I am constantly amazed by the artistry and raw talent that you poser artists display. I'd like to pose a challenge (pun intended, and not very original) for you.

I would like to see some poser characters flying.

What?!? Flying? Come ON... Half of the poser posts are winged women, faeries, demons and angels, right? Right. But I've only seen one or two actually FLYING.

What's this loon talking about? Well, I've got an aeronautical engineering background, and I'm a pilot. In almost all of the posted images the wings aren't in any position to do the work of flight. The artist seems to regard the posession of the wings as a license to ignore what wings are supposed to DO, which is create lift to offset gravity. Almost all of the flying poses show the flyer vertical... their wings can't do diddly in that position. Ever see a bird, an airplane, or even an insect fly for any length of time with their wings straight up and down? No? Then why should our characters be any different?

My challenge is... Show us flying characters actually doing it. Perhaps show some of the effort of flight on their faces, if they're doing anything difficult, like making a tight turn, or lifting extra weight. My challenge is for you incredibly talented people to make it look REAL.

Yours,

Bill Maness

PS. I have absolutely NO skill in Poser, or I'd give it a shot myself. I'm an engineering, MAX guy. If you need an airplane, I'm your guy... Need a faerie... Um... Talk to Turtle ;)

PPS. And the myth that winged people are inherently aerodynamically unsound? That's bull. Depending on the wing structure, and the assumptions you make for muscular weight/power ratios, people can fly just fine, thank you. Not with straight HUMAN musculature to be sure, but if you're gluing wings on in the first place, uprating some muscles ought to be easy enough ;) Lift, Thrust, Drag and Weight... May the force be with you.

I'm a pilot too. 4700 hrs mostly helos and have held an IA for 15 years now. There is a definite shortage of pilot clothing and props. Some of what you are asking is difficult. For example, the facial expression in a 4g turn would be tough to duplicate. Poser doesn't have soft body dynamics. But, we do have access to some nifty bvh's for the eagle and the dragon and with the right effort, both can be captured in flight. I was working on a flying dragon animation. Not as easy as I thought. I created a scene in Bryce and ran the camera along the flight path. Then used that .avi as a background for Poser and put the dragon in a wings flapping mode in the scene just below and in front of the camera (like a view of someone riding the dragon). To get the bank angles right, the wing rotation right (aileron) etc, was quite difficult in Poser. Synchronizing with the avi is also not so fun. Maybe by the end of the year I'll have something to show. One of my disappointments about special effects in the theater is that most CG folks can do nice texturing but they really have no clue about aerodynamics. I really don't want to make another half whit thingie. Ok, interesting challenge. Easier said than done. now here's a thougth, enter the May challenge and win and you get to pick the theme for June!

My challenge is for you incredibly talented people to make it look REAL Wel, erm, uhm, there's this little problem called the square-cube ratio... unless it'sa teensy faerie it can't look real without unaesthetically large wings. Additionally, those unaesthetically large wings would require a second, upper set of absurdly large pectoral muscles, which would, of course, place Vicki's boobs somewhere under her arms or between them and the wing bases. Then you have the wing attachment problem. The typical angel or bat wings added onto a humanoid (or goddess forbit a Pegasus or Alicorn) are attached at a ridiculously small point and do not connect to the sides of the body (to make better room for the arms, if nothing else). Actually making a figure with this would be virtually impossible as you have the poser non-parent weeld problem. Totally unfeasible using Poser, actually. So it would take me at least a week. Without it welded there's too big of a gap between the body and wing undersurface to maintain lift -- all that high-pressure air leaks right out where the wing doesn't attach to the humanoid 'fuselage'. (Yes, I know many bugs are built sort of this way, but bugs are little and beat their wings really fast and the combination allows a bubble of air surface tension right there from what I understand.)

chuckle Definately NOT an easy challenge to be sure. The Square/Cube ratio is definately a factor, but it is one that can be worked around. One of the greatest misconceptions of aerodynamics is "Bumble bee's can't fly according to science." Scientists know that's not true, but it's something that's gotten into the lay public's mind.

Let's take the case of an "angel" Human sized. I'm going to cheat a little (there will be some of that) and assume a slightly lighter bone structure for the airframe ;) Let's call a full height angel a dead-weight of about 130lbs. Given a static wing loading of 2.5 lbs per square foot, we get a wing area of 52 square feet, or a pair of right-triangles about about 10' along they hypotenuse. This isn't an outrageous wing, or wing-loading. And it neglects the "bumble-bee" principle.

The Bumble-Bee misconception comes from applying Bernouli's equations assuming that at any given instant, a wing in motion can be assumed to behave as a static wing in a constant airflow, then the results of the motion integrated. The real world doesn't work like that. (fortunately) It's NOT just the scale-effect at work here. The motion of the wing can create a complex of low pressure vortices. Who is to say that the lower wings of a faerie don't ride the turbulence created by the upper wings? Dragonflies do it to extremely great effect.

I concur that the shoulder structure would definately change, and internal shifting of organs would be needed, but those are structural details, not aerodynamic impossibilities. Someone brought up the topic of balance and stability... ie, shouldn't a flyer's wings be around his/her hips? With a neutral pitch-moment wing, that's correct, but many birds, and some aircraft have strong forward pitch-moment airfoils. In the case of faerie, if the lower wings are catching a turbulent airflow and using it, they may even be creating more lift than the larger forewings, which would tend to torque the body nose... er... head down, balancing the weight of the legs.

Now, I realize that this is all fantasy, and that it doesn't HAVE to work out to be pretty art. I find it's much more fun to work it out, if one can.

• Bill

What is the average air speed of a swallow carrying a coconut? heh heh sorry about that, just had to be done.

I've got to agree that most of the wings you see on things here would never support the weight of whatever they're attached to. I'd like to see some more realistic sized wings- at least as big as the body itself, if not bigger. Then again, in "fantasy" you can always explain the greater lift/mass thing with "magic" but that's a cop-out. Hmm, in Dan Simmons sci-fi Hyperion series, there are human sized "Angels" who fly through space using the solar wind against their wings- which they can extend to several square kilometers worth of surface area. Talk about having wings large enough to support your body...

IIRC, in the Judeo/Christian mythology, angels are bloody big warrior types, too. Not the kind of blokes to have lightweight bone structure. Think of a souped up Arnie with wings. :)

But if those souped up bone structures were more of a carbon resin than a dense calcium structure, their mass to load ratio would be quite different. They could still be hollow, and be nearly a quarter to a tenth the weight of normal human bones. So our "Arnie" could be as big as the real one, but weight only 130-150 lbs.

Don't ask where her fuel tanks are.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=399745&Start=1&Artist=Valandar&ByArtist=Yes

Valandar, That's pretty darn good! They must have a pretty good airspeed to have her blown back as far as she is... say 40-60 knots. Otherwise, she'd hang down more vertically. I love the expression on his face... definately working to drag her into and through the air. He's considerably more muscled than I'd expect a flyer to be, but I've got to tell ya, that's one of the best flying poses I've seen yet. Congrats! - Bill

Thankys!

lalverson, is that an African swallow or European swallow? hehehe

Like I mentioned before, I based this off Dan Simmons' "Hyperion" series of books, specifically "Fall of Endymion". It's just a rough render, I may refine it later.
Although its nearly impossible to give a sense of scale in the volume of space, I can try by saying, yes, they are human sized, and yes, there is a full sized human figure between the two gold wings.
I had to arrange the planet carefully- although nowhere near life scale, it was already positioned so far away that the camera and render engine weren't drawing all of it.