Modeling this Pratt & Whitney R-1340 Radial Aircraft Engine to go into a Boeing P-26A Model I am working. Here are some clay renders. I had to model some parts like the carburetor using AutoCad 123D, then import it into Blender. Blender’s solids tools are not great. I highly recommend using it over Blender for complicated cast parts like this one where there are lots of filleting. Very intuitive and easy to use. I picked it up in about an hour of using it. The only drawback it that it exports as Triangles not Quads and it uses lots of verts. So once in Blender I used the Decimate and Remesh modifiers to reduce, but still ended up with lots of verts.
Here are some close-ups of the Carburetor. The base hosing was modeled in AutoCad 123D, and imported. The nuts, bolts, levers etc were done in Blender. Sorry these renders are a little noisy. Texturing is next.
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I did some radial engines for WWII - Tank
but don’t remember doing that one
are you doing it in cycles?
where did you get the reference drawings for this model?
looking nice
happy cl
Look nice 
Thanks all. Ricky, I only found one ref drawing online here. Mostly worked from photos. Yes, this will be rendered in cycles. I’ll be scouring the net to see what decent materials I can find, or creating them on my own.
Congratulations! Great model, Jeff!
[SUB]I wonder how I will model even more complex shape of the PD-12K Bendix-Stromberg carburetor for the R-1820 engine in my Dauntless[/SUB] :).
wondering if all the carb are the same basic shape for the different engines
I did not have that much details for the R -1830
thanks
happy bl
Thanks Witold! Autocad 123D works great for those odd casting shapes as it is a solid modeler (also free). Just don’t expect to be able to edit it much after importing. Do all your editing in Autocad 123D.
Ricky, based on my research on the R-1340, there is enough difference to probably not be able to leverage as a base asset for other carburetors.
Wow, that is impressive!
looking nice
can you give some of the nodes setup you used
might help other peoples to get better materials.
did you use an HDRI map too?
thanks
happy bl
Yes, I will post the node setup sometime later today. Yes, used HDRI by using sIBL. A great tool for HDRI setup that is similar to Andrew Price’s Pro Lighting Skies, but free. Find it here. Tutorial here.
top part I think should be more chrome
I got a high res bolt head if you need one let me know
did you use color lamps here like bluish ?
there are some squarish bolt heads ?
are these on the model or made up ?
have not seen a lot of these !
by the way where is this carburetor located on the engine
don’t see it in first images !
happy cl
Here is the Node Setup for the main housing. I did not use color lamps here, only HDRI lighting. Yes, there are square bolt heads (see ref image). Carburetor is located on the bottom of the engine (see image).
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Finished up the engine and put it in an environment. I call it “Abandoned Relic”.
The background is a little choppy, but I did not have a hi-res image of it.
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Nice work. That paint material looks great! and you integrated the environment very well.
Looks great, excellet modeling and the lightning setup, the model fiths the background photo in a seamless way!
[SUB]Looking on these pictures I just realized that the last thing is missed - the dust! Such abadoned relics, as this one, are usually covered by a thick layer of the dust. But OK, let’s assume that somebody just cleaned it - maybe you can put a few dirty rags around to suggest that such a cleaning has been just finished :)?[/SUB]
Thanks 01rich01! Thanks Witold! There is a dust shader on the gray crankcase but not on the cylinders or the cart. Maybe I will add.