Saturday, July 3, 2010

Beauty on two rotors- The Chinook Story

Belenos "Bel" Stardust here with another blog installment for you. This time around I wanted to tell you all my story of how I did the CH-47 Chinook. It seems to be one of our most popular items, up to revision 2.7 (soon to be 2.8), and there seems to be no end of good uses myself and others have found for it.

Let's face it, the Chinook is my absolute favorite helicopter of all. If I could marry it, I probably would... If it could cook, clean, and buy me beer, the marriage might actually work! if it could have sex.... well, let's just not go there... you get my point. I REALLY like the Chinook!

So here it was mid January 2010, when I decide to make the CH-47. I had already visited the wiki page for it, as well as Boeing's page, and several fansites for it ranging in eras from Vietnam to modern day... so I knew a lot about it already. Discovery Military also obliged me by showing an episode of "Great Planes" featuring the Chinook... I took that as a sign from Gawd... I was meant to build it.

Luckily snoe Halostar had given me a sizeable plot of land on her sim, Peaceful Dreams... in thanks for turning her on to SL, and her current income stream (which STILL puts mine to shame). So I had a dream, a build pad, a bunch of pictures, some stats on the bird, and all the prims I could rez... Not to mention a very patient girlfriend in the form of Janean Zwiers...


Ok so maybe the first draft did not QUITE look like how I wanted... at least it was a start. I was able to put enough of it together based from a model I had done of it a week before. Talk about easy... all I had to do was do math to resize it from small to OMG it actually fits me! Once I had enough of it built up, I dropped in the attachment/rezzer scripts, and the flight script... and began the initial tests....

Oh... boy...

Yeah... I have much work to do here... Unfortunately the makers of EEV type scripts failed to mention to me that those scripts are really optimized for airplanes, not helicopters....>

A couple days later... I think I finally got the script to where a helicopter might actually benefit from this. Sure enough, I was able to get it to lift off, come back down, hover around a little bit before gravity won out, you know all the normal things a helicopter is supposed to do. (After all, helicopters are definitely hands on aircraft... You cannot just skate by with them) With the basis of a flight script in place, I decided to finish the actual build... I got a hold of some little freebie items that I thought would be neat to include... most notable of these being the Terra e-Chute (highly modified for looks... sorry Cubey, that fanny pack just was not doing it for me), and a classic, the Fairchang rubber boat (painted black of course for assault SEAL and Ranger operations).


Even with these little easter eggs (plus the HUGE bandaid Janean made, her first build ever) I still faced a few problems before I could actually sell this thing...

First problem... what to do with the rotors...

Seems like a simple issue... right?
Wrong.

First off, the Chinook's rotors are 60 feet wide... that's roughly about 18m in second life measurement. 18 Meters!!!! Holy Hell, that means megaprim! Thankfully Edesse gave me about 7000 of them... not to mention someone else showed me how to use the SALT hud, which will allow u to punch in megaprim sizes and if available it will conveniently deliver it to you. That works... now I have a lovely 20 x 20 cylinder prim... make that two of them, on top of my helicopter. Only one thing for it... I opened up photoshop and textured me some transparent rotor textures.

Now at this point it is noteworthy to point out that I had been introduced to some of my competitors' work by this time through my newfound friends at Pirate Air. Their leader, Outlaw was gracious enough to show me the new CH-46 he bought from one Patrick Lawson, and give me a little flight in it. Mr Lawson runs the Real Flight company, and I have to admit, he has really made a benchmark for himself there in the aviation world. I had heard rumors also, that a couple other people were planning on making Chinooks, and naturally this concerned me if he was going to be one of those people... which turns out he was.

My course was clear... I had to finish my Chinook first!

Upon suggestion from Outlaw Acker, I elongated the nose, and ditched my idea of "painting" windows on it in favor of the (ahem) higher prim route of PRIM windows... I figured i could skimp on certain things, but windows were kinda crucial. I have to admit, the idea worked... and allowed me the pride of many great comments on how "realistic" the windows look, whatever that means. My greatest resource was a dude by name of Nacklepest Blackbart, who as it turns out, happened to WORK on the real thing in his time in the US Army! His advice was invaluable!

Not all ideas were as great though as the windows... For example, snoe suggested I put stripper poles in each model....

Umm... no. I have to admit she had a pretty compelling argument, but no... No stripper pole. Perhaps on the 2011 Super Bling model...

As it was, the Chinook was ready enough for sale. Up it went onto
XStreet (btw you folks know that whenever I put xstreet in these blogs that's a link to the item in question right... sneaky little subliminal marketing ploy there... huh?)! I had acheived my goal... I got the Chinook up there before anyone else got theirs up.

Now I can finally rest.......

WRONG!

To this day I have not had any complaints from paying customers, or even those who "test pilot" for me for free products... but they say the hardest person to please is yourself... especially if you are a perfectionist like me....

