3D Aircraft tips - Best of

[kevjon]

INTRODUCTION

I've trolled through my 4 WIP aircraft threads (Me262, Zero, Meteor & Buffalo) and have cut out all the best tips, tricks and advice given to me over the past year at Military Meshes. Thanks to all you guys who contributed to my knowledge (particularly Skyraider). I post it here for others who might want to follow the same path or pick up a few extra tips. I should point out that a lot of the tips are max and aircraft related as that is the application that I use and the type of 3D work I’ve been doing.

These are excerpts from my 4 WIP threads so if any of them don't make sense its probably because they really need to be read in context with the discussion happening inside the thread. Unfortunately those threads are now gone with great MM crash of May 2006.

I've tried to arrange the data in the same way you would need it as you go through the 3D process of Research, setting up your blueprints, modeling, checking the accuracy of you aircraft, texturing, lighting and rendering.

BOOK & PLAN RESOURCE

by Skyraider3D
Osprey and In Action both feature very unreliable plans. I wouldn't trust either... Also instead of the In Action book, I'd have a look for some Polish monogram instead. They're lots more interesting (even if you can't read them! LOL!) and often feature great drawings.

In general, Russian (for Russian aircraft) and Japanese drawings are best. Most English and American books feature rather bad drawings compared. Often Czech and Polish monogram's have good drawings too.

Resouce for military books and out of print books.
www.abebooks.com

Good source of online blueprints
http://www.airwar.ru/other/drawe.html

BLUEPRINT SETUP

by Skyraider3D
After a few years of experience, I recommend you build your aircraft in centimeters. This seems to be a good scale in MAX and allows small details as well as large bombers to be modeled without too much difficulty. When modeling in millimeters or meters you find yourself zooming in and out of the viewport all the time. Mighty annoying!

Actually, in MAX, inches and feet are quite good as well, and perhaps decimeters would be best of all, but these are just cumbersome units to work with.
Tip: If you currently have your model set up to millimeters (as per drawings), simply reset MAX, set it to centimeters and re-open your file, adopting the new scale.

by Skyraider3D
By the way, don't put all your trust in blueprints. They are generally slightly different from the real thing, no matter how good the draftsman was.

by KevJon
Blueprint accuracy. I usually check things against photos but sometimes you get so caught up in the part you are modeling that you forget to check.
GETTING THE BLUEPRINTS AT 1:1 SCALE

by Skyraider3D
I often do the math in Photoshop though and scale my drawings up or slightly down to something workable. Often this works out to 1 pixel = 1 cm.
So in Photoshop I measure the span in pixels and then scale the blueprints and map them on an appropriately sized box with inverted normals.

I find selecting a box in Photoshop easier and more accurate than using the tape tool in MAX.
Additionally I often increase the canvas size of the drawing to some nice values, keeping the image centered. In case of the Zero I'd probably have gone for 1250 or 1300 pixels. This way I cant go wrong easily when entering the numbers in MAX.

As an additional bonus, now the blueprints match the sizes of the aircraft, they can easily be used as templates for the textures. Simply scale up, say, 400% and overlay them on your texture to match up panel lines etc.

PS. Scaling up doesn't look nice, but no information is lost and that's what it's about in the end

by KevJon
I now finally understand the relationship between the pixels of blueprints and the units of measure in max. Basically 1 pixel equals 1mm, 1cm or 1m depending on your units setup in max. Now that I know that I shouldn't have problem setting up the next aircraft at full scale from the start.

[kevjon]

MODELLING GENERAL

RECOMMENDED TUTORIALS

Here are some tutorials I have found useful. I learnt to model sub-d/meshsmooth by following the Fiat 500 tutorial.
FIAT 500 http://www.3dtotal.com/team/Tutorials/fiat500/fiat500.asp

BOX MODELLING A CAR http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=156460&page=1&pp=15&highlight=rims

NURMS MODELLING http://www.wide3d.no/tutorials/Car_nurms_01.htm

SEA KING HELICOPTER (MAX 6) MODELLING TUTORIAL http://www.computerarts.co.uk/tutorials/3d__and__animation/model_aircraft

AIRCRAFT TUTORIAL http://www.colacola.se/wip_p47.htm

LOW POLY MODEL (WHERE TO START)

by KevJon
I don't know if this will help you or not but after doing several aircraft I have kind of developed a formula for the low poly mesh. I use a 24 sided cylinder for the fuselage and 12 sided cylinders for the wings, tailplane and vertical fin. I used to start with the fuselage but I now start with a small section of the wing, tailplane and fin and get the cross sections of these correct where they join the fuselage. The fuselage is then extruded and the cross sections of the fuselage align with the edges in my wing & tailplane. You also will need to put cross sections in your fuselage in front of the wing and tailplane and also at the rear of the tailing edge fillets. Any other parts of the fuselage that are not in line with the wing or tailplane (when viewed in side or plan view) can have cross sections as needed to match your blueprints. Perhaps have a look at my wireframe in the Meteor thread and you'll see how the wing edges flow over the engine and fuselage which illustrates what I am trying to say here.

