This week’s assignment was to create and animate a TIE Interceptor, first seen in Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi.
Not being a huge Star Wars fan, and not having watched the original trilogy for many years, after looking at reference materials online, my first impression was that this was going to be a long, complex and arduous task. However, by applying the Blender skills I’d learned so far, creating the Interceptor turned out to be much easier than I expected, and in the end I believe I created a fair representation of the craft.
With an understanding of form and shape important in this task, I began by breaking the Interceptor into basic 3D shapes, and started by adding two spheres which would ultimately become the cockpit and main viewport.
The viewport was created by deleting surplus faces from the first sphere to leave what could be described as a dish shape with a convex outer surface, and adding two loop cuts to map out the overall window position. The outline of the viewport frame was then created by selecting and bevelling the relevant horizontal, vertical, and diagonal edges; the faces of which were then selected and duplicated in EDIT mode, as using EDIT mode would ensure that only the faces I had specifically selected were duplicated.
The selection representing the view port frame was then separated from the main object using the alt + P shortcut, to leave the shape which will eventually become the viewport window behind. I then applied a solidify modifier to the frame, adjusted the thickness in line with the reference materials.
Turning to the cockpit made from the second sphere, the access hatch was created by, this time, selecting the three uppermost faces of the sphere, and extruding them upwards, before adding a loop cut at the bottom, moving the hatch downwards, and bevelling the edges to produce a more indented effect. Applying the auto smooth option to each of these object also created a more polished look.
Next came the solar array wings which I modelled by adding and solidifying a plan, and extruding the edges by using extrude along normals in EDIT mode. Ensuring that these shapes were in proportion/equidistant, I then extruded the top and bottom front faces outwards before then moving these inwards to create the general wing shape.
A solidify modifier was then applied, and any abnormal faces tweaked/adjusted before creating distinctive pointed wingtips using the Vertex Slide Tool, and angling the rear aspect of the wings into their characteristic shape. Each face was then inset and extruded inwards to generate the wing’s unique solar panel structure.
Finally, a mirror modifier identifying the cockpit sphere as the mirror object/the centre of the mirror was used to exactly duplicate the wing and tether the cockpit midway between the two, before resizing to correspond with the reference materials.
The next step was to produce the wing pylons that connect the cockpit to the wings. Constructed from a cylinder with only eight vertices, the ends removed, and minimally bevelled edges to maintain a more robust, hard-edged appearance, which I moved into the correct position central on the wing, and rescaled accordingly. Detail was then created by adding loop cuts to both change the diameter of the mid-section by extruding it inwards (using extrude along normals) and to nip it in to produce a more accurate, concave shape. The section closest to the cockpit was then also rescaled at the adjoining end to be more representative of the reference materials. To give a more finished look, smooth bevelling was then applied to the entire wing pylon. Another smoothed and resized cylinder was then used to make the connection between the pylon and cockpit more aesthetically pleasing, before being joined using control + J. Finally, instead of creating a new mirror modifier, the pylon and wings were linked using the control + L shortcut before the modifier was copied over.
Before colouring and texturing, using shift + D and mirror modifiers, I added wing blaster cannons made from bevelled intersecting cylinders. Then, using the same principle, I added targeting sensors to a platform, created from a smoothed, bevelled and adjusted cube, which had been initially extruded upwards to join the cockpit, and mirrored using control + L.
I then coloured the model in keeping with the reference materials by adjusting the node values for a range of base colours in grey and black, apart from the targeting sensors which were coloured red in line with the tutorial materials. Reflections were also created in the viewport window by reducing the roughness and raising the metallic nodes values. To make my model less bland, I then imported and applied various textures from textures.com (https://www.textures.com/); black carbon fibre for the solar array panels, and a pitted metallic texture for the mid-section and the wing blaster cannons.
Turning to the animation sequence, after parenting all of the pieces to the cockpit, I added (alt + A) and scaled (alt + S) a Bezier curve for my craft to follow, and using Edit mode, added some highs and lows, which I then rotated slightly to make the path more interesting and the craft fly towards the viewer. Once set up, using object constraints and follow path, I fixed my Interceptor to the curve. Then, after adding a light source, I created a key frame sequence to animate the Interceptor tilting and spinning on the x-axis around the Bezier curve now against a background image imported from the Blue Origin website (https://www.blueorigin.com/about-blue).
Finally I thought what good’s a TIE Interceptor without the iconic sound effect? So, after searching online for a soundbite, and using Audacity software to crop the sound file, I then added this, taking care to synchronise the sounds with the appropriate parts of my animation. And after adding a camera and rending, here’s the end result.
I thoroughly enjoyed this project, and now have more confidence in my Blender skills. Looking critically at my completed piece, if I’m honest, the wing pylons aren’t reflective of the source materials, and feel too flimsy to support the mass of the solar array wings, and the additional weight from the pull of gravity as the craft flies close to Earth. For this reason, if I had to repeat the project, I’d scale them up to appear more robust.