Ornithopter Start-up

Recreating the ornithopter from Dune starting up (motion blur study), in Blender, Radeon Prorender & Blackmagic Fusion.

[marcosperez]

I fly helicopters for a living, and I recognize the engine sound used in this video as that of an Allison 250-C20B engine.😄

[jamessutherland]

No way the blades could ever do that in real life. Really cool thing for a movie though. GO DUNE!!

[joshreyes]

People are failing to understand that future science and materials would provide for possibilities and physics that we don't currently understand... enough about the blades. We get it, you're a scientist.

[lordllewellynofdarkdelight]

Beautiful visuals. This also shows the power of good sound design. The sound designers in Dune are brilliant.

[badejoolatuiyi]

impressive work, how did you get such level of quality motion blur ?

[Hambalam]

in the dune universe they use bio engineered mollusc muscles to get enough power and energy to move the blades and they are made out of a futuristic material with enough flex and rigidity that it can take the normal and sheer forces that they would have to endure, pretty practical and awesome if you ask me, also to the nerds saying the blades would need to rotate they literally do you can see it in the start up motions of every ornithopter in the movies

[xX_Gravity_Xx]

The amount of force that thin would transfer into the ground, let alone the people in the damn thing. Standing anywhere near it would be a deeply unpleasant experience.

[kaiwheeler]

I imagine a lot of internal vibration for the passengers.

[maruti_rakshit]

legends say that the engines are still priming and the hopter is readying for take off..

[mikehunt]

imagine the kind of beating these materials would take having these massive wings go back and forth like this? the machine would just fall apart in seconds.

[richardbullwood]

I understand whoever designed this fictional aircraft was probably not an engineer, but I would hope they would recognize that the fact these blades have to change direction dozens of times per second would lead to a very inefficient aircraft!

[vmatey]

Is this even possible as a RC version. I doubt it could get off the ground.
But the model as quality and style looks amazing.

[UMBA-ATS]

Rabban: GO!!!

Also Rabban: WHY IS NOT FLYING!!!??

[singalongwrudy]

My friend in school had big ears and could wiggle them...

[thnmskd]

This is why the military study flying insects. Very impressive.

[mauriciocastro]

As an aeronautical engineer, this video scares me to death. There are a 1000 good engineering reasons why this thing will never evolve more than movie cartoon.

[johnwalker]

It was clearly explained in DUNE. The dragonfly wings are only there for navigation and propulsion. Gravity dampers act like "TRAGGAS" and keep the thing in the air.

[popolocaba]

hey fun fact, ornithopters are powered my giant mollusks

[Padoinky]

Just imagine what the USofA defense and security technology agencies are really doing in their various skunkworks labs…. Imagine an insect-sized drone device, or even swarms of them, with self propelled power, being able to infiltrate any location, listen-in and/or selective deliver a microscopic payload to/for/against whoever it has been targeted, using nanotechnology marking of scent, or other biometric marker… the future is likely already here

[bobibest]

It would be fun to calculate how fast these wings need to be moving for this thing to fly in the real world.