EDGE CREASE OR SEPERATE BY SMOOTHING GROUPS ?

by KevJon
I used my two favorite max tools to model the canopy.
1. Edge Crease
2. Shell modifier

The canopy was modelled in two pieces using conventional low polygon techniques.
1st piece is windshield and sliding canopy.
2nd piece was rear glazing area.

The windshield and sliding canopy were then separated which give you three canopy pieces. Then the framing was cut out of each piece. The framing was then mirrored to complete the entire canopy. After that a shell modifier was added to each piece which offsets your polygons to the inside and joins the edges automatically, it also orientates your normals correctly and this gives you the thickness. After that, I went around the edges of the framing of each glazed cutout and set edge crease to 1.0 which gives you a hard edge once meshsmooth is applied.

by Skyraider3D
Doesn't separating by smoothing group give the same result as edge crease? I have never used the latter.
You can specify in MAX to not subdivide across different smoothing groups - effectively the same as specifying not to subdivide across certain edges.

by Kevjon
I've just tried separating by smoothing groups and it and works fine as well. It could be quicker and have less drawbacks than edge crease. One of the problems with edge creasing is if you do further subdivisions and cut across your creased edge then it loses its setting and your meshsmooth goes a bit haywire in the area you just cut through and then you have to go back and set edge crease again on the cut edge.

SCALING IN MAX

by Skyraider3D
You can check the scale of your blueprints with F12. To get the correct dimensions reading go to the Utility panel and click Measurement, with the object selected. To reset the scale, choose Reset XForm, also from the Utility panel, then collapse again. Be sure to save before you do this as it's not undoable.

As a general rule of thumb in MAX... don't use Scale on objects. Only on subobject selections. So if you need to scale up your plane, select all its vertices, set the scaling pivot to the centre of the object (or world, since this would be at 0,0,0 typically) and scale. This way the scale is "baked into" the mesh and not just a MAX value.

GETTING THE AIRCRAFT AT FULL SCALE

by Kevjon
My workflow now is
File 1 - Low poly version (to same scale as blueprints eg side view 1400 x 900 pixels)
File 2 - High poly version (to same scale as blueprints eg 1400 x 900)
File 3 - UV mapped version (scale aircraft up to 1:1 size before uv mapping) & keep a record of the scale factor used.
File 4 - Textured version

Does this sound like a good way to go...or are there better ways ? Be interested to draw on your experience/thoughts here.
by Kiwi
I always scale it up before rigging for animation. So the textured version is also off scale.

RIBBING EFFECT FABRIC COVERED SURFACES

by Kiwi
I also made the ribbing on the D.XXI before collapse. Makes it very much easier I think.

by Skyraider3D
Because of the shape of the panels on the NA-57 I made them at true resolution instantly, as this would give me more control and lower polycount.
basically I made a panel with an edge at every rib. Then apply Bend on it to fit the fuselage curvature. Then each edge was chamfered twice and this gives a nice rib effect. Try it on a cylinder; just make one and twice chamfer each edge. Fairly small chamfers (about 2 cm wide - imagine the width of the rib or diameter of the tube underneath).

For control surfaces you may want to use meshsmooth. In that case one chamfer should do. Personally I'd probably model them at true resolution though. Or perhaps with one subdivision instead of two. Choice is yours. Just experiment a bit .

[kevjon]

CUTTING OUT FLYING SURFACES FROM YOUR MESH

by KevJon
I'll try and explain how I currently model aircraft as far as cutting out all the flying surfaces, so hopefully if you read it carefully.....it should make sense and may be of interest to some particularly new comers. I use max so the terminology is related to that application but if you wanted to work this way , there should be no reason why the same can't be done in your own application.
Be warned though, this is not for the purist 3D modeler who likes to create the perfect low poly cage from the start.

Please note: When I refer to flying surfaces, I mean things like ailerons, rudders, elevators, trim tabs etc.

THE CUTOUTS.

