While betatesting Brazil r/s I realised I didn't have a good quality model to do my renders, all I had were half-finished models and teapots. I decided to do a proper model that could show some of the new features in Brazil r/s. After a couple of weeks modeling and texturing I ended up with this little jetfighter. The reason I chose this plane was that I had plenty of research lying around (after having modeled it for the JSF game). Also, when the plane underwent testing there were some super-hires stills on the web that really helped me figure out the surfacing details of the plane.
I put together this very short animation just for fun. Sound effects done by Arne Kaupang.
Click here to purchase this model at DigitalElements.
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Not everything was rendered in Brazil, though. To save rendertime, I placed the background elements on cards, and rendered them with the standard scanline renderer in 3dsmax. The backgrounds were pasted together from photos I found on the Lockheed Martin homepage. All the different renders was then put together in After Effects, where I also added stuff like lensflares, grain, exhaust blur and other nice details. The camera motion was also tracked from mpegs I found on the same site.
The lighting was composed of just one spotlight - the rest of the light was handled by the then-groundbreaking technique of skylight and global illumination. Skylight simulates a sphere throwing light onto the object, and global illumination simulates stray light reflecting and scattering around. Combined, these two create a lighting environment that is frighteningly close to real life. As I predictet back then, the technique would revolutionize the way we light our CGI models, and has now turned into the default way of lighting for photorealism.
In addition to the Brazil version of the plane, I set up a scanline version for selling on DigitalElements. Now both models are for sale at the site. For the scanline version, the Brazil skylight effect is emulated with a ring of spotlights with blurry shadows.
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But wait!!
I also have the original funky version of the X35 movie here. This version features an impressive Hammond organ soundtrack, that sets the perfect mood for hi-tech warfare. I got a lot of complaints about this version not being serious enough (maybe aircraft fans take themselves too seriously?), but it still is my favourite version of the animation!
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