look and
setup the environnement - blue cloudy sky with asun ect…

keep up the good work

[Fake]

Lol, wires, ok.
Yeah, it’s subsurfed. The bits coming down from the mainn body don’t have ridges, thats caused by subsurfed triangles.
Gerris is a CFD program (Computional fluid dynamics, think virtual wind tunnel). It should give me most of the information i need to make a jsbsim file so it can fly in flightgear.

The point of it is to gather scientific information about mars. I don’t really care about that, i just wanna fly it.

Anyway, wires, here they come.

And my workspace.

And somebody else on a different forum corrected me. It’s not a glider, it’s rocket powered (don’t know where the rocket is though)

the pics arn’t that useful, are they?

[RickyBlender]

i assume that this Gerris is not a free program!

Fluid dymanic - i like to look at my ketchup flow
i supposed it’s a non Newtonian fluid but who cares - when it moves it goes fast ! LOL
and walking on Newtonian fluid --> Water and cornstarch
that’s really funny to see people walk fast on a fluid! LOL

it’s nice to see some science application ounce and a while

i like the very simple shape nice and smooth with subsurf - so easy and nice to look at

but don’t know about Mars gliding !

i tough there was so little Pressure on Mars that a plane could not fly there
but may be i’m wrong - At what speed with such a low pressure !

keep up the good work and have fun

Salutations

[Fake]

Actually, it is. That’s why it’s so hard to use

What i really have to do is get rid of the big trapezium and break it up into smaller quads.

[RickyBlender]

sorry for the technical questions !

\but what is what ?
meaning Free?

and to do this kind of simulation what are the requirement
like a model with lot’s of subdivisions ?
you can increase the level of the suburf to do that or may be it is done in the other program!

but to get high precision for the simulation results anything else required

which big trapezium are you talking about and where is it
i don’t see it in the model you did ?

i dont see much control surfaces on this model like Flap on back wings or on the tail section
how do you control this thing ?

i guess to do a realist simulation for this glider do we really already have the different density temperature function of altitude but may be also wind average and may be dust density

are we going to se some resulsts summary here or is there another site where we can see this?

Happy blendering

[Fake]

The big trapezium is where the main body joins the wing. When it subsurfs it makes roughly triangular edge loops.

I don’t mind technical questions, sometimes i just blabber on to people who arn’t listening and it clears things up for me. Actually talking to someone who’s listening is a nice change.

Gerris is OSS. It’s open-source. I think i have it installed on the box i’m typing this on (ubuntu, most recent), but 2 of the packages are broken. I think i’m gonna try just using one of the main examples, just run identically to on the wiki. Oh yeah, and Gerris is run by using slightly mutated python config files, which is good, cause i already know python.

You had to bring up control surfaces didn’t you :{.
I was just gonna fudge it with no control surfaces (won’t work too well, but it still makes pretty pictures).

I think i’d have to redo parts of the wing (and tail), and make it into 2 seperate meshes? I don’t know, i haven’t done any boning before (that’s what we’re talking about, right?).

[RickyBlender]

but can you give a short description of what Gerris does

i mean is it a sort of FE soft that can do some Fluid dymanic simulation too?

well i’v seen many plane done on this forum and sometimes people forget about theses flaps and it does not really look very nice without theses !

but it’s fun to see all the m model of airplanes of all kind that i’v been done here !

happy blendering

[ShadowFantasy1]

That’s a mighty high subsurf count you got there. I’m pretty sure that you have to fix some geometry issues, the tail looks like you just used fill instead of using the knife and loop cut tool to make nice quads ( lowers the poly count+ if you ever do organic modeling triangles will just kill your rig).Boning? Do you mean rigging and skinning? And I suggesting using a slight edgesplit modifier, about at 100-150 degrees or edge creasing since I see some slightly sharp edges in this reference. Good Luck with this!

[Fake]

Yeah, the tail does look kinda dodgy. I realise that the subsurf is rather high, but my computer can handle it, and i think it needs to be smooth for Gerris. Boning? Yeah, i think i mean rigging. This is the first subsufed model i’ve ever made, so please explain what the edgesplit is? I know what the knife tool is though, through i don’t know what the loop tool is either.

Gerris is mainly intended for water CFD work, but it can also do air. And heck, i just saw someone else say they used it for the same reason. And it’s easier than openFOAM.

[RickyBlender]

have you been usng blender for long time or still a noobie?

you could use Nurbs surface and retopo it on to this model to get quads all over then add you control surfaces to it and then convert to mesh to complete the modeling

it may give a better model with minimum of tri’s in it !

but depends on your skills level i guess

well i’m not really info Fluid dynamics as a pro just as a general interest
but other people might find it interesting

are you going to show the part for Gerris the simualtion or only the model here?

would be an interesting science application

hope it helps

happy blendering in science

[Fake]

I swear i posted this. Maybe firefox crashed again?

I have no idea how to use nurbs, and I have no idea what retopo is. I have heard the terms before though.

I would post everything i made.

[RickyBlender]

1- retopo
well it helps to add a mesh object above another one - to create a second mesh which conform to the first one = retopo meaning re topologised in 2 D i guess

you also have another tool along theses lines calles shrinkwrap modifier for 2d or 3D

2 - by the way there is a new tools system for nurbs coming along but doh’t know anymore when it will be ready but it will a hec of a lot more powerfull than what we hae right now

the thing is that it seems to take longer than anticipated last year and don’t know if it will be ready for 2.5 release - the new tools for nurbs are lot more flexible and powerfull
but this needed to change all the nurbs to get a new type of nurbs will possibilitiy of holes in them - you know like extratordinary Nurbs if you know what it is !

anyway theses are tools that exsit in blender to model
you can find more about theses and other in wiki or blenders books
or noob to pro site to learn more

blender is pretty powerfull and flexible too and it keeps getting more tools year after year
so with 2.5 release in about 2 or 3 months it should have even more toos, and a new look to it

hope it helps
happy blendering