Airplane Animation (with Bubbles)

Hi! I am a student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. In this instructable, I will go over my process for creating this animation, from modeling the plane in Fusion 360 to animating and adding flying bubbles in Blender. I'll try to keep it as simple as possible. All of the software used in the process is available to anyone with a decent laptop. Hope you enjoy:)

1. A laptop that can run both Fusion 360 and Blender
2. Patience
3. Access to the internet
4. A creative mind and vision for your flying project

I began by looking for inspiration. I knew I wanted to create something realistic, but I was unsure of what exactly that would be. I was inspired by the low-flying agility of a crop duster and was excited to try to add in the spray from those planes. After a bit of research, I came across the Air Tractor 502XP. I liked the look of the plane and was excited about the challenge of modeling all of its curves in Fusion 360. Once I had settled on my design inspiration, I found good reference images that would help me in the process of modeling.

Now it was time to see how accurately I could model this plane in Fusion 360. I was a bit nervous about all the curves, but after some trial and error, I succeeded. The reference images helped to keep the plane proportional. Even if you are designing your aircraft from scratch, I strongly recommend creating good reference images (front, side, and top views). Creating organic curves in Fusion 360 turned out to be quite fun, and I was able to model the plane almost exactly as it was originally designed. If you plan to export your model into Blender for the animation as I did, Make sure to give each body a separate material before saving the model as an obj file. This will make the material process in Blender much easier.

Now it is time to bring your aircraft to life. Think of a scene and find footage that matches your vision. Or go out and shoot your own! You could even 3D model your entire backdrop. I found some footage that matched my vision of a field that a crop duster could fly right over (close to the ground) while still having an engaging background. After spending hours animating the scene and adding a particle system for the spray, I realized that there was no limit to what could be released from the plane. After trying dust and balloons, I settled on BUBBLES! I was able to reverse gravity so the bubbles would float, as well as add turbulence to make them feel more realistic. Although the scene is no longer "realistic" due to the bubbles, I wanted to keep the same goal of realism. I wanted the bubbles and plane to feel real, even if it was clearly impossible. Lighting is also a very important aspect to consider. Messing up the lighting instantly makes the animation feel wrong. I found that a shadow helped to ground the plane and make it seem like it was actually flying over the field.

This project was a nice blend of modeling and animating. I was able to improve my skills in both Fusion 360 as well as Blender. It was nice to see how easily I was able to transfer my work from one software to the other. This project showed me how much time and effort must go into every single scene of animation. This single 9-second clip took quite a bit of time and iterations to plan, design, model, animate, and finally render. Hope you enjoyed the process and learned something along the way!

Keep designing:)