Markings of Voss' famous opponents

[SCMc]

Tom,

Maybery was in SE5a B1, coded “K”, this info comes straight from the source and his files = Alex Revell.

Thank you.

Tim,

I think the series did a dandy job =P

I think that most here would agree with you. Thanks for your part in it.

Steve

[tcrean7828]

Originally Posted by SCMc

Tom,


Thank you.

Tim,

I think that most here would agree with you. Thanks for your part in it.

Steve

Mates,
To all, I agree. With what time you had, you produced a bang up job - one of my favorites.

ttfn

tcrean7828

tom

[Ahnab]

Very true guys. I am, by profession, a CG artist and an animator, and I can tell you just how many god-like miracles us digital artists have to pull in the time we're given. Hands down, the Dogfight series is mind-blowing, both in its technical as well as historical aspects. Kudos Tim, awesome job man! Which tools did you use for your work?

Umm....by any chance, does anyone know how many revolutions per second the Hispano-Suiza 200 hp and the Le Rhone engines (of the SE5a and Voss' Dr. I) would make at full throttle?

[Tim West]

Originally Posted by Ahnab

Very true guys. I am, by profession, a CG artist and an animator, and I can tell you just how many god-like miracles us digital artists have to pull in the time we're given. Hands down, the Dogfight series is mind-blowing, both in its technical as well as historical aspects. Kudos Tim, awesome job man! Which tools did you use for your work?

Umm....by any chance, does anyone know how many revolutions per second the Hispano-Suiza 200 hp and the Le Rhone engines (of the SE5a and Voss' Dr. I) would make at full throttle?

Well, thanks everyone...but let me be the first to point out..the series was awesome because of the other cool people that worked on it. Not to mention the talking heads from this site that also worked on the show. Oddly, CG and this stuff is a crazy pipeline of pieces that come together to make one production. lol, it really takes a village =)


I use Maya and PhotoShop...some Zbrush but not for the Dogfights models. All poly modeled with some conversions to sud-D and back. I find I get more control with a sub-D pass rather than a mesh smooth. The models had a ton of polys and huge maps...huge! As you know, for film...close ups..need large maps to look good. I did color maps, specular and normal mapping for each shader used.

When I was done, I'd export to the FBX format as the guys as Radical 3D(the animators) worked in LightWave. Everything ported ok. but some items and UV's flipped axis..so you just have to be careful everything is where its supposed to be.

Heres a link to a interview you might enjoy.NewTek LightWave

So what is it you're working on? What tools do you use? Where's some screenies? Hehe, Im sure everyone here wants to see what your working on.

And lastly about the RPM of the engines..not sure about the 200hp HS but Fred Murrin list the rpm of the LeRhrone at 500-600 at idle and 1200-1300 at full during flight. He has a fine article on the subject in OTF november 05 issue. Lol, the same one with the 103/102 article.

I bet the replica guys here would be able to give you the information your looking for about the engines.
hth.

[R Gannon]

When many British squadron's adopted letters in Autumn of 1917; the idea was A Flight letters A to F; B Flight G to L & C Flight M onwards. However this was modified about the turn of the new year - where A Flight's used A onwards, B Flight's used numbers ( that why JTB's G became a 6) and C Flights used letters from the other end of the alphabet - from Y upwards - with Z reserved for squadron commander. So you see 'V' is a 1918 ident for a C Flight machine.

Cheers Russ.

[Ahnab]

Tim.
Thanx for the input. Again, kick-ass work on the Dogfight series! I'll start posting some pics soon, I'm sort of halfway done modeling the SE5a and the Dr. I, and have a rough "stand-in" modeled for Voss. Still have the unwarapping and texturing/shading to get done. I've been kinda busy lately with developing the custom-shaped clouds (turns out faking ray-marched particles is quite a challenge!) and the smoke effects.
As for the tools, I use 3ds Max 2008 for modeling/shading/animation, Photoshop for textures, usually use VRay for rendering but gonna use Mental Ray instead, and Combustion for composites. I've been wanting to make the transition to Nuke for some time now, so I guess I'll use this short film to do just that!