I currently just model the basic shape of the aircraft in low poly as shown in the attached image.
Once the basic low poly mesh is created I make a new file called Gloster Meteor_High Poly.
The low poly mesh is merged into the High Poly file and then converted to high poly using nurms (iterations 2).

Half of the high poly model is deleted along the centerline of the fuselage (when viewed from the top) and discarded.

The flying surfaces are cut out of the remaining high poly model and then discarded as they won't be needed.
The interiors of the flying surface cutouts are done on the high poly model by extruding edges and welding. This gives a nice crisp cutout without pinches, bumps, lumps or mesh tearing which are all typical problems when trying to model around these things in low poly mode. As a matter of interest, I use Max's cut tool and never have a problem with it. Shapemerging is another option but usually results in many vertices to clean up.... but the choice is yours.
A further cut is done along the centerline of these interiors so when it comes time to uv map they can be split in half easily. For example the aileron interior can be split for the top and bottom of the wing.

Once the all the flying surfaces are boxed in we now mirror the highpoly mesh to create the other half and then it is attached and welded together.

We now have a complete model in high poly with all the flying surfaces cut out and the interiors of the flying surfaces boxed in. Everything should look crisp and clean if you've followed me so far.

THE FLYING SURFACES

The next phase is to create the flying surfaces eg, ailerons, elevators, rudder etc.
In the high poly file another copy of the lowpoly mesh is merged in. The flying surfaces are cut from the low poly mesh and the rest discarded. Further subdivisions and edge extrusions are done on the low poly flying surfaces to refine their shape and create the rounded front edge of these surfaces. I don't box in the ends of these flying surfaces on the low poly mesh (see inset on attached image).
Once all the low poly flying surfaces are created in the high poly file I reopen the low poly file and merge the low poly flying surfaces from the high poly file into it so that they can be reused later on if you need tweak them for any reason.
OK back to the high poly file now. All the low poly flying surfaces are now converted to high poly with nurms (iterations 2). Once that is done the ends of the flying surfaces are boxed in by extruding the edges of the high poly mesh and welding. Once again place a cut down the centerline of the ends so that they can be divided in half later on for uv mapping.

Whew, that's it. Hope it is of interest. Good luck !

by Skyraider3D
Kevin, I pretty much work the same way. Make a low-poly model, collapse, cut out the flying surfaces. Reload the low-poly mesh, cut out the flying surfaces again, but this time keeping them. However a few things I do differently...

1) I make plenty of incremental saves. Just do Save As... and hit the + key to make a new one. This way you are unlikely lose something. Also have your backups set to the maximum of ten, saving every 5 - 10 minutes, so if you do make a mistake, you'll have at least an hour or more work saved in autobackups to fall back on. Occasionally I do a Hold too.
I don't have a need for a high- and low-poly max file. I simply hide my cloned low-poly shapes for later use or get it from an old save. Often I revisit certain parts of the aircraft when the mesh has long been collapsed.
You can have MAX automatically zip the incremental saves for less discspace, by the way, but I never bother. When I need space, I simply burn a backup DVD of my last finished projects, which can never be a bad thing
2) I don't discard the high-poly cut-off flying surfaces. They are good templates for the low-poly ones to conform to. Remember that a wing curves and often cut-off flying surfaces are slightly thicker "on their own" due to lack of curvature. I discovered this "feature" when doing my Mustang profile images and had to squash its ailerons a bit, which was a bit tricky in highpoly, due to the odd rotation angles ailerons typically have.

3) Don't mirror-and-attach, but simply use the Symmetry modifier. Does it all for you!

Hopefully this was of some interest
PS. The cut tool works quite well in MAX 7. I draw splines as guides and cut with 2.5D endpoint snap on.

by KevJon
Yep, that's a good idea too, using the high poly flying surfaces as templates. Once you cut the flying surfaces from the lowpoly cage they can lose some of their shape due to not being part of the overall mesh anymore, so you may need to add a few additional cuts or edge loops and tweak a few vertices to redefine their shape so it matches the plans and the high poly model. Pretty easy stuff really.

3. Never thought of using symmetry for this. Automates things for you a bit and saves a minute or two. Another good tip.

The tip about drawing splines and using them as guides for cutting is crucial for accuracy. I do the same thing. The lines on the blueprints are just too thick and ill defined to be used for this purpose. You need to refer to photographs also while drawing the spline guides as this helps to get things more accurate & proportional than just using the blueprints alone, particularly with canopy frames. I create a layer called guides and put all my spline cutting guides on this layer.

