Hey everyone! I’m working on an asset pack for the Unity store. I noticed there was a little gap for modern fighter aircraft that can be used in a wide variety of situations. So I’m going to be creating three packs of aircraft, broken down like so:
European Fighter Jets: Eurofighter Typhoon, Saab Viggen, Dassault Mirage 2000 American Fighter Jets: F15c, F16, F22 Russian Fighter Jets: Mig 25, Mig 29, Su-30MKI
All aircraft will have a selection of skins.
Each of these will be modelled to be poly-friendly (roughly 1500 tris per aircraft including landing gear and cockpit), each will have most if not all control surfaces rigged to be positioned in Unity, each will have optional landing gear, and each will have an optional cockpit to support many scenarios.
Here’s the first plane of the bunch, The Eurofighter Typhoon, at 1,318 tris including cockpit and landing gear. Without cockpit and landing gear, it’s exactly 1000 tris.
Nice stuff! Should be very useful for mobile games. But if you really want to fill a niche I’d suggest midpoly models at 20-30k triangles or so. There’s pretty much nothing of this sort, although it’s definitely going to take a lot of work and may be rather niche.
Consider other countries as well. Iran and North Korea used to have quality Air Forces, I do not know if they do now.
Germany, Turkey and France have always been known for having good Fighter Pilots.
You’re absolutely right. I’ll certainly consider that. Any preference on which jets?
I’m just trying to make sure I have the aircraft themselves. The skins for them will be from all over the place. I’ll try to make sure other countries are represented!
Speaking of Germany, here’s the Typhoon in WIP Bavarian Bronze Tiger markings. I’ve tried to get the stripes as close as I could to the real thing. Still got to do the ‘tear’ marks and tiger eyes on the wings and rudder, and some other detail trim, and a nice glossy coat compared to the worn look of the grey scheme.
EDIT:
I’ve done some more work today paintint in the last bits of this tiger skin.
Well for a game of my own I’d probably want the fun of making them myself … but I think you’d get a lot of interest making some modern/future jets such as the F-35 or some russian 5G fighters. Also I’d consider testing a complete package - with a cockpit, HUD, sound effects etc. In fact if you did this kind of package for a lowpoly mobile model I think it would probably sell quite well.
Just thought I’d add the reference picture for the above markings just to show you:
I was considering making that one of these mobile packs- near future or very present jets like the F-35, PAK FA (Su-57), Chengdu J20 and others. I’ll progress with what I have planned so far and add those on to the end.
Adding sound effects would certainly be a good idea, maybe I’ll throw a few of those in to the pack, but those kind of things are also hard to get hold of enough! I will consider adding them in if I can make them myself and I can get them sounding satisfactory. The main thing most games miss out with aircraft is the sheer ‘crackle’ of an afterburning engine, so I’d love to hear a game do it.
I’ve cleaned up the tiger texture, and I’m moving on to the last distinct one for this, based off of the RAF’s Battle of Britain memorial flight markings, as seen here:
I’m also going to do variations of the grey texture for each air force that uses the Typhoon in europe, so UK, Spain, Italy and Germany. I may do one for the Austrian airforce even though they’re getting rid of theirs. I should have all these done by tomorrow (well Saturday early hours my time).
Here’s the Memorial paint version! Took far less time than the tiger one, but I’m pretty happy with it. I’ve tried to tweak the specular on this one as the reference is quite diffuse on its surface.
And here’s an RAF variant, a Luftwaffe one and one SPAF one in progress. I’ll do the italian one later and then call this done! I’ve also done some work today on reducing draw calls, textured the landing gear (and re-rigged it) and a few more bits and pieces.
Should I add in a control script to handle the posing of the aircraft to limit their values? So rather than the ailerons being weird rotation values, you just pick degree of movement and it does it?
Hey there! Yes, each one uses a single texture atlas, inuding cockpit, gear, and canopy for if you don’t require transparency. LOD is something I’m planning. I’ll see what I can do in that regard, shouldn’t be too tricky.
@SiliconDroid as per request, here’s the wireframe for the LOD version. I hope 279 verts after Unity compression is okay! I’ll give these their own dedicated textures of course, for each skin.
Here we go then, batchable LOD versions. No landing gear or cockpit or moving parts of course. Here’s 64 of them at a single draw call (empty scene with just skybox is 2). They use a 32^2 texture taking up only 0.7kb. I’ll do a LOD texture for each skin I currently have.
Just thought I’d post my progress! I’ve been working on the mesh for the Mirage 2000. Currently sitting at 914 tris! That will increase slightly when I model the landing gear covers and the canopy but this should hit about the same sort of tri count as the Typhoon.
I see a well thought out mesh. Nice to see an artist who realizes: “every vert/ind is sacred”.
Would also like to see texture map UV (I like looking under the hood), just lowres thumbs.
When purchasing models I like to be able to see all the low level details, because many models out there look nice but aren’t game ready, well at least not ready for my games.
Oh yes. It’s like solving a puzzle, It’s far more enjoyable than high-poly modelling I find anyway.
Sure! Here’s a thumb of the tiger one!
I’m doing my best to keep as much detail as possible in as little as possible but as suitable for mobile as it can be. It’s striking that balance really. Making those LOD ones made me cry a little though.
Yes, Instead of “low level detail” i meant to say: all the low level specs of the model, mesh topology, vertex count, index, uv layout. To have those listed with item on any store is a good idea i think, you may already plan on doing that, I just mention it because I more often than not have to email sellers for that info.
With regard texture detail, by looking at your 2k vert mesh and how it flat shades; i know it will look nice up close provided texture is hi enough res. what size textures do you plan on including in the packs? I always like hi (>=2048), then I have the option for closeup cam should i need it. I make big feel 3D games (free roaming) for mobile VR and want/need low poly models with decent texture art. Finding that combo isn’t easy.
Good job on the 228 vert typhoon, a nice looking solved puzzle. do you reckon you’ll manage to get all variants <300 verts?
If that’s something you or anyone else wants, I’ll put it up at least some of it.
You’re absolutely right- flat shading for things like this is one of the most important parts, otherwise it will never look good. I try to make good use of smoothing groups too to keep things looking clean.
The main textures for that typhoon are made at 10241024. A couple screens I’ve posted have had textures at 512512. I’m not super familiar with how moder phones can handle large textures. I didn’t go as high as 2048^2 because of that.
EDIT: Glad you like the UV layouts too. Those are always something I feel like I’m doing wrong. I get self conscious about UV maps is what I’m saying.
… but I think you’d get a lot of interest making some modern/future jets such as the F-35 or some russian 5G fighters. Also I’d consider testing a complete package - with a cockpit, HUD, sound effects etc. In fact if you did this kind of package for a lowpoly mobile model I think it would probably sell quite well.
