B24 cockpit instruments and bombsight

Artwork Works in Progress
1

began working on the cockpit of a B-24 and also on the bombsight model NORDEN

so here are the beginning of the bombsight

see pics

this is a complicated shape in 3D but beginning to take shape in blender
all done with mesh only
the cockpit instrument panels is also coming along well
see pic

C & C Welcome

Thanks salutations

2

so here is the bombsight base coming along well

see pic

Thanks

3

added more details and some texturing to gove it a better look

now i did not usethe black color from original pic cause it’s too dark and cannot see details on the model

see pics inlcuded

Thanks

4

i added some details from the pictures fro a later model of the Norden bombsight

see pics

Salutations

5

i think i found a good way to represent the metal casing here
see picture render of the bombsight head

C & C welcome
salutations

6

where’s all the comments? This is looking good! Give it some material though!

7

Keith,

It does indeed look good. However, without knowing what the metal looked like in life, right now it kind of looks a little like styrofoam to me. Maybe turn down the noise a little? But like I said, I don’t know what the material looked like in real life.

Keep going!

8

I think any sort of dark, greenish/greyish metal would work well for this. Definitly not purple and lime green ;). I have some materials on hand if you’d like them.

9

can show one pic from original device but it’s black
and way too dark to see anysurface details

probably some sort of iron cast or may be alum cast
see pic
but change it a mat like grey alum cast - at leat you begin to see the details
on object
this is the head of the bombsight with in the middle top part the eyepiece
and on the left you can see inside the window there is a gyroscope spinning at around 8000 RPM
ect,
this was considered top secret till the 60’s

i 'm only beginning to play with this and still adding some details to the model

in the last picture it ’ beginning to give a good surface teture for a cast metal
ok need to may be reduce the size a little

Thanks

10

here is the cockpit with a little bit os texturing for the backplate in grey cause it should be black
but looks at pic and we don’t much details from all instruments on panel

i also added the fire extinguisher panel on the right

just added a pic for the autopilot box

see pics

salutations

11

wow, that’s a pretty complex object…

looks good! i have no idea what it is, but it looks good :slight_smile:

12

that’s the whole B 24 / B 17 WWII bomber cockpit control panel
plus the in the back of the plane the bombsight control system

3D view of the control panel

and added panel for engine control

salutations

13

here is another panel that goes on the left of the cockpit

but don’t know what it does

so if anybody knows let me know

salutations

14

the modeling is really awesome. very detailed. I like it very much.
however, the metal material I see on the renderings look very odd.
the normal mapping is way too strong and way too large. the spec is
too wide and makes the material look like dull plastic.

I suggest for the bomb sight casing something more like this.

I’m really looking forward to see the finished plane!
so, go for it! :slight_smile:

regards,
serum…

15

That black paint looks to be ripple paint - a special paint that roughens itself as it dries. I think you need to tweak the texture a bit. Other than that, great modelling.
Are you going to do the rest of the B-24?

16

thanks for the comments
i’m only beginning to play with texture and experiment a little
but i’'ll look more at this iron mat

but i would preder to stay away from dark black cause you don’t see details
would preder to stay with a greyish but not too bright
at least you can see the details of the texture

for the rest of the B-24
not cetain i’ already done a B-24 shape in another thread but it was not high res
and i don’t really have high details dwg for a B-24
if you know a good set of free dwg let me know might be interesting to do a detail B-24 model

Thanks

17

i’m beginning to intefrate all the elements to make the cockpit

see pic

salutations

18

Fine work Ricky.

19

i found some old pic showing what radios looks like in WWI in bomber like B-24 or B-17

and it did not use any PC or integrated circuits !

only big electronic tubes
the frequencies ranges where for one raiod covering the AM band from around 100 Kilocyles up to 800 Kilocyles

and another radio with a range of 1 MEgacyles to 12 Megacyles

i mean this was only the beginning of the radio era and radio wave bands were limited

see pic

salutations

20

Pretty darn good Ricky. I’m busy working on a Samba XL for flightsim myself. If I can get the code I’m gonna try writing a script to export blender objects as MDL files which is what FS uses. But if you can get the textures right that will make a darn awesome panel for a B-24.