MODELLING EVERYTHING IN LOW POLY MODE ?

by KevJon
Everything is pretty smooth and clean at the moment, but once I add small details to my low polygon mesh (such as vent cut outs, small holes etc) everything starts to go lumpy and bumpy and I loose control of my mesh. Great respect here for how Kiwi123 manages to do it....

by Skyraider3D
There's nothing I hate more than adding small details that are an enormous pain to blend into the main shape and trying to make it all work nicely with subdivisions. To me, it's a big frustration and waste of time and polygons, so I also add details later. An example of such detail are the gun ports on my Mustang and canopy frames.

by Evan
I also collapse (or freeze) my object to add the smaller details and cutouts, etc. I'm amazed at how Kiwi adds so much detail to his low polygon object and yet it seems so smooth.

[kevjon]

CHECKING ACCURACY OF MODEL

by Skyraider3D
Cross-check with other drawings from the same book (there are plenty) and also with photographs, whenever possible.

Photographs are your only real proof your model is accurate. The P-51D drawings I used came from the same draftsman, coincidentally (Matsuba Minoru), and my scans were warped. Photographs proved my Mustang model (which was spot on with the drawings) was too short and with help of photographs I fixed this. Then I cross-checked the model with a number of '3D' photographs as well (opposed to a sideview) and everything lined up nicely after some fiddling with the perspective viewport (as it's tricky to match up the angle/field of view/distance/perspective correctly). Measure your model too, as the drawings you have nice measurements on them

CHECKING THE CROSS SECTION OF YOUR MODEL

by Skyraider3D
Perhaps it's the cross-section, rather than the outlines that need adjusting? Go to the Create panel, Splines, and create a Section. Place it vertically and drag it through your model. See if the rear fuselage stays all nice and circular. Section is a very handy tool for these things and can help you spot nearly invisible problems with your mesh. I always do this before collapsing to check for anomalies.
Sometimes with Meshsmooth your carefully crafted cross-section goes all screwy when you add stuff like wings and you need to over-correct this in the low-poly mesh to compensate for what Meshsmooth does to it. If you don't do this, the high-lights and shadows may go "weird" while the outline still looks accurate. It can be very confusing, knowing that something is wrong, but you can't figure it out. So try the Section technique for peace of mind

WINGS

by Skyraider3D
Ah yeah, the trailing edge at the root is always tricky to get right. Drawings often don't offer enough info on this area, and you'll often need to study photographs to get it right. The leading edge and trailing edge of a wing are hardly ever parallel. Meaning the trailing edge at the root will always be lower than the leading edge at the front. Twist in the wing is always a tricky one to get right. Generally, for the root tilt the wing profile about 2-4 degrees back, and the tip 0-2 degrees forwards. This will automatically twist the entire wing.

WINDSHIELD ANGLES

by Skyraider3D
Seriously though, the angle of the windshield somehow is critical to the looks of an aircraft, as it's the first thing you look it - well I do.

[kevjon]

RENDERING WIREFRAME IMAGES

by Skyraider3D
What I do when I want to render a wireframe, is to duplicate my model. Make one solid white and the other solid black wireframe. Then align your view, and with the coordinate system set to "screen" move the wireframe model slightly closer to the camera. A few millimeters will do.

There's also a special plugin for rendering wireframes, but I don't like it. The wireframe looks crude (not antialiased) and it also shows invisible edges.

by KevJon
I create a white material and self illumination to 100 and set the wireframes to black.
Then I just use PRINTSCREEN and paste into a new photoshop file where they are cropped and saved as JPG.

by FiExec
what i do if i want to render a wireframe is much like what Skyraider3D does but instead of moving it towards that camera. i use the 'shell' modifier in max to make the wireframe object ever so slightly bigger.

UV MAPPING

See Skyraider3D’s Texturing tutorial thread.

UNWRAPPING MODELS

by KevJon
Could be useful for some aspects of your work such as characters/pilots.
This is the best tutorial I could find on how to use Unwrap http://waylon-art.com/uvw_tutorial/uvwtut_01.html.

DEALING WITH MARKINGS ON TEXTURE SEAMS

Q by Kevjon
I have hit a bit tough spot with the texturing and don't really know how to progress at this stage. The problem is that I have a seam in my textures along the top spine of the fuselage and top centre line of engines. I have to put triangular markings (yellow with white outline and number in the centre) on the spine of the fuselage behind the cockpit and on top of the engines where the seams are. The marking would span across the seam. As there is some stretching in this area, I don't really know how to go about it.

