Drunkard's Walk Forums

Hey troops, I'm making a variable Me-262 Schwalbe (plus HG.II version with 35 degree wing sweep instead of 18) but I have two nearly equal variants of the robot mode I can't decide between.

Considered on its own I tend toward Type A, but with space-tech versions of the Lorins a VMe-262 HG.II would be able to make orbit on its own, and "get earth ready to fight the aliens" is basically the whole justification for Germany being the aggressor (by wiping out undesirable "weak" strains of humanity, communism, etc. - I never said they were the good guys!)

Got sidetracked. Anyway, givn the emphasis on capability to fight space-based enemies, fighters that can get up there or back down without needing a mothership have obvious importance - otherwise, the only option for that mission type until the 70s style original designs that only appear very late and if you put particular effort into creating them is the variable V-2.

So, do you prefer TYPE 1:




* can use OTL landing gear
* V-shape folded backpack is common element with variable V-2
* less time to pop the wings out for boost jumps
* arms have room to swing back for melee or holding a gunpod

or TYPE 2:




* flatter backpack
* better field of view from head & cockpit
* easily mounts OTL Lorin ramjet boosters



It is possible to have the normal transformation use type 1 but switch to type 2 with optional equipment attached, but this still means I have to come up with different landing gear... for voting purposes, call this TYPE 3

Game design is not a democracy, but I will count audience response when making the final decision.
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

I would vote for B. 
I like it better, and your right about the get ye into space thing. 

Weird... I was sure I'd posted this here before... Oh well. Veedja ho aitch-dee!


Carmen Richthofen's Me-262 HG.II as equipped for an orbital raid on the alien fleet.

Integral armament: 4x rapid pulse energy guns (nose/head)

Option parts:
4x Heavy Anti-Ship missile
2x Leg Mounted Micro-Missile Hive (Micromissile x156 total)
2x Lorin-Sanger-Ravvika fusion scramjet boost equipment

Polycount:
mecha: 2770
option parts: 1268
crappy placeholder insignia: 708
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

I like the design.  Some of the transitions seem a little hinky (mostly the arm deployment in the F -> G transition; why would it swivel forward and then rotate back, if it could do both at once?), but the model is definitely cool.

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My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours.

I've been writing a bit.

It swivels so far forward in order to clear the front ends of the LSR boosters - when it shifts back B -> A after ejecting them you can see the arms just flip up to get over the wings and then fold into the fusilage. I'll admit, though, when I finally got all the parts shaped and saw that it really was going to work, I breathed a sigh of relief - I love the sharky look of this plane, and really wanted it as one of the mecha due to its status as the world's first operational jet fighter, but I wasn't at all sure I could get a transformation to work, and especially not with a outline good enough to qualify at a scale R/C contest! This thing is EXACT to the three view drawing I found, even down to the fusilage cross sections provided. It's definately going to be one of the things I look at with pride for a while. I've made a few more minor tweaks to the color scheme (though that's only temporary anyway - I'll need to make a proper UV mapped skin, or really four, to be default mook, Carmen, and tintable playabler version in wartime camoflage and a sporty "airshow/racer" version to let the user choose paint colors) and plan to add a Mad SCIENCE! gunpod, so I'll probably re-render it after adding an "aim, draw, and fire" segment to show off the Microwave Disruptor Cannon too. Figuring out how to make a proper film scratch energy beam for a game engine will have to come when I've actually got a game engine rather than the Irrlicht, Irrklang, Smartfox, and Tokamak SDKs sitting around waiting to be seriously examined and made to work together. At least three of those are designed with each other in mind, Smartfox networking may prove beyond my very basic coding ability to integrate, but multiplayer was never more than an afterthought for me anyway - you'll be able to replace the AI wingmen for coop or spawn (with or without wingmen on either side) into a map for head to head, but that's really it, and not much is lost if I have to switch to something more basic except the possibility of expanding that at some future date.
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

