The YF-19 Project

Dedicated to all Pioneers...

It all started in 1998

Surrounded by snacks and all sorts of unhealthy foods, me and my friends from High School sat down one summer evening to watch our recently acquired VHS finding: A 1995 series of OVA (Original Video Anime) called Macross Plus. We hit the play button, and this message begins the film:

Dedicated to all pioneers…

A 1/48 scale model of the YF-19 made by Hasegawa

I don’t have enough words, nor I would finish anytime soon, to express how much this movie meant for me, and means to me ever since. The main story is a love triangle between Isamu, his teenage years sweetheart Myung and his best buddy Gold. But really, the stars of this film are the planes, the YF-19 and the YF-21, who are competing for the next production contract for the UN Spacy to create the next generation Variable Fighter and replace the aging VF-11. This was based on an actual competition in the US between the YF-22 from Lockeed Martin and the YF-23 from McDonell Douglas, from which the YF-22 won and got the contract to produce the next-gen fighter F-22 Raptor.

Clearly inspired by the YF-23, the YF-21 in Macross Plus is test piloted by Gold, who uses an experimental mind-driven control and visualizes the plane in full VR like it was his own body. Isamu, on the other hand, pilots the YF-19, based on the experimental forward winged X-29 and the recently revealed SU-47, with traditional controls, but with enhanced maneuverability and vision with a screen-projected exterior inside his cockpit.

Very few things have resonated so much in my head when watching a movie. This one became my favorite Anime film of all time ever since. Yoko Kanno, the composer for this film, became my favorite Japanese animation musician of all time. Shōji Kawamori , the designer behind the vehicles became my favorite designer and so-on-so-on.

Anyway, I used to daydream a lot about this plane and how would it be like to be in its cockpit, looking out through these screens that evolve the whole sky as a single thing and make you feel like you’re flying as a bird. My love for flight simulators and Sci-Fi was fueled by technologies like this. So eventually, when I started learning Blender, a single question raised up:

Wouldn’t it be awesome to finally find out what it looks like?

So the YF-19 project was born.

Origins

(Also known as the series of Early Big Bad Mistakes)

As I was gaining experience in modelling in Blender I started getting myself a pretty decent amount of reference material. Besides the Movie and the OVAs, I had three basic sources of information for the YF-19: The Hasegawa 1/48 scale model (which I own one but I haven’t got myself time apart to build it), the Arcadia 1/60 transformable toy, and CG models from people around the globe. I went to the usual image search sites, like Google Images, but also scrolled down Deviantart.com, Tumblr, Pinterest, Bing, the Macrossworld forums and tons other anime galleries. I got essential information about the plane, its dimensions, weight and thrust rate, color variants, versions and above all, the source material for the films, which is a bunch of amazing sketches and designs by the franchise senior designer, Shōji Kawamori.

Turns out there are these many variations of the same exact plane.

After choosing precisely what views were the most eloquent with each other, I formed a basic viewport and started creating the nose shape, while still digesting the most of what Youtube had to say about Blender. I took this snapshot on July 28, which is my birthday! This shows how committed I was to this new project, I had to model and take snapshots instead of eating cake or whatever people do on their birthdays.

Once I understood the basics on modelling in Blender, it was just a matter of recovering all my seemly lost memories about the art of 3d modelling something.

As I was creating the next piece of mesh, I started getting the hang of it quicker and quicker. I could remember these things! How to keep four sided patches at all times, how to move topology away to make holes like the front romboidal openings on the nose, it was all getting surely but gradually back.

I started cutting pieces and extruding them separately to make the panel divisions, while stretching new extrudes and “wrapping” the fuselage around. There was no time to lose, this was me modelling again!

The way I’ve been cutting these panels from the mesh has been basically, start with the whole section, then subdivide and cut it, add as many vertexes as i need to sharpen the edges between the panels when smoothing the whole thing, and so on. Since my cousin is a programmer, he wanted to know how many polygons the plane had already. I looked at the Blender info section and quickly responded: 120,000!…. Whoa….

120,000 polys.

“So, would that be too much for a video game?”, I innocently asked. “Yup”, was his short answer.

