Advice on detailing a spitfire ?

Support Modeling
#1

Hi all,

I recently bought “Digital Art Masters : Volume 2” which is an enjoyable read. One of the works covered is a WWII shot, and a small part of the wireframe is shown on the link (hopefully).

The original was done in Modo, and I would like to do my own Spitfire in Blender. I’m wondering about the best approach to get some of the details in - specifically around all those fasteners that are shown near the exhaust stubs.

Now, some may argue that I should just do that with textures, but I’d like to model them. I’m not sure of the best approach though - I’d like to model the general shape of the aircraft, and then later add these details into the various quad plans. I’m not sure how the Boolean would work - I have had problems with stuff a bit like this in the past - whether that’s Blender or me I;m not sure. Any suggestions of a general approach I could follow ? I’d like to have one fastener that I could apply in multiple places if possible. Thanks,

Wolf

#2

make a serach on plane and even with specific plane names in this forum
there are losts of post on airplane jet ect…

i’m certain you can find ideas in theses posts

Salutations

#3

Good point. I did as you suggested and it looks like Bigglesworth has it cracked. I’ll see if it is possible to get some further details on techniques.

#4

Create a basic outline of the plane using faces or cubes (I prefer faces). Pay attention to where the panels of the plane start and end. Make your faces fit those as best as possible. That way you can separate a section if you need to. What I mean is, say you wanted to add the little gap you see on car doors. It’s much easier ot do if the door panels already fallow the line of the door.
Next for smaller detail, there are a few approaches you can take. One of my faves is to delete 1 or more faces, extrude them inward and out, then use extrusion and loop cuts to add detail.

#5

Hi Pie-Guy, I understand what you are saying, and agree about the gaps - I think I can manage them okay. The bit that I am really not sure about is the little screw fasteners. On the diagram they look like they are a part of the fuselage object itself. I could do them individually, however it would take a lot of time and each one would be slightly different, which is not what I am after.

RickyBlender,
There are a lot of threads about, however few of them seem to have much reference to the info I’m after. I’ve seen a lot of clay renders that look really good, but few wireframes or discussion about the details. It may be that I just haven’t hit upon the best search terms I suppose.

Some pictures I’ve seen seem to show objects not quite part of the model, by which I mean things like rivets are a different object from the fuselage - it gets rid of that tricky boolean work and associated problems I suppose, but is that the best approach ?