Can you map this markings over existing uvmapping's somehow ? If you can't then you have to be very careful when you break your aircraft down into components that you don't have any breaks where markings need to go ? Skyraider3D or Kiwi if your reading this I'd appreciate any advice !

A by Skyraider3D
What you need to do is make a separate texture for the marking and add a UV Map modifier which you align in such a way that the marking is placed correctly (use a new material for this and make sure your bitmap has an opacity map to go with it - turn tiling and "show on back" off).
Then texture bake this marking onto your existing texture coordinates.

TEXTURE BAKING

Texture baking essentially allows you transfer bitmap data from one uv channel to another uv channel, which is useful to create seamless looking textures for complicated camouflage schemes.

UVmap your aircraft like you normally would. Then where you have seams in uv channel 1 that you want to deal with grab a couples of polygons on each side of the seam and planar uv map them with uv channel 2
Output uv channel 2 to a wireframe render so you can paint over it in photoshop.
Paint your textures in PS and apply to uv channel 2.
Then texture bake uv channel 2 to uv channel 1
Bring the texture baked image into PS, complete your texturing and apply to uv1.

Some tips from Skyraider3d regarding texture baking in Max.

Go to render menu and select render to texture.
Be sure to disable any auto unwrapping and right at the bottom choose "render to files only". Then select your object, decide what kind of map you want to bake (Diffuse most likely), apply some padding (16 pixels always worked fine for me), resolution and render. You will need to rescale in Photoshop as unlike MAX 5 the newer versions of the texture baker doesn't do non-square output, stupidly enough. Never save out the image you see on the screen (no padding and it includes shadows you don't want), but always use the save options from the menu.

Three more tips:
1 - set your environment background to black
2 - be sure anti-aliasing is checked in the render settings, otherwise texture baking doesn't work
3 - never save out the virtual frame buffer (it's only for you to see it's actually working, but what it shows has no padding and has wrong shading), but always specify a filename in the render to texture dialog.

PHOTOSHOP TEXTURING

Q by Kevjon
All my base camouflage colors are on separate layers in photoshop.
The weathering is on a separate layer. Is this how you do it ? or do you weather your base camouflage colors all on the same layer ?

A by Songbird
If I do, I'll also draw the base camouflage on separate layers. Weathering the base camouflage colors on the same layer may drive me mad, if I want to change the shapes of camouflage.
To my custom, the rivets, dirt, chipped paint and other elements should all be drawn on separate layers. The base camouflage layers should have no relation with other layers, they are just the color of clean fuselage. The objects be weathered are the paint and rivets, not the colors. In most case, we do not need to modify the layers of weathering if we changed the base color

by Arai
dpi is really only applicable in 2 situations. you are working for print, or you are creating new textures in inches rather than pixels (which I don't imagine you are. 5000x5000 pixels at 72 dpi is the same as 5000x5000 pixels at 300dpi. however if you create an image in photoshop that is 2 inches by 2 inches at 72 dpi it will be different than 2 inches by 2 inches at 300dpi.

for 3d work you should only ever be worrying about actual pixel size. until you decide you want to print something out. again this is where you just have to remember that if you try and print something and its twice as big as you want, when resizing you just uncheck resample image and change the document size to the inches by inches that you want. all this does is tell the printer how big the image print size is without changing the actual pixels in the image. Of course its likely you already knew this but just in case.

GETTING THE CAMOUFLAGE COLORS CORRECT

by Pete Cook
Kevjon have you tried this to match your colors with.

Digital Colour Charts (http://www.clubhyper.com/reference/digitalcolourchartswm_1.htm)

It might get you a little closer to the colors you need.

by Skyraider3D
Don't put too much trust in these color charts. It's more about the look than exact RGB values. I've found that for every model I do I need to tweak my custom made set of RGB values. Every single one of them. So go by your instinct, rather than numbers here!
Don't sample RGB values from photos (or only do so to get a basis to start from), but simply try to create something that looks the same. Easier said than done, I know, but I am confident this picture should sort out your color issues.

Be aware though that color swatches show the pure color, which is always much more intense than the color as you'd "experience" it. Generally, color samples need to be slightly desaturated and especially brightened up to appear realistic in renders. A brightness/contrast layer (with somewhat increased brightness and decreased contrast) on top of your base colors usually does the trick nicely and helps bringing the colors together for a more realistic appearance in renders. Weathering layers and possibly pre-shading layers will also help toning down "pure" colors.