You see those triangular shapes at both sides of the fuselage? Well, on closer inspection, there should be only one of them, on the left. As far as I know, they’re some sort of micro-missile hidden door or something.

So no big deal, right? It’s just a matter of not using mirror here, creating the whole piece as a single thing and then deleting the right side panels, reconstructing the mesh and keep on. But that little thing got me thinking: Why am I carving out each and every single panel out, even ones that are not probably panels but part of the paint job? (the zig-zaggy line above that triangular cut is probably a division with a grey paint job on top of it) Wouldn’t there be a more poly-efficient way to get the result I want without carving all of this? And with a plus: I could reduce the poly number substantially.

When my cousin commented on the last close-up above that the “UV mapping will be a nightmare”, I had to agree. Not only I had no idea how to UV map something in Blender, I was making it a lot more difficult if you could just make a bump map with the panel lines, UV map the surface and call it a day. Plus, I was going all the way down with this plane into a realistic short film of some kind, so I wanted efficiency of method in the model and let the textures and lighting do the rest. The idea of loading an extremely heavy model into a scene to be rendered, instead of a light, efficient model with the right UV maps and textures, was starting to become a daunting thing.

The last nail on the coffin for this stage of construction was that I had been watching a lot of pictures and videos on the Arcadia transformable toy, and I was getting more and more inspired to not only animate the YF-19 as a plane, but as a GERWALK and Battroid. That involves critical thinking in the modelling process, since from the beginning the modelling would have to divide the fuselage into the parts that disassemble and form the robot. It was a very exciting idea, and nowhere near the initial plan of just learning how to model something in Blender.

The YF-19 project had to make a forced landing here, and get back to the drawing board… plus watching loads of new tutorials.

Fuselage

After a few tutorials I was able to go back and re-do the whole plane all over again, but this time I took special care to economize on the polycount, use a feature in Blender that creates creases without the need for extra loops and mesh, and overall take the extra step into the detail to get as close as possible to the Hasegawa scale model.

Featured

Old version next to the new economized version.

Adding the thruster vector bits (newer on the left, older on the right)

This time, however, the idea was to make it transformable, so from the modelling point I started dividing it in different parts, using the fuselage panel lines and the toy as a reference of which parts are separate when transforming.

Wireframe view of the upper fuselage, with a much higher economy of polys.

Upper fuselage with smooth on.

Legs outer shape and wings.

Thruster/feet.

Canard wings and cockpit glass canopy.

The robot arms are tucked under the plane's belly.

Adding a quick material to get the canopy transparency and make sense of the different parts.

Extra details added to the legs and air intakes.

A quick experiment in posing the separate parts to make the GERWALK mode.

I quickly checked how the fast flight configuration looks like in the references.

Fast flight configuration/Storage mode.

Modeling of the spoilers/air brakes, flaps and slats.

refining the small detail between fuselage panels.

Refining the under belly panels.

The landing gear bay doors.

Close view of the front landing gear bay doors.

Modeling of the front landing gear.

Landing with flaps down and airbrakes.

Rear landing gear.

Featured

I added lights and realized there was an ugly gap.

I ended up remodeling the lower part of the leg to make it rounder, so it resembles the Hasegawa model better.

Modeled the gun.

Canopy articulations.

Modeled intake fans.

Mechanical

Pretty much everything else that was modeled belongs to the Mechanical area: the arms, hands, head and parts that are mostly hidden in the plane mode, but that unfold to create the robot versions like GERWALK and Battroid. It also means I had to learn how to rig this so I could control it.

Featured

Head created.

Understanding the basic principles of rigging with the front landing bay doors.

Rigging of the front landing gear.

Tricky stuff because it all needs to fit in that little space.

The way I solved the logic of the bay doors (ended up changing that once I knew better)

The opening sequence for the landing gear.

Rigging of the intake covers.

Rigging of the rear bay doors.

Opening sequence for the rear landing gear.

I realized I had no idea how to do a setup for the legs of a biped so I followed a tutorial to get this understood.

Finished rig from a Youtube tutorial.

Dealing with the huge amount of separate objects in the file.

Too many parts! Need more efficiency.

