This image shows two aircraft of the Frecce Tricolori, the aerobatic display team of the Aeronautica Militare, climbing through the clouds and seen from the cockpit of the formation leader. The “three-colored arrows” were formed in 1961, the Aermacchi MB-339-A/PAN type aircraft are flown by the team since 1981.
Rendered in Cycles (Blender 2.66/2.67) up to between 3200 and 9600 samples per pixel, depending on how much sampling different areas of the image needed to be noise-free.
Compositing was done in Blender with additional grading in Lightroom 3, masks for compositing were created with the traditional Blender render engine and Gimp.
Aircraft textures were created in Inkscape, some additional textures, including the backdrop, are from cgtextures.com.
Fantastic work, JulianH! There is great attention to detail here, and I truly appreciate your write-up on your site. I can tell this information will help me on my own projects!
This is a beautiful work! I particularly like the small details you created in the wing shades. It makes it very alive. Said that, the transition between the inside of the plane (foreground) and its outside is very well done, very realistic in my point of view. On the top of that I also enjoy your shades. You have a nice colour balance going on there! Are you a pilot?
As a former pilot I can say very good however the tilt on the last plane is a little odd to me. The best way would be to straighten it out more - not so severe of a turn. Or the last plane would have to have the rudder engaged for such a sharp turn.
And by the way the guys responsible for the Ramstein Airshow Disaster in 1988,
they killed 67 people and had hurt another 1000. Wether the team nor the Italian Air Force ever said a word of sorry.