So about a week after it was listed and starting to sell happily... the itch came... that bug hit me... the I gotta update this thing bug!

The rotors don't look right... I really did not like the wheel position, the hover in the script is a little shakey, the HUD looks cumbersome, the notecard needs to be refined... the list went on and on (in truth it still does).

My first task was the rotors, and the flight script. Enter my begging and pleading to Janean to front me some "investment capital" to purchase an item called Sculpt Studio.... by the way it costs 4999 L$. I know i needed it cause I had downloaded Blender and almost slit my wrists trying to figure out how to make a 3 bladed Chinook rotor, and have it upload to SL in a manner where it does not look like utter crap...

Not to mention there was the little thing of how to transition from hover to forward flight with the least amount of headache... I examined every script I could find that was mod... Looked at every helicopter in my inventory to try and guess at it, and finally came to the conclusion that if I was finding it difficult to control, my clients will be too. My best bet was to keep the two flight mode system, of HOVER and NORMAL, but just refine them.

A week or two later, I had sculpted prim rotors made, and the script itself was retooled somewhat for the hover efficiency tweaks I had in mind.

With a somewhat stable version ready, I also decided to expand on it by creating several models for people to choose... The Desert Storm, Air Force MH-47, British Airways, Vintage Look, in addition to my original, Army Green model (Btw, notice the also subtle links to the xstreet pages of each). So instead of ONE Chinook model... there are 5... consider the market cornered. I love choices! :-)



One can never rest on one's laurels however... and even with the new versions and better script, it is STILL not enough for me. I can do better. I made the seats sculpted... I changed this texture and that, I changed the speed and sculpt of the rotors, the speed and sound of the ramps, even the pilot sit pose! Pretty much doing everything I can to make the Chinook one of the best helicopters out there. There was ONE thing that eluded me for the longest time, till I had help from an unexpected source...

My Chinook COULD NOT carry vehicles!!!

One of the few times I actually met Patrick I even mentioned this in passing, which I am sure gave him a chuckle, since that is apparently what he is BEST known for, is cranes and the like. No matter how good I could make the Chinook, or how refined the flight script is... It would never be AS good... until it could pick stuff up.

Here's how I figured it out...

A little known SL rope maven named Komrade Podolsky had published a rope script a few years ago open source... and I had gotten my hands on it and managed to make all sorts of good things, like "avatar on a rope" for example...

This amused Janean greatly by the way, and she was happy to see her investment money wisely spent so that i could dangle in the air...

It also helped that I had decided to take a break from the Chinook, and work on another large helicopter, the CH53-E Super Stallion (the subject of my next blog). This gave me the time away from the Chinook to clear my head and approach everything from a different avenue.

After much MUCH experimentation, I was able to rudimentarily get the stupid thing to lift up a 3 x 3 plywood block.

Yay!

There was much rejoicing. I have to add that whomever decided to create the physics in SL should be slapped with a pimp glove. What fool arbitrarily came up with the materials and weights used in prim building, and why didn't they tell me that making a glass airplane, while great at reducing friction, also means you do not have the mass to pick up stuff made out of say wood.

Once i figured out this little secret, the rest came together enough for me to at least ATTEMPT to pick up a cargo container with a Chinook.

OH BOY! It works!!! Except the rope seems to fly crooked? I am not sure this follow/ rope script was such a good idea. So I did what anyone else in that situation would do... I deferred to a higher authority on the subject of SL ropes... I sent an IM to Komrade Podolsky.

To my shock and amazement, the man who rarely logs in, ACTUALLY logged in! I guess he was curious to see what a helicopter could possibly do with rope... But nevertheless, he was able to see what I was trying to accomplish, and open my eyes to the script tweaks it needed to actually function PROPERLY (and where the weight and material of the helo makes no difference) Now, not only did I have a Chinook i could be proud of, but another selling feature.. make that TWO selling features!

- The ability to carry vehicles within a sim (I don't think anyone has really solved the sim crossing with a vehicle issue yet)

and two- Two internal loadouts (passenger variant carrying up to 12 people, and cargo variant, which carries 3 total but has room for the newly included Hummer Truck... another little freebie I stumbled upon and greatly modified for inclusion).

That, plus some major changes to the flight script... yes again... have made the Chinook better than ever, as my sales figures still attest to. The ideas keep rolling in, and as such, the updates will keep rolling out!

Now if only I could figure how to make the Chinook with all its various models actually sell MORE than the ONE model of CH-53 Super Stallion I have...

But that is the subject of another blog.......

About Us- Stardust Enterprises...


Or... why am I doing this.

These blogs will be an attempt by me to chronicle the vehicle building history of my Second Life company, Stardust Enterprises INC. I will be your tour guide, Belenos Stardust.