In order to better rig the fuselage, I deleted half of it to apply a mirror modifier.

Main bones.

A better way to see the bones using sticks instead of polygonal shapes. Created a slider control for the landing gear, flaps and thruster nozzles.

Rigging of the landing gear and cockpit parts.

The transformation process once skinned to the bones.

Constrained bones to allow the landing gear animation.

Half way through opening.

This required a lot of study!

GERWALK mode.

Battroid mode.

Featured

Rigging of the wing surfaces.

Fitting the plane nose as the Battroid's chest.

Madonna would be proud.

Modeling of the arm and how it connects to the fuselage.

GERWALK with arms on.

Decided I'd make the arms bulkier, and find a way to fit them inside.

Hand door.

Forearm and hand modeling.

Hand modeling.

Hand palm view.

Grabbing the gun.

GERWALK knee joint.

There was not much information about this part so I reduced the segments to make it look closer to the toy's.

Leg joint segments.

Bulkier arms and the GERWALK pose.

Re-fitting the parts for the Battroid mode.

Modeled a crotch cover and tested the panels as they fit with each other.

Backpack piece with hovering thrusters.

Cover slider for the neck and backpack.

Trying to make the crotch plate closer to the Anime.

Featured

GERWALK bone mess.

The mess is just too much.

Color code! That's it!

Still a mess, but simpler to understand (at least for me)

The different panels are very difficult to move and tell if there are intersections, being all the same color.

After taking a look at the transformation guide, it hit me: Colors again!

Fabulous YF-19, now color coded.

It's also a lot easier to find intersections between pieces.

Simplified controls for the bones in plane mode.

Creating custom controls for the Battroid mode.

Posing test: crouched.

Custom driven controllers for the transformation phases.

Checking on intersections while transforming.

Checking intersections on transformation.

Refining and increasing detail in hip area.

Adding inner mechanic work.

Intersections! Begone!

The folded pose in Battroid mode.

Created covers for the backpack gap.

Refined head details.

Featured

The cockpit transformation mechanics is crazy.

It's very satisfying, though, to see it work.

Extra detail to the belly parts including the lower laser cannons.

Extra details to the panels for the neck.

Extra struts for the spoilers.

Mechanical extras under the shoulders.

Refined fans.

checking that everything fits in without intersecting.

Checking the spoilers and flaps intersections.

Mmm, the exhaust thrusters look like candies... gotta refine this.

The deployed Battroid and checking for intersections.

Checking for more intersections behind the legs.

Updated exhaust thrusters.

Figuring out the mechanics behind the feet.

How the pistons and levers make the feet rotate.

Rotating them around.

The fitting of the mechanical parts for the feet.

fully finished rig!

Satisfied of the finished work.

Comparison between the older and newer details.

Older legs vs new legs.

Older Battroid chest and newer details.

The biggest differences can be seen at the back of the robot.

Ready for some textures!

Textures

We enter the new undiscovered world of textures and materials, where I had pretty much no experience, practice, or idea of how to do anything. This took the most time for me but became one of the most enjoyable parts of creating this plane.

Featured

I began by making a few tutorials on texturing until I could place UV maps correctly on the fuselage without warping things out.

I then used a grid template to get some bearings of which part was where.

The map was initially mirrored but I ended up making changes to that.

Textures done to the belly.

Textured back, wings and shield.

Biggest mess ever.

Mapping all those little pesky mechanical parts.

Even the fingers.

The almost finished mapping in Battroid mode.

Finished mapping from below.

Also, the colors were washed out because I made a mistake with the white values. Fixed.

Now that the mapping is done, I can start with a wireframe map to check if the textures are lining with the mesh.

Wheels textures done.

Some parts are bigger in grid size than others so I had to fix that too.

The intricacy of mapping!

Switching the maps to a wireframe to check for issues.

The little wireframe issues on the base of the intakes.

Then I decided to color code it and go, piece by piece, finding which was was up.

Fiuscha version of the YF-19.

Replacing textures with the base color for the fuselage.

Adding signs to find out which was is up on each part.

Graffitti look!

Added black and lines to wings and rudders/winglets.

Still so much to texture left though!

Substituting the shader material with a metallic one.