[kevjon]

SPECULAR MAPS & BUMP MAPS

by Skyraider3D
Let me just clear up two misconceptions here
1) As long as you haven't set up any specularity for your model, you can add as many specular-only lights as you want, but you won't get a specular effect. So better make your specular maps first before tweaking the light further. I normally start with an RGB = 128,128,128 texture and start making dull areas darker and shiny areas brighter.

Also, use semi-transparent panel lines in your bump to avoid trenches (black on white is NOT the way to go and use supersampling and summed area filtering as well. Lowering the blur may help too.

by Kiwi
I am having problems with the sizes of texture maps as well, making them grayscale (8 or 4 bit) works great to reduce memory load (at least in LW). You don't need color for spec/diff/bmp/refl maps anyway.

The same map I use for specular is also used to help break up the reflection, in addition to the falloff. For the me109 I also used 5K textures, which I had to reduce to 3K just to render it (except for the bump). Photoshop doesn't like those big file sizes......

by JerryB
As a general rule of thumb, IMHO panel lines should only use bump-mapping if you're going to see the surface of the aircraft at very close range. Otherwise the effect should be more subtle and there should therefore be no sign of any panel line 'trenches' (even mild ones - unless the panel is very obvious on the actual aircraft). One should take into account that most aircraft have fairly clean lines and panel lines would be more obvious by the dust and dirt they accumulate rather than how deep they are. If one looks at the way panel lines are shown on plastic model kits, the effect is often a little too exaggerated - which is one thing you don't want to have if you're aiming for a good level of realism.

by Skyraider3D
...hence the use of semi-transparent lines. You want the break in the highlight, not the depth of a trench though!

by Skyraider3D
Black on white bump maps are indeed filthy trench makers

by Skyraider3D
I model the ribbing on fabric covered aircraft as I think bump mapping these doesn't quite do the job. Except for ailerons and such, then it's all right.

But I still do recommend some bump on the panel lines. It can be very subtle but you need to have that break or else your models will look too flat ad painterly - unless it's the style you're after, of course, but I personally prefer realism

PS. Test your bump map and specular with the diffuse map turned off, then tweak with it turned on
The thing I am trying to point out is that bump maps are required to create breaks in panels. Just a brief alteration of shading. However personally I add a lot of post-editing to my images and this, combined with high-res images and textures, has a tendency to destroy the finest details. So strictly speaking the bump map may appear overdone, but in the end result it looks right.
Perhaps in this case it's a matter of how much post editing you do?
In the case of my triebflügeljäger I wanted a rather smooth finish (being a high-speed plane). Relative to the panel bumping, my panel lines aren't that strong really. I mean compared to the Mustang. I used a very low value for the bump amount on this one. The high contrast in the texture was simply there to get the most out of my 256 grey colors (which, by the way, I simply don't find enough to get smooth bump maps! I want MORE grey colors!!!)

So my final opinion is: do put panel lines in the bump map and alter their intensity to your taste and final purpose

by Gewehr
The specular looks much better than before when there wasn't much. I would suggest to raise the spec level a little bit higher and maybe add a real low reflection using the falloff- fresnel map. it will give it a little more shine.

Q by KevJon
I have a question though about the spec. Should the panel lines in the spec be black and the rivets white or light grey ?

A by Skyraider3D
Spec map: panel lines black, rivets light grey indeed .Add some panel buckling effect in the bump map too.

FALLOFF FOR BUMP MAPPING

by Kevjon
Still coming to grips with bump mapping. I do have many dents all over the aircraft to represent a imperfect surface and they render Ok from most angles but on these front on views the bump tends to disappear.... a little annoying really.... but one of the quirks of 3D. However when I increase the bump amount it starts to make my panel lines look like trenches on other parts of the aircraft....so no perfect solution to this problem. I will do some more tuning of my specular maps for the cowling as all the detail on it disappears in most renders due to the blue/black color. I may be able to solve some of this with adjustments to my specular map....bit more trial and error.

by Skyraider3D
Try using falloff on the bump as well, to make it stronger under shallow angles. Use the output field on the bitmap rollout to modify the strength.
To be honest, I've never used bump-strength-falloff myself, but I might, as I find it often a bit too strong dead-on (top/bottom profile views).

by Kiwi
Yeah Falloff rules, it is the most underestimated tool for shading. Works a treat on skin textures as well. I almost always use falloff shaders in my renders.

