As a real jet pilot and Blender Noob/Intermediate I've been trying to model the aircraft I fly. After following along and getting to the end at about 14:50 on I must say that yes, indeed you did in fact nail the whole issue down with the constraint of the Empty Rig so that the Rig Controller was no longer visible and that the whole aircraft was deflecting control surfaces just by manipulating the Empty…well, that's the Golden Enchilada! I was following along the whole time adjusting my model and then, BAM! I've got the whole thing rigged and all I have to do is animate one object… That is exactly the way to do it. Thank you! PS--> It's Aileron not Airleon PSS--> While not shown or expected, in real aircraft the deflection is differential. The initial movement is small and ramps up to a large movement on a non-linear curve. The elevators and ailerons move small amounts initially, then deflect more as they go further up or down. Not quite sure how to constrain that! Additionally, the elevators move separately than the flaps or ailerons during a maneuver. So, to pitch up would only be elevator, not opposite flaps and ailerons. However, to roll and pitch would be both elevator and ailerons! I hope the subtlety is not lost on your excellent rig. Outstanding tutorial!!!
Just a note here for realism, the horisontal stabilisers does move for rolling the aircraft (one in the opposite side of the other), and the ailerons don't move when pitching the aircraft. But this is a great tutorial here, I now understand the basics of rigging an aircraft.
Great tutorial, Chris! I used to (in the 90's) work in Flight Simulation and used a Unix program called Multigen for modeling and Rigging. We would use another program to run a simulation to drive the model. I have been interested in doing something similar in Blender and thanks to you i know how to do the rigging. Thanks for sharing.
Nice ! Specially like the way you can move the plane around and the control surfaces moves accordingly ... A note, the ailerons (outer most surfaces on the wings) normally moves in opposite directions from one another to roll the aircraft on the Y axis. on some planes they can move down together at takeoff or landing to act as flaps like the inside wing surfaces, but they would seldom move together down or up when plane is diving or climbing. Same for the flaps, mostly used on takeoff/landing.
Great video! I've just barely gotten into rigging and animation but this looks like so much fun :D thx for being so informative hope to see more videos in the future.
This seems quick and easy. But it might be possible to have better control using bones and the transform constraints. That way you can also get some amount of proportioning and perhaps some mix adjustment of flight surface controls. Having that extra degree of finesse may also make combined purpose control surfaces like elevons or flaperons more believable too.
Some modern computer controlled aircraft also mix flaps in as flaperons along with the regular ailerons if they have them. Got to watch some more footage of the jets in action or some videos how RC guys set up control surfaces on the fancier models. Or talk to some flight-sim guys, particularly those that are into the hard-core realism.
I assume you're talking about the vectored thrust nozzles. I actually did rig those, along with the slats on the leading edge of the wing. But I didn't think I needed to include those parts in the video. Same concept, you know?
Very nice.. now the big question, how to import the mesh into other projects and still maintain the full controls? With bones it is possible, but with empties?
Also, the last thing of the tut is false, as the ailerons are there to change orientation. Once you're in the right orientation, they return to their "rest" position.
I tried this with one of my models. It works well on Blender, but I tried to import into Unity and it's not working at all. It's maybe Unity not compatible with that way of rigging?
Quick question: why did you bother rigging both sides? Wouldn't it make more sense to rig one side, then Copy rotation for the other side, with Invert selected for ailerons?
The movement of the ailerons is completely wrong. They are used for turning (rolling) the airplane and should always move in opposite directions (when the left one is deflected upwards, the right one is deflected downwards, and vice versa). This produces a difference in lift and therefore a rolling moment, so the airplane turns towards the aileron that is deflected upwards. The movement of the ailerons is completely independent from the horizontal stabilizer. Good tutorial, though.
I'm a bit confused here... I'm aware of what ailerons do and how they work... and I agree with everything you said. But the video doesn't contradict that. Are you looking at the flaps, maybe?
this is a rigging intro to give us noobs the necessary knowledge on how to rigg, the science behind on how the various parts of the rig move is a separate story 😊
+Kuhn Industries Nope, I'm looking at the ailerons. They move together instead of opposite to eachother. Didn't mean to criticize the tutorial though, it's very useful and well explained.
+Kuhn Industries your ailerons move correctly in the end, when you rotate the whole rig. But in the beginning, when you rig the horizontal surfaces and then rotate the aircraft object, elevators move correctly, but ailerons move together and against the elevators. Completely wrong. Also, your flaps shouldn't move at all when positioning the aircraft, they are extended manually for take-off and landing. And they only move downwards, you might wanna add a limit rotation constraint.
I rigged a simplyfied model of a plane following this tutorial; however if i set up the Rig_control sphere with a locked rotation constraint, when the model follow a path the flaps are all messed up if the model rotate by 180°... (here is a video that shows what happen, higlighted in orange are the "target" empties ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-V_aJihkQWn0.html ). Any tips on how to solve it?