Getting a shiny smooth result.

Clean shiny end result.

Featured

Matching the Macross logo across four different separate pieces = Insanity.

Matching the Macross logo on the wings.

Basic idea is done. Time to trace the panel lines.

To accurately trace the panels I switched the base to grey and followed illustrations and closeup drawings.

Adding the panel lines as bump maps.

Changing the bump maps to normal maps.

Tracing the rest of the fuselage panel lines.

Test using normal maps and a light.

Working out the metallic fuselage shader.

To get a better info on reflectivity for the fuselage, I switched it back to grey.

I actually love this result.

Increasing the reflectivity values on the metallic shader.

Bright aluminium!

Panel lines under the wings.

Panel lines for the rudders.

Detail work on the wings.

The plane in storage configuration.

Playing with some lights.

The shader in Batroid mode.

Working out a specular map with different values for the panels. Since each panel can be replaced it should have different specularity, which makes it look more realistic.

The lines are feeling more reflective than the panels, though...

It looks cool but I can't find out why my map looks inverted.

I made a grey version to figure out why the parts that were supposed to look less shiny were shinier.

Happy accident: the result looks amazing.

Featured

The research continues, this time with low light values.

Once I saw that the dirt lines I added to the specular map were shinier, it hit me: Blender considers white surfaces grainy and black clean, so they are more reflective. That means it was inverted all along!

Once I inverted that, the correct specular differences appeared.

Increasing the reflection values to get a more metallic feel.

Working on the diffuse maps to add more dirt.

Adding dirt and scratches.

Added dirt to the flaps.

Closeup that shows a very bad panel line on the nose.

Increasing reflectivity once again on the specular maps.

This was my goal: Reflective but only on a close distance.

I kept adding labels and warning signs, and since the motors are thermonuclear, a Radioactive warning and a label for the International Nuclear Society.

Getting to a very nice point! Adding more smoky marks and weathering.

The right amount of dirt to make it look realistic.

Featured

Improving the textures inside the landing gear bay.

Adding wear and scratches to the edges.

Adding scratch marks to the fuselage.

Scratches to the landing gear.

Adding scratches to the mechanical bits.

Trying out HDRI maps!

Time to texture the gun.

Initial textures for the gun.

Adding rust, scratches and wear.

Tuning the values and adding more labels.

Sexy pose!

Throwing the gun away.

Metallic details under the shoulders.

Metallic details inside panels that slide.

The awesome effect of HDRI maps.

Working out the bits behind the legs and roots of the wings.

Featured

Pretty much done!

Working the shader of the navigation lights.

That lousily drawn panel for the nose needs work.

Fixed!

The inside of the intakes needs work too. It's too angled.

The reference book I'm using for the next paintjobs.

First paintjob variation is the white common UN SPACY one.

It differs from the YF-19 in the Macross logo (not Training Center), numbers on the nose and wings, and white instead of tan.

Roy Fokker variation. Trying to match the Skull-1 textures.

Fixed textures.

The Skull 1 paint job belongs to the Project Super Nova.

Adding details.

Closeup of the details for the Roy Fokker special variation.

Fixing the landing gear insides. Again.

Featured

Detail on the Roy Fokker variation.

The iconic yellow and black stripes.

Top view of the Roy Fokker variation.

Detail on the navigation lights.

Label on the landing bay door.

Next variation: The SVF-569 Lightnings.

Toughest thing was to match the lightning effect across the fuselage.

The completed ligthning for the nose and wings.

The logo is different in this one so I had to re-match it.

Finished variation.

Next version!

The VF-19A Ravens from the Macross VF-X2 video game.

Same deal. Here's the finished version.

The black stealthy version.

Nosejob art.

Detail on the rudders.

This black low visibility version is the best one!

Lower view.

Finally, the SMS version from Macross Frontier.

Finished version. This one is fairly similar to the YF-19.

Details on the nose vector thruster.

Details on the position light.

Featured

The landing gear is finished!

Rear landing gear finished.

Lower laser cannons.

Some test renders of the paint jobs in different modes.

Detail on the feet.

Fixing the red sensor.

Adding more detail to the head.

