Radial engine and associated plane

Artwork Works in Progress
#1

Work in progress, definitely. I’d say 15 hours, maybe more, have gone into this so far. I have no particular reference, and am still not entirely sure what the final configuration will be. Most of the work has been on the engine, where I still need to finish off the cylinder heads and the variable pitch propeller hub, as well as adding some tubing for fuel, exhaust, spark plugs, etc. I’ve done some work on the seats, mostly the bottom portion, and when I’m done with the seats and the engine (or mostly so) I think I’ll start playing around putting in buttons, levers, avionics, etc. Thoughts?

Note: That top down view made me think that the prop wasn’t quite beefy enough, so I made the blade a bit thicker/wider.

Attachments

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#2

looks good.
try turning down the specularity, it’ll make it look a bit more professional.

#3

I tweaked the shape of the propeller blade and added the variable pitch propeller hub, which I modeled based on this picture. I’m still not 100% on what the mechanics of that system are supposed to be, but it looks nice, and if I don’t figure it out I’ll finish the mechanical parts of the system out of my head. Hdr map comes from link in these forums (here).

Attachments

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#4

Starting to sketch out body, cockpit, etc. Had to take a short break from modelling to find and name everything… Fun stuff. I also took the model over to 2.5 to test out rendering speedups, and renders were a good bit faster over there. Can’t wait for more stable and cough DOCUMENTED cough versions! Anyway here’s what it looks like (now).

Attachments

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#5

Given the scale of your seats, that’s a pretty small engine, as radial engines go. You can get an inline aviation engine that small (eg, Cessna 150), but probably not a radial. Go take a look at the Cessna 195 for a size comparison! At the current scale, the thing looks cartoony!

#6

Maaaaybe. I actually don’t see it though. My reference isn’t exact but this is basically what I was thinking about when I tried to figure out how large the engine should be. That engine is listed as being 810mm (~2.7 feet) in diameter. Here is a picture of a plane in a similar configuration, albeit only a two seater. I think that my engine is slightly larger than the one in that picture though. Still think I should scale it up?

#7

The size of the engine looks fine to me particularly when looking at your second reference picture. As a general rule of thumb, most later radials were covered with a cowling to improve the aerodynamics and that would have been the diameter of the fuselage.

If anything, I would move the seats slightly forward but that would depend on your vision :slight_smile: It looks like the lasts two pics are in perspective view. Maybe thats why it looks a little out of whack. Try using ortho next time.