All I'm saying is that it looks like those pieces of the fuselage come forward, and then move back into arm position while rotating into a proper arm shape.  If they were to rotate into arm configuration as they moved forward, so that they would (perhaps) be functional before coming back to default arm position, it might be a slightly better flow, iff'n you know what I mean. ^^
Either way, it's a very impressive piece of work.  I've made some static models, but transforming?  That must've been a few dozen headaches, and I salute you for getting it to work.
Also, how to do the beam really depends.  Theoretically, it'd either be a 2D sprite, rotated to face the player perspective (like the older games did it), or a 3D object (with a rapidly increasing length, in the case of non-hitscan beams) with a beam texture slapped on it.  The 2D would be easier, most likely, since you'd only need one texture for it, but the 3D would probably look better, once you got enough sides on it, and the textures lined/angled up right.  Maybe a set of textures, rotated around the sides of the 3D shape of the beam to match the player's perspective?

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My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours.

I've been writing a bit.

Oh, I see what you mean. No, that's the action of two (actually five) different joints - they come forward on a two-part hinge that's flat with the surface of the fuselage, then go back on the three part (two hinges and a rotor) joint that acts as the shoulder. That's not counting the two part linkage (on each side) just forward of the cockpit that also moves to the side and rear, to get the shoulders lined up with the neck and form the sides of the upper torso. Look back up at the stills - the purple part at the center of the upper chest and over the cockpit is a different linkage, but stating from right beside it is a white part that connects to a red part in the armpit - those are the bits that are the fuselage just ahead of the cockpit, along with the thin "tail" that goes over the top and hangs off the back end. The red part is the inboard end of the two-pin hinge connecting to the upper half of the shoulder area (blue on the left, yellow on the right - you can just barely see the dark grey 2-pin hinge on the back views) and that connects to the actual shoulder joint, and with the arm side of the shoulder being the middle-cockpit part of the fuselage, and the lower, rotated section of the upper arm having the fairing that smooths the back of the cockpit into the tail. There's not any joints that go one way and then the other during transformation, just sequencing which ones act in opposite directions to get the arms into place around the obstacle.

Really, the best thing to do is download the video with Flash Video Downloader or JDownloader and watch it in a loop (which it's designed to do seamlessly) so you can concentrate on each part of the assembly as it moves. That's basically all I did to straighten out the interpenetrating tangle that resulted from just having Blender interpolate joint angles from the extremes all at the same time.
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

I wasn't referring to a single joint, either.  Right around 0:05-0:07, you have the arm pieces (everything from the green shoulder piece down, if I'm not mistaken) folding forward on hinges attached just forward of the cockpit (to the yellow and blue bits in the shoulder, if I see it correctly).  What I'm suggesting is having the arms (everything from the yellow and red upper arm pieces to the hands) extend and rotate from fuselage shape into an arm shape as it comes forward, so that, by the time the green bits are mated to the yellow and blue bits, the arm below the shoulder is already transformed.
Basically, moving the whole 'arm assembly rotates and separates into actual arm' step, so it happens while the arm assemblies are coming forward, rather than as they move back.

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My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours.

I've been writing a bit.

Oh, I get you. I tried that, it didn't look good - like everything was breaking up rather than a controlled mechanical sequence. The arms extending that way also have an effect that's unique among all transforming aircraft I know of - it actually has a fairly evenly balanced increase in frontal area top and bottom as it breaks out of high-speed aircraft mode, so it wouldn't have an immense sudden nose-down input if you were applying real flight physics to a giant robot. So it would go straight ahead instead of entering a vicious tumble as the slipstream ripped off the arms and legs, which is progress? I guess? But I'd better stop talking about it before I kill another cat-girl.

Anyway, basically right now the parts start moving from the ones closest to the mechanical center of the linkages (the cockpit in this case) first and propagate outward, for the most part, but more important than that is that messing with any of the joint timings outside a very narrow range it's currently centered on makes things crash into each other, especially with the boosters mounted.
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

Ah, I see.  Good to know you thought about it... though I shouldn't be surprised.
This is why I don't have a degree in robotechnology.

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My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours.

I've been writing a bit.