Fixed the intake shape and added panels to it.

The finished fuselage material.

Featured

Adding wear to the neck plates.

Details behind the head.

Adding a smoky feel to the thrusters at the back.

Hand textures.

Mechanical parts textures.

Back of legs textures finished. Also fixed the wings.

The Ravens version!

All the variations in one single shot.

Cockpit

This whole journey began because I wanted to know how it would look to fly a plane with the screen systems of the YF-19 in Macross Plus. So this part was particularly satisfying to me.

After carefully observing the reference drawings from the cockpit design, I decided I would model the inside panels, dashboard and chair, and then find a way to "project" what the outside of the fuselage looks like from the perspective of the pilot who is inside, thus creating the feeling of a transparent glass, looking out. Realism, baby.

Up to this point, everything I had modelled for this project came from very reliable Hasegawa blueprints and pictures of that same actual model assembled and shot from lots of different angles, so this was the first time I had to model something while making sense of the inconsistencies of each version.

So with enough material on my hands to test my modeling practice, I embarked on the new and exciting journey of dashboards, panels, HUD components and many, many test renders.

Featured

Defining the inside of the cockpit.

First draft of the seat.

I made an experiment with a "green screen" to do the virtual screens in post production.

It didn't work well. The metal would reflect the green color to a point where it wouldn't work well as a post effect.

Fitting of the chair in the cockpit.

The view from the pilot's point of view.

Checking on the proportions to match the Anime.

How the pilot fits in the toy.

Modeled the cover for the co-pilot seat.

Co-pilot seat in the toy.

Refining the seat edges.

Featured

Normal maps for the chair.

I personally want as many Easter Eggs as possible in this project.

Chair textures finished, moving to figure out the Virtual Screens.

The VEC (Virtual Environment Cockpit) consists of several cameras on the lower fuselage that take a real time feed of what's in front and under, from the same perspective as the pilot's eyes.

Once the image is rendered, I apply it as a texture to the screens (moving texture so it animates with the plane)

The result is - ideally - a clear canopy effect.

How it looks from any other angle than the pilot's eyes.

Trying the idea with a city landscape HDRI.

The screens projecting from a different point of view.

I began tracing the idea for a HUD system using green lines.

The lines matching the point of view.

The rig system I designed, it marks the compass, roll and pitch in separate bone systems.

Updated system using dotted lines.

Adding more details to the HUD.

The new panel.

Adding additional information to the HUD.

The view from outside.

Closeup.

Closeup to the dashboard.

The graphics on the side windows need work.

Featured

Closeup on the thruster.

Closeup on the side panel for rear ejection seat.

Playing with lighting.

Adding scratches to the glass for the VEC.

Adding scratches.

Adding a map for emission so it can have night lighting.

Updating the panels to add more detail, buttons, knobs and things that are proper to a very complicated plane around.

Getting some specular values.

figuring out the normal map direction.

This image is a crosseye 3d one, cross your eyes and you'll see one image in 3d!

Fixing the specular maps.

Closeup to the side panels.

Little Easter Egg: Powered by Blender.

I love adding labels!

Safety labels for the pilot chair.

The startup sequence: 01-Off.

Startup sequence: 02-Logging in (TV static)

Startup sequence: 03-VEC cameras on, streaming video.

Startup sequence: 04-HUD online.

Startup sequence: 05-HSI, vector indicators and information displays.

The finished effect.

Featured

Adding scratches and wear edges to the dashboard.

Instrument light working

Updated scratch map.

Ejection seat handle.

Effects

This section resumes my attempts at making convincing thruster effects, lights and smoke, heat and all that jazz.

Featured

First attempt at an afterburner effect using planes.

The effects work well but at a certain angle you can tell the trick, so discarding this one.

Second attempt using geometry.

It's fine from far away but it's too solid looking.

The next logical solution is a shader.

Third solution using a ramp shader.

Definitely the best one!

Playing with particles in Blender.

Compositing heat from smoke particles.

Preparing the area for a turntable video.

The rearview screen render.

Adding noise values to the animation.

Playing with the lighting of an HDRI.

Featured

Night lighting.

The render of the floor from the cockpit view.

The finished product.