Model by Robert (Kel) Kelly

Very nice model.
Does it ever land? How does it stay stable if lands?
Does the script ever show anyone boarding or leaving the craft? How to they get on or off it?
I think the decals on the "balloon" part are cool, but I'm guessing the balloon part is going to do some squashing and stretching and I think those well defined, hard-edged decals are going to look mighty out of place when they start stretching and squashing.

Glad you like the balloon.

Since, in the story synopsis, there was no explanation of how they get from The Bumpy Man's house to Jinx Castle, I suggestred to Martin that they travel by hot air balloon. During the trip, the young boy, Pon, can lay out his story in detail. The trip in the balloon, the view of Jinx from the air, the approach to the castle, other balloon traffic, etc. would be a good source of eye-candy since I feel that the real star of the film should be Oz itself.


The balloon behaves like any real balloon. They rent it from a rental agency man [ a W.C. Fields sort of character], it stands poised at the end of its tether. They board, Trot enjoys standing on the top balcony, Bill should thump the ceiling several times and admonish her to sit down and be careful. Upon arrival, attendants on the ground catch dangling ropes and assist in docking among the other balloons coming and going. There certainly should be boarding stairs, like airliners used to have.

The decals are a hasty attempt to decorate like the early Montgolfier balloons. I don't know as it needs to squash and stretch all that much...but why not?

You are probably right. It probably doesn't need to squash and stretch all that much. That's a great idea to have Pon tell his story on the balloon.

OK, so we will need ropes. And those ropes will be permanently attached to the balloon. And it needs to be possible for characters on the ground to grab the ends of the ropes. Not only that, but it sounds like the characters have to be able to pull, hand-over-hand, on the ropes in order to pull the balloon down low enough so the riders can exit the balloon via the boarding stairs.

I would love to use a rope ladder here, but a rope ladder sounds really difficult to set up and animate. Boarding stairs sounds much easier. Since this is a fantasy, the boarding stairs could possibly be as tall as you want them. i don't guess it matters how big they are, as long as they are just as interesting as everything else.

The ropes, I'm guessing will be dynamic bone chains with a dynamic target at the end for characters to grab on to. We probably don't have to show a character actually tying a rope to an anchor, but I assume we will at some point see the balloon tethered to an anchor. Do you think it would be a good idea to make a "balloon tied to anchor" pose so the animator can just constrain the dynamic chain target null to an anchor and slide the "tied to anchor anchor" pose slider? voila, instant rope tied to an anchor. just an idea.

Wow! Forget about Oz. Let's make a movie about this airship.

Here's another 'mesh-sketch' of a primitive, boney flying machine. An amalgam of Otto Etrich's "Taube' [German for 'dove'] and Hubert Latham's 'Antoinette'. [Antoinette was the daughter of the guy who put up the money to build his plane]

Another primitive flying machine. This by Alberto Santos-Dumont [a Brazillian]

Another by Santos-Dumont.

And a Voisin...

Not sure where all these airships fit in - But since you seem to like doing this, how about some fanciful, farcical unlikely flying contraptions? Like flying fish mobiles, flying pig pipers, flying batmobiles, flying dragon flys, flying dragons. You know? ... perhaps to resemble what a melding of early flight technology attempts might be when traditional or mythical cultures (such as Cargo cult, Michaelangelo, Nazca, Kelleyginites, early Roswellian desert dwellers, etc) inventors might have come up with when trying to synthesize nature, nonesense, and getting humanoids airborne.

Sure thing. All things are possible in Oz. My thoughts on doing these is to have activity in the air, in the background. They're an adjunct to the balloons. If they catch the imagination of the design crew, well and good. If not, they'll probably turn up in one of my productions somewhere down the line.

along those lines for inspiration (but still too real maybe?):

http://www.art-of-flying.com/galery.htm

And of course Christensen p 17-19, 23, 24, 96, 136, 160 or just about every page

Nancy: those are fantastic...and exactly what I'd love to see bunches of flying through the skies of Oz/Jinx. I'm posting an airship that I downloaded from one of the 3D sites a year or so ago. Don't recall what program it was built in. As a flying machine it makes no sense, only faith could keep it up. But I think it's elegant beyond belief. Thanks again for the link.

