Typhoons in Action - Hello from new SI user.

[ActionArt]

Hello all,

I've just recently switched from LW to SI and I've never been happier. Here's my first real project completed is SI. Hope you enjoy it and comments most welcome.




Here's some of the pilots that flew the mission:







Cheers!

[Hirazi Blue]

Looks good...
How long did it take you to create the image?

PS. Welcome to the si-community!

[ace63]

Thats alot of action going on in 1 picture

Nice one, and welcome to the adventure of Softimage ;)

[ActionArt]

Thanks! Yes, that was a busy day indeed. There were 400 Typhoons involved, 1,700 gliders and over 16,000 airborne troops.

This one took quite a while. I started it on a trial of SI2010 to see if it was going to work. I got held up part way through and then resumed on a trial of SI2011. At that point I liked it so much I bought it and finished this one so I'm not sure how many hours but it was a lot of time.

Sure do love SI though! I'd never go back...

[Ethangar]

Wow.. That is an impressive amount of aircraft in one scene. And I really wish that I could say that I loved it but there are a few tweeks that could make it so much better. Being an affection ado of all planes WWII its great to see a tiffy render but the formations of some of the planes are WAY to close. The trailing 3 planes wouldn't dare fire for fear of blowing the tail off of the two or three plane. They should be spread out a lot more. The AA guns might show better if you rotated them a bit to show more that they were batteries. It took me a second look to see that they weren't buildings in the distance. If there was that much smoke above the bridge on the right side then it would be much darker due to the smoke shadowing it. There should likely be some shadowing on the water from the closest plane. The shadow is under the exhaust stacks nice and clear so it would likely extend down to the water since it only appears to be about 15-20 feet up. Adding some haze and some motion blur would go a long way to giving it a sense of depth. Its sort of flat now though I can't decide if its the lighting or the lack of depth to it.


I hope you take the comments in the spirit they are intended. I'd love to see you take it a bit further. One WWII, LW, XSI user to another.

[ActionArt]

Thanks for the comments, it's too late for this one but I'll keep it all in mind for the next project

As for the formation, I talked with the pilots at length and they saw many previews. That is the way it was. There were several reasons. That day was HEAVY air traffic so they had to stay close to avoid collisions with other groups. The second Typhoon was flown by Angus Scott and he said he was a little too close. He was a green pilot at that time so that's the way I showed him. The others are not firing on the same angle as to hit anyone in the lead and with the 20mm ammunition which exploded on contact there was little chance of a ricochet hitting another aircraft.

Also, they wanted to give the gunners on the ground as little time as possible between aircraft to get back on their feet and start firing. They said the typical separation was about 1000 feet but on this raid was quite a bit tighter.

Thanks again - Cheers!