Flight Simulator
By: Umair Tariq Bajwa
flight_simulator1.avi (17 Mb)



Contents
Introduction

The purpose of this project is to apply ideas learnt in Computer Graphics course at Brock Univesrity. It was a very challanging experience to work on this project for several continuous days and nights in computer lab at Brock University Computer science Department. The tool used in this animation is called Bryce. Initially, the limitations of Bryce caused alot of frustartion but eventually, I was able to get my desired results. The project helped me alot in learning the fundamentals of animation such as setting up motion paths, key frames, camera control, light and other core techniques.

The basic idea of this animation is based on "Dog Fight" between two helicopters. The entire animation is created in Bryce 4.I spent most of my time in designing and animating the helicopter particularly its blades to get the real graphic effects. After considerable amount of time and effort, I was able to get the effects close to reality. There are certain things which might seem quite simple to human eye but it is not as simple as one think.

The poor camera movement compeled me to render certain scenes in this animation. I hope you enjoy viewing it and expect your prompt feed back.

Modeling

I started my project with learning Bruce4 by playing with it for few days. The most time consuming and difficult part of this animation was to model a helicopter involved in the project. I realized that it is so difficult to model helicopter specially its body in Bryce4. Therefore I download the egg shaped body and texture from the web.

body.jpg

The helicoptor model consists of several different parts which are being designed over a long period of time. It includes top blades, tail, tail blade, missiles, wings, stand of the helicopter etc. Finally I group them together.

Blades:

Designing blades was really simple and straight forward. I used sphere, cylinder and brickoid that were given in the Bryce4 to create blades. Finally I put them on top of each other and group them.

blades.jpg

Waterfall:

Creating waterfall was also fun. It took so long to figure out how to design such graphics in Bryce4. I created terrain first and edited it by creating new on my own. Then I made a concave shape object to create the edges of the fall. I clicked on eroded button on different times to get some vertical effects to show the water flow of the falls. Finally, I used one of the water texture which was already given in Bryce4. On viewing the scene, you will observe that I have put three terrains on all three sides and tried to get real waterfall effect. After producing this waterfall, I firmly believe that with an appropriate knowledge of tools anyone can produce his or her own waterfall successfully. Hope you would like it.

waterfall.jpg

Missiles:

At the end of the animation, I realized that I have forgotten to close the backside of missiles. It was too late to fix everything but on analysing the front and rear view you will find them real. The hardest part was desiging outer missiles and their racks. The reason of producing different types of missiles was to show a real airel war combat where aircrafts use different missiles for different situations.

missiles.jpg

Helicopter Base:

The base of the helicopter was made in bryce using brickoid and cylender that you will see in one of the scene. You will also see small outlets or boxes on the platform. The main concept of having those on helicopter platform was for putting tools or outlets for gas supply.

Project_files/missiles.jpg

Wings:

Wings have been made by using streteched cylinder,strteched cube and brickoid given in Bryce4. The boolean effect has also been used to create the real effect of the wings and racks which carry missiles.

Project_files/wings.jpg

Tail:

The tail is made by using Bryce4 and Corel Paint6. The tail itself is divided into two parts. The major long part of the tail is designed by using stretched cone. The second narrow elevated part of the tail is made by both using brickoid and stretched cone.

tail.jpg

Stands:

Stands are created by using cylinders , 2D disc horizontal and brickoids. Initially, I wanted to create wheels as a support but since wheels were difficult to design so I made stands which were easy to create in brickoid.

tail.jpg

Final Model:

After grouping together all the above described tools and objects, the following helicopter was created.

helicopter.jpg
Tools

Following tools are used to create this animation.

Sounds

Sound clips used in this animation are extracted from movies "Top Gun" and "Speed". All sound files were origionally in wav format and finally embedded in the animation using "Movie Maker" in SGI Lab.

Textures

Almost all textures were used from Bryce except few which were downloaded from the web.

Favorite Screen Shots
Click on thumbs to enlarge the picture
top_view.jpg inair.jpg infront.jpg shooting_scene1.jpg

turn.jpg overfalls.jpg blasting_helicopter.jpg blast.jpg
Click on thumbs to enlarge the picture
Comments

I do not know what should I say about Bryce4. Bryce4 interface is really good and interactive. I really liked working with it. It is one of the PC based software which has really nice and cool interface. But it has many limitations as well. In the begining it seemed too complex but after few days effort and going through different tutorials, it turned out really simple. There are so many thing in Bryce4 that I don't even know yet. The lack of experience with Bryce4 and design I had in my mind resulted in spending days and nights to accomplish this animation. But still I am not totally satisfied with my final output. I could have done better if I know Bryce really well. But I did not have enough time to explore it's capabilities. One thing that I would like to mentioned while working with Bryce4 is that it takes so long to render. First seven second animation took more than 6 days to render. It is just unbeleivable. Rendering time totally depends on the scene. If you have really complex scenes then it will takes forever. By complex scenes I mean if you have so many polygons.

Overall project was really challenging and I had alot of fun while working on it. I learnt alot from this computer animation. Now I realize that realistic animations require lots of work and resources all together. I tried my level best to make realistic animation but still there are some flaws that I couldn't fix because of time limitations. If you have any comments please do not hesitate. Hope you will enjoy it.

Designer/Architect

Designed and built by: Umair Tariq Bajwa

Any comments? Umair Bajwa
Copyright © 2002 Umair Tariq Bajwa

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