I too like flying machines that make no sense other than to inspire one's imagination.

This is pretty close to the same place where Trot, Button Bright and Capn' Bill all traveled via magic umbrella too. (Sky Island)
So just about anything is possible.

I just realized Ku Klip has a hot air balloon/flying contraption in his workshop. We gotta use that one too.

Martin would like to use the Galleon that I built as an airship, so here's the start. I am going to replace the gun ports with windows and will add another structure onto the rear deck. Please give me your input, thanks.

looks great. That's going to be an impressive air ship.

Is this going to be the "main" one? I think it would be fitting for Bill....being a ship of the sky. Also, the other one is abit cramped. Don't forget to put a wheel (steering) on it.

I'm not happy with something about it...?? Scale, no sails, shape of ship...I'm not sure what it is?

Just a thought. A bit larger blanket over the blimp (length & width) & bring the gondola up a little tighter to the blimp and see if that doesn't help a little proportion-wise

Perhaps the blimp might need to be bigger (twice?) ? If I think of the Hindeburg, I seem to recall that the blimp part was huge compared to the gondola.

This will be a fantastic airship.

I think,you should tie the ballon with more ropes ?
in french it's called "hauban" (don't know the english term ) but the sailors mount on it to get to the mast

and perhaps some plane engine ? tie each side of the ballon (like this picture shown previously on the jinxland thread)

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showt...30661&st=30

so all the thing can be propelled somewhere and not just go with the wind


great modeling
Al

from the movie "Stardust."

Try using the rigging to hold the balloon in place. You had a great ship before trying to use it for a balloon. Try adding more elements from your original model.

I'll see what I can come up with. Thanks for the input.

Do you mind if I ask how you achieved that beautiful AO render with a black background. Is the black an alpha?
Click to view attachment

Could I see screen grabs of the settings in the chor, lights and so on?

Best regards
Jason Hampton
www.hdjibguy.com

Make a new chor. Turn off all lights except keylight, but turn that down to about 25% intensity. Set shadows to "on" in the keylight with 100% shadow and two rays cast. Turn the ground off. In the camera properties change the standard light blue color to black. In the chor properties change the Global Ambiance type to "Global Color", this is in AM V.15. In the submenu set Ambiance Intensity to around 80% and Occlusion to 100%. With these settings you should get the same results that you see here. Remember this is done in V.15, I don't remember when AO was added to AM, but it may not be included in earlier versions. Oh, almost forgot, you need to use multi-pass rendering. Set to a minimum of 9x, that works decent.

Eric

Many thanks

How do I add a folder to the SVN on my drive and then add the Airship model to update?

Edit: I may have figured it out...

Thats looking good , nice render aswell

Eric,
The Airship model is up on svn but there appear to be some missing images. Would you please upload the images listed below into the same folder the Airship is in?
H:\temp.jpg
Diamond.tga
G:\RosewoodDiffuse.jpg
G:\Bark.jpg

Thanks.

I had a few problems, deleted what was causing the problems and now hope everything is there and fixed. Would you check for me? Thanks.

I loaded all three models in the folder you uploaded and didn't get any errors about missing images or textures. Is this what it is supposed to look like?

Looks great Eric. Can I/you move the splines so their on the Y axis? Otherwise it's going to be difficult to put the balloon on a path if needed. Also, positioning in the chor is awkward. The assembly action would need adjusting too. Thanks.

Edit: Does it have a steering wheel? If not can we add one?

The action has to be applied to the Airship model in order for the rigging and sails to show. As I mentioned, the model is not done and therefore has no steering wheel. Please do without one or use a proxy because I have a whole motor setup and steering wheel in the works. I'll center the model and commit it again. I will be working on it this weekend along with Jinx Castle - hopefully finishing them both. Whatever I get done will have to be it for this assignment because I just started a new job which will take up most of my time for the foreseeable future.

I'll keep y'all posted.

Hey Eric. You fixed most of it up pretty good. Can you add the images it needs to svn too? Thanks.

You got it.