I don't know why, but to me the Me-262 doesn't call out as a aircraft to have transformable version. Make into an early aerospace plane, yes that, just not the full VF thing. The He 162, He 280 & Ho 229 to me lend more possibilities, with the He 162 the engine can remain in use in all form due to it being on the outside and the Ho229s engines could make the spine or you go the FBz-99G route.

The Ho-229 is also on my list of things to try to transform, though a straight Invader/Zaubergeran/Pheyos/Quedlunn Alma clone is out, for the same reasons I'm doing an original WW2 setting instead of Macross, though it probably will end up with a vaguely similar "I'm wearing a big cape" robot form appearance, if only because there's not much else to do with that mid-wing engine, flying wing shape. I am going to try to avoid having bendy engines, but there might not be another good option. I'm also de-aging my Raven stealth bomber to a more era-appropriate form (and passive stealth is irrelevant anyway when detection and missile guidance is via psychic powers, not to mention impossible in modes with arms and legs hanging out all over the place) to be a late-game new wartime technology design. Basically this means giving it eliptical wings and evening out some of the jaggy panel lines, adding a bubble turret or two, and putting plain glass on the cockpit instead of the gold-tinted radar foiling stuff.

If I do end up with bendy engines, the intakes will be in hooray-for-boobies position rather than perched on top of the shoulders...

The other OTL designs on my list are:

* L-133 (fit into number scheme as P-58)
* Fw190 (will be an ugly hunchback, but there's little choice with a single engine tractor propeller plane)
* V2 (-ish variable rocket, modified from my original Plumbata by removing the portholes and Reich-ing up the insignia. Probably will be renamed S2 for "Sieg" - "Victory" - unless the vengeance is directed at the aliens for the orbital bombardment when they showed up. That does beg the question of what the Sieg-1 would be, though.)
* J7W1/W2 (images/video clip posted previously)
* Ushakov LPL (truly an all environment threat!)
* HiMAT unmanned research vehicle with the avionics/telemetry bay enlarged into an F-20/X-29 style cockpit and nose (another late-game development, during the "gear up to dislodge the alien fleet" stage.)
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

New still shots, and I'm about 2 of 12 hours into re-rendering the clip at half-speed for better visibility, showing off the new MASER gun pod and (by request) Nietzsche Hammer melee weapon. There are also various minor recolors, and the addition of an extra pair of rear-aspect armor plates that also handily fill in that unsightly hollow nose in the hybrid mode. (these stills are from before that, unfortunately) I kind of think Carmen's usual choice of melee weapon would be twin mid-length blades, stowed on the inside of the engine pods/outside of the lower leg, but a Big Fun Hammer is a better choice for smashing up starships after the missiles are fired, even to the point of reducing the carried antiship missiles by 1/4. (Warning: Hammer is only fun for the person holding the handle!)

As for the MASER pod... I thought of how to do the folding dish, and wanted an excuse to use it. It's just barely small enough to be plausible as carried equipment in fighter mode, but looks almost comically undersized in robot form, the one downside of managing to cram a really large robot into a smaller vehicle mode. The tall fin with the optic on it folds down too, it just has to pop up when the gun unfolds to see over the rim of the EM-shield disk.



Know your Me-262! The three variants that this transformation can support:


Unfortunately, the blended fuselage and engines of the HG.III mean it would require an entirely new build. I've got enough else to do for the project, and counting these separately more German variable fighters already than the rest combined, so 35 degree wing sweep is just going to have to be enough. I could do a V-tail for the early HG.II without much trouble, but it hardly seems worth it.

EditABuncha: Despite much messing about, I can't get the last thumbnail to display. I have no idea why.
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

Re-rendered video clip:


Note the no longer see-through-hollow C-mode nose section, increased cockpit armor coverage, and yes, a big frikken' hammer, plus vintage Mad SCIENCE! MASER cannon. I recolored the chest a bit too.

And just let me say that figuring out the right compositing node setup to get the glow effect without messing up the rest of the image was a right pain in the arse.
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows