Triplane

[Toad]

This one is a complete fantasy scene put together from 5 photos...

I'm pretty happy with it. What do you guys think?

[Guac953]

That's a really cool pic. I do have some questions... are the clouds your render? you mentioned your pic was compiled out of 5 pictures which ones are they? I guess my main question is how it was made in more detail

Jess

[Toad]

Thank you. The 5 pictuires are the sky, the triplane, the plane and smoke (tailspin), the pilot, and the scarf.

The sky was the first layer and is just a photo I took on Sunday of the sky over Vancouver - increased contrast for more drama.

The second layer is a flash lit triplane which was sitting in a hangar in Midland, Texas. Used the clone tool to remove flash refelctions. I extraced it with a variety of tools and plunked it on the sky in an appropriate position - then scale transformed it to suit. I had to work the edges a lot to make it look less cutout - mostly with polygonal selectional tool, smudge tool and clone tool - this was the longest part of the project.

The biplane in a tailspin was a photo that I took at an airshow - I used the extract tool to cut the plane and smoke out - and then worked the edges to make it look less cutout. I scaled the extract to the right size and set the opacity to 65% - this made the blend of the smoke look right. Applied the Paint Engine arctic filter to the smoke to make it look more solid.

The pilot is the catcher from my son's little leaque team. His catcher's mask looked about right for a flying helmet from that angle - I colored it brown and applied a burlap texture to the helmet to look more like leather - then shrank the whole think to fit and placed him in another layer over the plane layer - then I erased all of the catcher that would be "in" the cockpit. I then cut out a piece of rippling flag from another photo to be his scarf - scaled it and placed it. Cloned extra bits from the scarf to make it look like it was going around his neck.

The spining propeller was done by selecting an elipse in the sky layer - below the airplane layer - roughly the shape and posiition of a propeller - then applying radial blur at 100% to make that portion of the sky "spin".

I applied motion blur at 6% to the airplane layer at 21 degrees (roughly the direction of plan's momentum) to give the plane a slight motion blur. This was not enough for the photo to look right motion-wise, but more blur made the triplane TOO blurry. So, I switched to the lower sky layer - selected a trapezoid in the sky starting roughly at the upper wing tips and extending at 21 degrees to the right side of the photo. To this selected area of the sky I applied motion blur at a MUCH higher level than the plane - to make it look like the air was disturbed by the plane's passing.

Adjusted the levels/contrast of all the layers to be roughly the same.

Finally I flattened the image and applied a bit of Buzz simplifier to unify the look of the layers - I find that this last step conceals a world of sins when doing elaborate constructions.

Thanks for your interest - I love doing this sort of elaborate construction.

Best
Toad

[Guac953]

That's certainly a lot of work... I took a second look at it after reading all that you have done. The pic still strikes me as a Model plane picture. I think it is due to the position of the Triplane. I'm not exactly sure, but I think the tail end should be lifted a bit? Not so in line with the front wheels. I still think this is a wonderful picture, I would have never thought of using PS to make such things come to life.

Jess

[Toad]

Yes - good point - the original triplane was sitting on its wheels on the ground - a slight reangling might improve it. Thx.

[jch71566]

Toad,

This is a great manipulation. However, the technical difficulties I find are:

* Agree about angle of triplane
* There should be specular highlights and reflections of the clouds on the surface of triplane
* The perspective of the clouds does not appear to match the foreground plane. The horizon convergance does not match.

Please keep in mind that I could not perform this nearly as well. I am just saying what I see.

Regards,
Jeff

[DannyRaphael]

To my untrained eye a very good job of compositing. Until I read the details I would not have guessed at the subjects of pics 4 and 5.

RE: Position of foreground plane
Its angle didn't catch my eye as a distraction, but for me it's a little too close to image center. I'd drop it down and to the right a bit.

~Danny~