[Tim West]

Originally Posted by Ahnab

Tim.
Thanx for the input. Again, kick-ass work on the Dogfight series! I'll start posting some pics soon, I'm sort of halfway done modeling the SE5a and the Dr. I, and have a rough "stand-in" modeled for Voss. Still have the unwarapping and texturing/shading to get done. I've been kinda busy lately with developing the custom-shaped clouds (turns out faking ray-marched particles is quite a challenge!) and the smoke effects.
As for the tools, I use 3ds Max 2008 for modeling/shading/animation, Photoshop for textures, usually use VRay for rendering but gonna use Mental Ray instead, and Combustion for composites. I've been wanting to make the transition to Nuke for some time now, so I guess I'll use this short film to do just that!

Thanks for diggin it!

Yes! Start a WIP thread down in the art section. Heh, sounds like you have a lot to do. And my least fav...unwrapping UV's sucks but if you take the time now, it pays off when you start the maps. Have fun with the prop...I couldn't get rid of the seams...lol, no big if your blurring it I guess.

Yeh, mental ray is real nice. Does it come with Max now? Its been standard with maya for a while now.

Lol, particles and clouds crash my rig.. I've only toyed with mayas particle system, I really should learn more about it. Heh, faking most any ray effects can be challenging. Saves a lot of overhead if you can. Good luck with your clouds.

Have you animated long? I want to become proficient at as film is really where I want to go. Have fun leering Nuke..and a bit of luck as well

[Ahnab]

Yeah, unwrapping is a REAL pain, possibly one of the most tedious things you ever get to do in this lifetime! I'm trying to use as many procedural shaders as possible in order to minimize the number of textures I'll use, and thus, reduce my rendering overheads too. The prop won't be much of a problem coz I'll slap a simple wood shader on it and the motion blur will take care of the rest. Mental Ray's been a part of Max for quite a while now, its a pretty good renderer but it has its occasional quirks.

Particles are fun man! I actually just finished tweaking the method how I'll be making clouds. I wanted to be able to give a custom shape to the clouds so that I can place them and shape them as I wish or as the shot requires. I initially tried using fluids for this; although you get great looking clouds but its near impossible to give them custom shapes. So I then resorted to traditional particles. The problem with those is that, although I managed to get custom shapes, they have a HUGE render overhead. So, the solution was to use Sprites! Sprites are a particle type (also present in Maya) and are like flat billboards that are always aligned to your camera view. They take a bit of tweaking to get the right look, but the render overhead is minimal. You can make a huge blob of a cloud with just 200 particles! Hehe! That, btw, is how they usually make clouds/smoke/dust in video games You just need a good shader (or texture) and you're good to go! If you want, I can give you a walkthrough of the technique I'll be using, its pretty simple!

I got into animation in 2001, have been doing it since then. I'm in Pakistan, and the animation industry here is quite nascent. We don't have a film industry worth mentioning, so the only animation we have is strictly for TV. It kinda sucks being an animator here coz there's usually nothing to do except making channel idents or simple product shots. I DESPERATELY want to get into film, that's actually one of my primary motivations for doing this short film.

[Dan_San_Abbott]

Hi Tim:
In September 1917, 56 Squadron was flying S.E.5a aircraft with geared hHispano-Suiza 8Ba engines, with the single piece radiator, with vertical shutters. The cam shaft covers had streamline fairings fore and aft riveted to the top cowling. The single landing grear legs were streamline steel tubes. The Viper engine showed up in 1918, first with the single piece, rounded top radiator like the geared engine radiator. The wood u/c came out in January 1918.
Seasons Greetings,
Dan-San

['14-'18aviationcollector]

Originally Posted by tcrean7828

- Cronyn was in SE5 A4563, coded “L”, Maybery was in SE5a B1, coded “K”, McCudden was in SE5a B4863, coded "G", Rhys Davids was in SE5a B525, coded "I", Bowman was in SE5a, (B2) coded "M", Muspratt was in SE5a, (A8944) coded "H", Hoidge was in SE5a (B506), coded "J", Young was in (B527), Jeffs was in (B524), Gardiner was in (B508), Taylor was in (A8906)

I have a few 56 squadron photos. I have one of B2 (but not B1 unfortunately) and B509 - not B508 or B506 unfortunately. I am sure that the B series of personal markings must have pre dated the more familiar sloping white bars in front of the stabiliser, and I was interested to read that some of the aeroplanes had what must be an earlier personal marking system. They must have been the few which survived accidents and combat losses. Aeroplanes with the sloping white bars all seem to have used the A,B and C flight identification system as outlined by Russ in one of the more recent posts, and with which I am sure we are all much more familiar. Does anyone know much about the B series of markings?