PANEL LINES

by Skyraider3D
But you can paint sub-1-pixel in a way. For panel lines this simply means making them semi-transparent. For rivets, just create a whole row, then scale this down - also semi-transparent. And use Summed Area filtering to get that little extra crispness out of them.

Alternatively, you can have 0-pixel panel lines
In other words, for your bump map use the panel layer you made - again very subtly. Now you don't have trenches, but edges, which of course are much finer. The only problem is, is that they don't always pick up highlights when you want to (by the sheer nature of the way this works).
I personally have no serious problems with bump mapping panel lines. Surely they're comparatively bigger than they would be in real life, but once I've done my post-editing they just about survive in the final image.

RIVETS

by Skyraider3D
Rivets can be blurry lines. There's often no need to portray each individual rivet. Very subtle single pixels work too in many cases.

BUMP MAP MATERIAL SETTINGS

by Skyraider3D
These are the settings I use for bump maps:
* Hammersley Supersampling in the material's properties;
* Summed Area filtering in the bitmap properties;
* Blur: 0.3;
* Blur Offset: 0.0005 (anything higher than 0.001 or so will blur your texture so much you indeed won't get any bump mapping going on anymore so maybe that was the problem? Filtering surely wasn't...);
* Supersampling enable in the render settings.

I've used the settings I recommended for years. Blur/Blur Offset combo is regardless of the filtering. Filtering is only relevant for shallow angles and small lines in the distance.

by Jerry B
Hammersley can sometimes make things a little too blurred - give the other supersamplers a try (i.e. Max 2.5), and check that 'supersample maps' is on too. That may help. If summed area don't work (it does, it just may not suit your particular texture) then try something else. You may have to keep fiddling with these various settings until you arrive at something that looks good to you.

[kevjon]

GLASS MATERIAL

by Skyraider3D
But what's happening with your glass? It's half-non-transparent or something? Refraction? I never use it... can't get decent results with it for some reason...

by kevjon
The glass, I do need to sort out. Not sure what is going on either. I've used max's raytrace glass and turned off shadow casting on the glass parts as I am rendering with shadow maps, but it is not coming out good. I'll play around with the settings to see if I can get a better result.
I've turned off raytrace refractions under raytracer controls of my glass material and that's now giving me nice clear glass.

My glass setting is as per this tutorial http://www.danielbuck.net/index.php?page=glass_tut/glass_tut. I have also tried max's own glass material in the raytrace1 library. As I am rendering with shadow maps rather than raytrace shadows, I have turned off cast shadows in the properties of the glass.

by Duderender
In LW you need a duplicated polygon set with flipped normals. For example copy, paste and flip your glass polys. Then set these flipped polys 100% transparent, 0% diffuse and 1.0 refraction. Set your canopy to its desired refraction with a fresnel effect and such. Be sure your ray recursion depth is reasonable, probably 4-8.

In XSI/Maya (using Mental Ray), you'd use the front-back node, using the back node for the "flipped" polygons described above.

Lastly, be sure there is something to refract or the effect is useless. Add a prop, but I think you've done that with a pilot.

GLASS WITH REFRACTIONS

by Skyraider
Actually I went pretty much back to basics with my material. It's just a double modeled canopy (i.e. I modeled the thickness) with an IOR of 1.46 (that of perspex/plexiglass) and a transparency of near 100% (it didn't even need a falloff). For some reason it worked now, whereas it didn't before. No clue what I did wrong, perhaps it was a scale thing. Anyway...
If your canopy is only single-sided, then yes a falloff in the IOR would be the way to go. But it seems MAX knows that it has to invert the reflection when going through the material with the normals the other way. Makes sense, I suppose, for example if you'd model a wine glass using a lathe object, etc...
Not sure what you want to see? It's literally just a bug standard Raytraced material in MAX with the IOR set to 1.46 and transparency to near-100% (RGB value of 240, 240, 240). Specular level at 200, glossiness at 75. The result can be seen in the image above...

PROPELLOR BLUR

by Skyraider3d
Not sure what goes on with your prop texture. You've made a disc, apply the texture as both Diffuse and Opacity, set mono channel output to Alpha, alpha source to None and Premultiplied off? The only thing I can think of is that the mapping coordinates are incorrect. Also, have you flattened the TIFF? Max might not support multi-layer TIFFs...

by Kevjon
For propellors. Apply TGA texture with alpha channel info to both Diffuse & Opacity. Set mono channel output to Alpha, alpha source to none and premultiplied to off. Ensure that both spec and gloss are set to 0 to stop glowing edges of prop polygons.

