NOTE: I am not at liberty to redistribute the documentation used to build this model.

2015 "L Craft" Future Fighter Concept Project

A little fun with animation:

Wear and Tear, over time...

Thanks to lessons learned from a great MODO tutorial by Tor Frick, I've been able to develop my own system for adding this sort of wear to my models, without ever touching the UV maps. Here are a few images of the process, as I tweaked the effects.

With the "grunge" shaders in place, it was pretty easy to rig up a slider to control the amount of the effect. Below - The ship goes from new, to worn, in 10 seconds.

Boarding the ship... (No ground support equipment required.)

Below - In the hangar...(F-22 hangar photo by Ken Graham used with permission.)

Below - A little repair work...

Below - Rendevous at the tanker...

Changes and Updates:

I know that many sci-fi fans expect to see the standard skid-type landing gear, but giving some thought to various scenarios for animation, I’ve decided to switch to wheels. When you think about the practicality of moving the aircraft around on the ground, (for maintenance, or simply to move it somewhere else) skids just don’t make sense. Also, from an atmospheric point of view, if this thing had an engine failure and had to glide in to a landing, skids would be a bad idea. Now I can show more situations, including taxiing on the ground, with nose gear steering.