Atlantic Strike

[franken_johan]

In this 1960's WWIII setting a group of Soviet Tu-16 Badgers just launched their first rounds of AS-5 Kelt missiles.
Armed with nuclear warheads and some basic active radar homing, they try to destroy a US Navy Carrier Air Group at aprox 110 miles. Not waiting for any counter reaction they turn away quickly for their secondary target being a heavily protected Allied convoy in the Northern Atlantic region.

http://members.lycos.nl/frankenjohan/forum/Tu16_Kelt.jpg

Hope you guys like it!:salute:

[Galgot]

Wow !I like it a lot ! very nice...
Make me think of that pict:
http://starfighter.no/web/5_BADG.jpg

[krazycolin]

nice... very.... i thought it was real for a moment....

just one small minor crit... the second plane is turning quite a bit and the thrid plane is not turning at all... it's a bit wierd... seeing as the missile from the second is closer than the missile from the third... (wow.... not sure i get it either...)... and one other thing. the missile flame from the second is practically invisible... or is it that it hasn't lit off yet?

[Mirko]

Very nice franken, original subject!
:salute:

[kevjon]

Excellent work Johan, I like it a lot !

[digiartist]

lovely stuff mate.......reminds me of a scene from Clancy's Red Storm Rising book

[Lukem]

Great image sir! We definitely need more bombers on here IMHO :D

[franken_johan]

Thanks guys!

...Make me think of that pict:
http://starfighter.no/web/5_BADG.jpg
I used that pic (and story) for inspiration :D

reminds me of a scene from Clancy's Red Storm Rising book
That is a nice compliment, because it was exactly what I had in mind for this render :lol:

just one small minor crit... the second plane is turning quite a bit and the thrid plane is not turning at all... it's a bit wierd... seeing as the missile from the second is closer than the missile from the third... (wow.... not sure i get it either...)... and one other thing. the missile flame from the second is practically invisible... or is it that it hasn't lit off yet?
About the missile thing. These missiles are big and slow (for guidance testing they used piloted versions of this downscaled MiG-15 missile). They first fall down before they ignite, smoke and finally start to accelerate.

So the first aircraft has just lauched its missile and the rocket engine generates lots of smoke and light for a short moment. See the reflecting light at the the wing.

The second aircraft launched his missile about 10 seconds ago, it has fallen below the picture border and you can't see a thing of it.

The third aircraft launched about 4.3 seconds ago. That missile starts overtaking the third aircraft slowly at this moment. Its engine is running better, so less fire and smoke for at this time.

[krazycolin]

4.3 seconds ey? LOL.... i love the timing!!!!

it's a great pic mate.....

[primer]

Wow, really great render. It really has a world war 3 feeling to it. It makes me wonder how the USN Carrier Battle Group on the receiving end will fare. :)

[Skyraider3D]

Good to see you finally got around finishing this image. It's looking very nice, though some things could be improved. Mainly the smoke looks rather odd and speckly. Some motion blur would already help it a lot, I think. Also lowering the contrast on the further planes may help suggest depth, and a little hint of lightbloom would benefit the integration into the backdrop. Lastly don't over-sharpen your image, as it doesn't look pretty.

[Buelliful]

Very nice work! Excellent infact. One question though. Who is the tail gunner pointing at? :D

[decoman]

Looking at several photos, it seems like the guns usually rest in that position.

http://www.pinetreeline.org/misc/other/misc8aw.jpg

[Supah]

Looking at several photos, it seems like the guns usually rest in that position.

http://www.pinetreeline.org/misc/other/misc8aw.jpg

That's not the rest position. It's the non aggresive position they would put them in when they were intercepted to prevent accidentally aiming the guns at one of the fighters and provoking a response.

[kiwi123]

A lovely composition ! Well done, I think this is your best to date !

[franken_johan]

Thanks for all the positive feedback. And like Skyraider I'm glad that I finally finished this one. I have not been very productive with MAX last summer :( Hope I will do better in winter :)

Trying to improve the render I used most of Skyraiders tips. Added some blur, decreased contrast on other planes, added some motion blur to the smoke channel, which resulted in this picture:
http://members.lycos.nl/frankenjohan/forum/def8_1_5_extra_tu.jpg

The only thing that bothers me is the LightBloom. Seems to be the magic word last months on MilMesh. How do I do it? I still use Paintshop Pro, but I think I can manage with that program.

I copied this quote
You make bloom very easily in photoshop, copy your image into a new layer, increase contrast and brightness untill you have very bright spots on a very dark image, use hue/saturation to adjust the saturation and turn the layer to screen. This results in all the highlights of your image being increased severely. Now apply a gaussian blur to that layer and presto.

Alternatively you can use the airbrush on a screen layer with white, or as someone else had shown on the old milmesh, use photographs of real bloom on cars to overlay.

from this thread

http://www.military-meshes.com/forums/showthread.php?t=216&highlight=bloom

But I still don't know what Kiwi means. Increasing contrast and brightness doesn't make my images more dark, but more light! What to do with hue/saturation? More or less? The 'screen-layer' and the Gaussian blur do exist in Paintshop, so I can use it. I just don't get the first steps of the increasing stuff. Can you explain it one more time to me?

[Martocticvs]

I've just made a quick sequence of images to show you what wiek is on about:

First you just render out your scene as normal, and make it the background layer.
1897

Then, duplicate the layer, and use contrast and brightness controls, or levels adjustment, to crunch the detail and get something with a much heightened contrast. You actually want to keep some variation in the brighter areas, but you are much less interested in the dark areas. Obviously there is no colour in this example, but hue/saturation controls can be used to strengthen or weaken the colours (I would say generally you would want to weaken them a bit). So the top layer for my example looks like this
1898

Next, you want to apply a guassian blur to the top layer. I've over exaggerated a bit here just to illustrate.
1899

Finally, set the layer's blending mode to screen, and adjust the opacity to suit. The closer to 100%, the stronger the bloom effect will be.
1900

[franken_johan]

Thanks Paul. This box looks stunning! Despite the lack of colours these images make your point (and Wieks and all the others) clear to me.

It's no magical button, so I will tweak my image and post the result!

[franken_johan]

...so I will tweak my image and post the result!

Just uploaded a new pic in the previous post. It has the bloom. I think it is a major improvement. Being a photographer of military aircraft it is not easy for me to downgrade a crisp and sharp render with the lightbloom. But it works! :)

Thanks!

[kevjon]

Yep, the improvement/effect is subtle but you have improved on a really good image.

[Skyraider3D]

Definitely an improvement mate!





PS. Checked out the new EOS 400D yet? Got mine last week! :D

[Lukem]

Definitely looks better (not that I saw much wrong with the original).

Thanks for the break-down Martoc! I'll have to give that a go.

[digiartist]

Thats looking even better......and as Luke mentioned the original was impressive enough in the first place

[Karras]

Which plane is this Swedish ?:cool:
I never saw it :eek:
beatiful picture, no dude

[falcon012]

Love the Badgers. Nice action in this scene.