Well, I worked on this model for several days (over a week I think, with all of the restarting from scratch :)). I am happy with the model… its got the guns, moveable rudders, flaps, and elevators, etc. Unfortunately, I cannot texture it for the life of me… I just don’t get it… it was so easy with … gasp … milkshape. But it doesn’t make sense to me in blender. Anyhow, this is my untextured model.
If anyone is really bored and likes to texture, I’ll hook you up the .blend and you can take it and keep it as your own, provided you send my the final textured model… Maybe I will learn from seeing it actually done.
I don’t mind uvmapping it but I am not a big fan of war aviation so I have no idea about the symbols and images and construction details and where to put them. Did you do that research ? If you did, maybe you could send me pics of real planes, the image_maps you found and the model. In return I’ll make a sort of tutorial with pics and detailed explanations that I’ll publish on a site so you can (and other) consult it.
That would be excelent! I am packaging all the pics I used to create the model… a total of about 500K. I will send you a link in a private message. That would be really good if you made a tutorial that we could all use. I also like the idea of publishing the finished work so others can get more hands on with the tutorial.
Yeah, I just sent you the location of the picture/model package… let me know if there is anything I can do to help. I found a lot of those pics very useful in modeling the plane.
The model looks good. Maybe a little underlight, but what we can see looks good. I hope you will show us some better shots from different angles when you’re finish.
Hehe the prop is semi-transparent because it really only has three blades but I used motionblur to give it the appearance of moving. Its not moving fast enough tho so I guess the effect is not quite there, yet :).
Yeah I can’t wait to see how it looks textured. I think modelling wise I am starting to get a bit of a grip so I can go to town with projects when I learn how to texture them too :).
Thanks for the feedback, and special thanks to jeanamontreal for volunteering to help myself and the community.
I know UV mapping can be a bit of a pain. But push yourself through it, it can be very rewarding! I know the first couple of times I did it, I didn’t get the results I wanted. But just play with it.
I know jeanamontreal will do a great job and hopefully the tute will benefit a whole lot of people. I had said that I could give him some help with it, if needed. So jeanamontreal, I am here if you need me
actually, i think your prop is moving too fast for the motion blur to handle.
You need to slow it down. for all your inflgiht stuff, i would just use a semi transparent circle with a yellow edge and black inside. NO animation required!
it looks a little like a p 4o warhawk, but it lacks detail
the intake manifold under the nose should come back in and be holloe. no raised bibbing pon the canopy. Also, the inake comes to an abrupt stop, and goes right angle up towards the plane on the real thing. i cant tell on yours, but if i were, i would look at more detailed reference.
Not to put down your modewl. i think it looks very good, i and ia m sure that you are goign to add mos tof the detail texturing. hey, i could tell it was a p 40 jsut by looking at!
I’m soooo glad that you are soooooo confident, BgDM, as I’ll need all the positive thinking there is in this world on my side. The body of the plane is one, solid, big, subsurfed 3 times mesh. An awfull good job, the man should write his own tut on subsurf modelling so much it is beautiful, precise (given the tool) and controlled. I’ll probably have to convert it to a full blown mesh though if I can’t get the precision I need for details like the parts around the glass and others. It needn’t to be in the early stages though.
I’m totally lacking proper images so the day will probably be spent hunting for them. This step too will be in the tut. I also have to decide on a… forgot the air force term, but I mean a theme : that of the ‘Tiger’ has the most chances. Indeed, a little reading about them won’t hurt. If I can get a few tentative shots at actually mapping today I’ll be lucky.
Thanks for all the good feedback! As you may have noticed, I know almost nothing about aviation, but relied completely on photos I could find of the plane… I chose the P-40 because it looked a lot more challenging than my Oakley’s and I needed the challenge to improve my modelling abilities. I actually have built this model about 6 times, which is great because it came a LONG way from my original attempt
Regarding the semi-transparent circle, I am curious about this but I don’t quite grasp what you’re trying to explain. If you can go in to a bit more detail that would be excelent :).
Do you know a good reference for pictures of P-40s? I used www.p-40.com and www.suurland.com almost exclusively… It was really hard to find a photo of the P-40’s belly, the details of the intake manifold (as you pointed out), and the rear of the plane.
jeanamontreal:
Please let me know if there is anything I can do to make it easier for you I modelled with modelling in mind and not texturing as I haven’t grasped the concept yet :(. If you do cover research in the tutorial that would be great as well because I don’t think I’ve happened across any that lists good research tips/resources.
From your comments I take it I modelled it differently than most people? Just curious how you might’ve approached it. I spent a fair amount of time to get the body just right, so if there is a better way to approach it, I am all for it
Doh… now I get what you were saying about the transparent circle Nayman :). Instead of using the blades to create the movement, simulate the movement using the circle.
Not that you have modelled that different. Your technique of Low Polygon Modeling is among the best I’ve seen, although no one can claim having seen it all. It would kill (appropriate isn’t it) in games.
I’m a cabinet maker, used to technical drawing (although not CAD, came to 3D right through Blender), parts, assembly… so I would have modelled the fuselage (am I speaking French here ?), control surfaces, canope, manifolds, screw, nose, wings all independant and from nurbs most of the time. And all this might have changed given the blueprints and image_maps gathered.
OK. Now it is “silence radio” : no communications till late this day or tomorrow.
For reference photos of the P-40, you may want to rent, “Flying Tigers”. It is a John Wayne movie-black & white, but has a lot of good scenes of P-40s.
3 levels of SubSurf!! OUCH!! I hope you don’t have to convert to mesh. That would make the poly count huge and a pain to texture. Though the texture placement would be better than with the subsurf, (stretching and all).
Good luck and I can’t wait to see it with some textures.
Hehe just make me feel guilty! Actually, I don’t think there is much difference between 2 levels of SubSurf and 3 with this model… so you could probably lower it. I think I will try jeanamontreal’s approach for my next model… The reason I did it all as one body was to get the subsurf to look really sweet… I thought that was the way people did it I think the face count without subsurf sits at a little under 1000.
can i hav that tutorial too!!! i would appreciate if you would let me read it!! i totally suck @ texturing… and its about time i learn how to do it properly…
my email address : [email protected]
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Actually, I don’t think there is much difference between 2 levels of SubSurf and 3 with this model… so you could probably lower it. I think I will try jeanamontreal’s approach for my next model… The reason I did it all as one body was to get the subsurf to look really sweet… I thought that was the way people did it 