N-480 Siegerotor

edwardE

My current project for a demo reel piece; the N-480 Siegerotor aerial artillery platform. (Yes, it's gigantic.)



It's not designed to be physically possible - it very much takes some of the liberties that games like Dawn of War did, in the sense that it might not be very feasible, but it looks badass. I did shift the gun forward a bit compared to the concept, but I'm not sure if I like it or not. Some others mentioned how the artillery gun would shoot the autocannon in front - being a helicopter, it would be far above its ground-based targets, so the gun would be tilted downward when firing. (In this case, the artillery would be used in a direct-fire method.)

I'm going to try to cram a 1024 texture on this if I can get it to look good, but I may go higher if it just looks like a pile of crap. The cockpit is on a separate non-square map. Being on a separate non-square map, while serving as a work around to avoid crushing the rest of my UVs to retarded texel sizes (assuming I try to cram it into a 1024), also will also let me open up to full square if I decide to model the cockpit interior without having to re-UV the whole thing. It was more a decision of convenience.

I'm open to any comments/crits, but the design itself is reaching a concrete state, so I might be reluctant to try significant design changes.

Hope you like; stay tuned for updates!

spanks

awesome, great silhouettes too!

ImSlightlyBored

I mirror the above statement!

Is this a game model or just a standalone hi-poly model? if its the former, theres some optimization you could do but i'll reserve comment as I get the feeling it might just be a hi-poly model.

East

I love the design, it's awesome But it doesn't look gigantic to me when you compare it to the humanoid, it looks fairly normal sized.

dejawolf

all helicopters have the problem that they don't "look gigantic"
in fact, all military helicopters are huuge, stretching 17m or so in length!
an example of this:

edwardE

spanks: Thanks a bunch! A put a huge emphasis on the silhouette - sometimes I think my peers were wondering what I was doing when I was just staring at it on my monitor and rotating it every couple minutes to stare at it more. It's great to know that it payed off. (:

ImSlightlyBored: I am intending this to be a game-ready model; so throw those optimizations at me. Final UVs are essentially done, though, so I can only hope it doesn't involve a bunch of edge moving. I'd definitely appreciate it, though, even if to keep in mind for future models. Many of the edges down the center were for mirroring only and have been mostly removed.

East: Much appreciated; I suppose I meant more that its core fuselage has a lot of bulk to it - it's not quite as lean and agile looking as some choppers.

Tulkamir

Looks cool man, but don't helicopters need rotors on their tails?

LoTekK

Damn nice work on that gunship. Love the silhouette and volumes. Reminds me of an Mi28, only more badass.

Tulkamir: I think this one's set up with contra-rotating main rotors

MartinKDahl

tulkamir its probably inspired by Kamov-KA, wich is also lacking rear rotor.

Edit: Didnt see that you had actually stated inspiration. doh!

edwardE

Tulkamir: As stated in the replies, the N-480 has counter-rotating rotors, which cancel out each other's torque, eliminating the need for a tail rotor. We learn something every day, though! I'm glad you think it looks cool - that was definitely a priority.

LoTekK: I'm glad all of that shows through - I put a lot of effort into the silhouette, so it's great to hear that it's distinctive. The Mi-28 was already badass, so to be more badass; well, that must be quite badass! (:

Nelis: Hah, yes; but it's great to hear that you associated it with the Ka-50 before noticing my inspiration blurb. It was generally a combo of the Ka-50 and the Mi-28, with turbine caps like the MH-53 (full circles instead of halves, though) and a plating design inspired by the Type-99 Chinese tank.

Vailias

Nice looking chopper.

Only crit from me is that the large cannon assembly in the tail section looks like it would throw the center of mass too far back for this to be a stable firing platform. Perhaps pulling the nose out further as a visual counterweight would help center it back on the rotor shaft.

edwardE

Yeah, it seems most people who view it generally like it as it is, or like it with the exception of it looking unbalanced; at this point I think I've just decided to go ahead with textures - color itself can add a good illusion of weight, itself, creating focal points and the like.

Also, there is a bit of comedic relief, as this isn't actually a stable firing platform at all; I set up a "test firing" render with a previous version of the model, and the moment it fires, the chopper nearly pulls a 65 degree forward tilt and twists opposite the muzzle quite fiercely before making a desperate attempt to stabilize itself. (:

I appreciate the input; hopefully I can tighten it up with the textures.

edwardE

Tweaked out the UVs - I scrapped that separate map idea for the cockpit and just crammed it all into one, in favor of a 2048 map.

edwardE

Next up was rigging. This is my first non-skeletal rig, as well as my first rig with custom controls.



Rundown:

Front autocannon actuates by rotation of a 2-axis control (represented by a pistol icon). Manipulation of the control rotates and pitches the gun, and rotates the lower camera array in sync (the camera array does not pitch). Upon pitching, actuated plates compress and expand like a fan above the gun. A "firing" toggle is planned.

The upper camera array is a more basic version of this setup - it is controlled by a 1-axis ring independently.

Rotor controls are fairly straight-forward; rotation of the rotor icon spins the bottom rotors in sync, and the top rotors at the same speed, but in the reverse direction. The control also has an animatable "bladebend" attribute that is used to lift the blades when they spin to sufficient speeds (this is done independently of the actual blade speed). The bend deformers are maintained correctly even when the rotors are in motion.

The most complex control is the steering control, represented by a joystick over the rotor control. It is a 2-axis controller, manipulated by rotation like the other controls. The hub that the two rotor sets are connected to tilts along with the tilt of the joystick very slightly; however, two more functions are linked to this controller. Pitching back and fourth opens and tightens the turbine caps, giving more and less airflow to increase or decrease speed. Tilting side to side actuates the outer fins for thrust vectoring of the turbine exhaust in the direction the joystick is tilted.

Possible other functions for the steering controls are an increased orange glow in the turbine thrust and increasing opacity of a refractive heat wave plane near the exhaust when tilted forward, but this is still being decided.

All controls have limits of freedom, to prevent stupid geometry crashing from happening.


Two more controls have yet to be created; the artillery cannon and back landing wheel controls. The front landing gear will NOT contract; I quite like the old school hanging wheels style reminiscent of old planes; and as an added bonus, the frontal silhouette resembles a star with the landing gear remaining down - being a fictional Russian helicopter, this works quite well.

So that's basically what's been up for the past hours.

edwardE

Started working on the textures. After playing around with and researching several real patterns/colors of camouflage, I decided to wing it and came up with a brown digital pattern, which probably wouldn't be very useful unless flying through the valleys of Choco Mountain on Mario Kart 64, but I like it none-the-less. It's only on the tail so far, but it'll make its way up. Most of the pieces don't even have their base colors down - I just felt like posting an update.

edwardE

Texture update - going towards more of a tactical two-tone look.

konstruct

looking really cool thus far-

LoTekK

That's looking hot, dude. Going for a digital camo-ish scheme?
The rig controls look cool, too, and props for including blade bend in the equation.

edwardE

konstruct, LoTekK: Hey, guys; glad you're liking it. I wish I could render out some animated GIFs to show the rig in motion, but the ones I can get to come out are too big of files.