I started Stardust Enterprises back in November of last year (2009), after a one and a half year hiatus from being in world, on Second Life (SL). Prior to that, I had dabbled in building back in 2006-2007, trying my hand at making Star Wars related vehicles, and fighter jets. My lack of building and scripting skills were evident though, as I never really got past the "plywood" stage. After a few minor successes (one of which was making and scripting a "singing" Red Stripe beer bottle), I decided when I returned to SL that I would make a go at building again. This was greatly aided by my losing my RL job late last year. They say whenever Gawd closes a door, he opens a window...

I discovered a lot had changed since I was first on the grid, most notably, the addition of new scripting capabilities, physics engines, sculpted prims, and other new innovations that were bound to make my life easier this time around. I set about to learn everything I could, starting with scripting! I figure I know how to slap prims together, what I really need to learn is how to make them MOVE!



I decided I would start with something easy... Since I was coming back from a Star Wars Galaxies binge, my first vehicle would be the sail skiff... Just to see if I could do it. Armed with 30 prims, some really grungy textures, and a copy of Cubey Terra's hoversled script, I set out to build the sucker. The build itself went well, easy to do, easy to line up with the grid I got from my friend Edesse Thibedeau, but the scripting... oy! That was a piece of work trying to get this thing to do what I wanted it to. Cooler heads prevailed and I was able to get it finished and ready to test! I had recently discovered the Blake Sea, and its crown jewel, Hollywood Airport, so I decided to take this monstrosity there to do my flight tests. After getting yelled at a couple times, once from the notoriously cranky Grandmother Bloch, and once by a supposed SL Coast Guarder trying to keep the peace.... yeah right... I was able to find a quiet spot amidst the Blake Sea islands to actually get the job of refining and testing the script done! It's amazing what you can get accomplished when there is no one around to chime in their 2 cents...

Bottom line, it WORKED... It worked well enough to carry several people (5 to be precise), and well enough for me to box it up and list it on xstreet. After my first few sales, I decided to really go for the gusto... I got vendor spots in Little Mos Eisley, and in New Tibannopolis (Cloud City). I fired up the little freebie vendor, and loaded my products in. By this time I had also made the Storm IV Cloud Car, and had begun work on the big brother to the Sail Skiff, the Sail BARGE!


Now the Cloud Car was a major "lightbulb" moment for me. I say this not because it was easy to build, easy to texture using my trusty photoshop CS3, or even easy to script using my growing library of freebie and open source scripts...

Noo... what made the Cloud Car a breakthrough for me was that... IT FLEW! Not just hovered over land or sea... It can gain and lose altitude! Now while that may not seem significant to you, to me it is the accomplishment of a dream. I LOVE flying... in real or second life. So you can imagine the exhilaration I felt as I popped in that EEV2 Flight script in there, and said the word "start" for the first time. I had found my calling... Except for one minor detail.

Seems like everyone has built TIE Fighters, X wings, Millenium Falcons, hell just about anything that flies... Even my versions of the skiff and barge were third attempts at it from content creators such as myself. At least the Cloud Car is an original... You won't find another like it in SL. Needless to say, that is on xstreet too... But If there is no point building the other items, then what do I build??? I knew as soon as I finished the Sail Barge... there was not much more in the Star Wars line that I COULD do that has not been done before, or at least done well.


The Sail Barge actually helped me figure something else out too... one- how to create pilot animations, and two- how to make HIGH prim vehicles and have them attach and detach correctly. I would be remiss to say there was a fair amount of my profits eaten up by getting the items I needed to finish the barge, but the investment in scripts and tools has proven worthwhile for me, and the finished Sail barge is of course... on Xstreet... Once I did finish the sail barge... I was at a crossroads... I needed a plan, a new direction... and aviation seemed to be it. There was one issue I would have to face... SL Aviation is a VERY competitive business!

I am a guy who hates competition... Cornering the market is one thing, but competition, I could do without it. I know it is the capitalist way... and yes it DOES spur me to do better at what I do, but competition is the major cause of sleepless nights of never ending building, scripting, tweaking, texturing, sculpting... etc. All that having been said, there is one thing above all else that I really really love... HELICOPTERS! My very first purchase in SL was a helicopter (Jillian Callahan's MD500 to be precise)... and the one thing I have NOT seen in SL up to that point are some of the behemoths of helicopters, most notably, the CH-47 Chinook, and the CH-53E Super Stallion! Come to think of it, some of the X planes and Hovercraft that I really enjoy seeing or reading about on wiki are not even touched in SL... Hmmm.....

I had a mission... A purpose... a goal.

Stardust Enterprises would not only make the occasional Star Wars related vehicle, but we will specialize in making the unusual aircraft AND hovercraft that you do not really see in SL, and are lucky to glimpse in RL.

It is that ever quest that these blogs shall be about, starting with my next blog, on the CH-47 Chinook project.