3D Aerospace Flying Wing

The Design

Some time ago I was contacted about doing some alternative future history nazi technology designs. Didn't go ahead with that project but did come up with some interesting designs. One of which is flying wing/ NASA lifting body shape that I used to start this craft with.

The Aircraft Model

This basic shape was then made in Animation Master, making it a little more conventional in the process. The aircraft hull and wings are very light models. The wheels are rather more than needed here.

The Textures

The most important things in making something look real are the lighting and texturing of the 3D models. Due to the distance from the craft, only diffuse and specularity maps were made, bump mapped panel lines being too subtle to be worth while. The diffuse map shows the panel lines and dirt, while the specularity simulates the brushed metal look of the highlights, and worn panel surrounds.

The Background

The background photo was taken from the window of a flight to San Jose almost 10 years ago. Possibly it is Los Angeles or San Francisco airport. Anyway, the photo makes good reference for the dirt and panelling on an aircraft wing, as well as providing the airport setting. The image had the wing removed by painting over most of the foreground with colours taken from the background, then noise added to get the colouring back to that of the runways.

Scene Construction

In Animation Master, the photo is used as a simulation of front projection, with a plane aligned with the ground plane, and set to receive the airport image projection. This effectively gives us a photo with a ground plane that will receive shadows and take a foreground model. Aligning the ground plane and a photo can be a non trivial exercise, but not in this case.

Final Render

Adjusting lighting to make the foreground 3D image match the background is a process of test renders and altering settings.  The photo contained an aircraft in the background indicating rather washed out colouring was more realistic. Once the image basically fitted in, fill lights were added to show more detail contained in the foreground object. These being needed as 3D doesn't really simulate real light.

A larger image is here.