ALUMINIUM MATERIAL

by Skyraider3D
Depending on how acceptable you want to keep your render times, there are several options. The most basic is a blurred reflection map, used inside a falloff material. MAX comes with a lovely reflectionmap called lakerem.jpg. Make a low-res tileable version of it (64x64) and use that.
Alternatively, used blurred raytraced reflections (not recommended if you want to keep your rendertimes enjoyable), also within a falloff material.
Lastly you could use cube map reflections (reflect/refract map in MAX), which are faster than raytrace and look more accurate than a reflectionmap.
Choice is up to you!

by KevJon
For option 1
I am assuming that I would uv map the propeller, create some grayscale textures for it and then add the falloff material to the reflection slot, with a blurred reflection mask inside the falloff material. Is that what you mean ?

by Skyraider3D
Sorry I meant reflection "map", not "mask". I've fixed this now in my previous reply, to not confuse others as well!
But yes, basically in your reflection slot put a fall-off map. Then set it to either parallel/perpendicular or fresnel. In the side slot put the low-res blurry reflection map and instance it in the front slot, just set the color to black and lower the spinner to anywhere between 0 and 100, whatever looks good. You'll find a value of 30-60 usually works fine.
You can take this setup one step further, and put this whole falloff map in a second fall-off map, this time a shadow/light one. The light slot is your first fall-off and instance it in the shadow fall-off slot, just set your color to black and the opacity to something like 25. This means that in the shadows the reflections will only be a quarter the strength as in the light. If you don't do this shadow/light thing, back-lit renders will look horrific
On my Mustang I needed real reflections, including self-reflections, so only the raytrace material (or map) was a valid option. Since the spinner of your Zero will not be that reflective, nor screen-filling, it's overkill. Combine that with motion blur and your render will take days!

COMBINING ALUMINIUM MATERIAL WITH YOUR TEXTURES

Q by kevjon
How do I apply three materials to the one object that have different degrees of reflectance.

For example. On the propeller I need to apply aluminum to the front which is reasonably reflective, then red bands near the propeller tips which need to be slightly glossy and flat blue/black to the rear of the propeller. I know you've done similar things on your P51 and several other aluminum aircraft.

A by Skyraider3D
Very simple: use a Mask map on top of your reflection map. Put a grayscale image in the mask slot. The whiter the mask, the stronger the reflection.

MATERIAL REFLECTIONS

Image posted is of a F111 showing the reflection of the sky on the aircrafts paint.

by Songbird
Do you notice the reflection on the top of the fuselage? If you use falloff map on reflection channel, you can get that effect.

by Skyraider3D
Fresnel is good. You can tweak the index a bit to adjust the looks. I usually add a few tenths to the default value.

by Kevjon
You mean the IOR of the falloff material ? The default it 1.6.
Do you make it more like 1.8?

by Skyraider3D
Exactly. Anything between 1.6 and 2.0 seems to work all right. The higher, the glossier your plane appears. I think 1.8 should work fine on the 262.

by Skyraider3D
A very nice model, but the integration doesn't quite work. I think your model needs some very subtle fresnel reflections, so it sits better into the scene. It doesn't necessarily need to reflect anything, just the panels facing away from the camera need something... Try a fresnel falloff in the reflection slot, with the "front" colour black and the "side" colour a dark blue-grey. It may help.

[kevjon]

LIGHTING

by Duderender
I believe the biggest correction is the strengthen the key light (sun) to be hotter in specular. Because you are flying above the clouds, you have a very strong diffused light since the clouds reflect a lot. The sun will hit with a more pronounced specular.

I would suggest key the lights above to be strong in specular (sometimes adding a boost specular only light) and then have the lighting below affect diffuse only.
quite often I parent my key light to a specular boost light (specular only).

by JerryB
You could try adjusting the Contrast value of the main light - that may bring out the specular highlights in a better way.

USING E-LIGHT

by Skyraider3D
Currently your E-Light shadows aren't showing too well. Try doing the following:
* Switch your viewport to EL_light01 and make sure your E-Light dome isn't hidden. Now change the diameter of the E-Light dome in such a way that EL_light01 encircles your model well.
* Increase the shadow density to about 1.5. Change the shadow bias to 0.001 and the map size to 256. These settings give more defined soft shadows.
* Create a low-res copy of your background image, desaturate it by about 50% and use this as a bitmap for E-Light. Use a full spherical dome (i.e. uncheck the Hemisphere checkbox). Increase the multiplier to compensate for the added bitmap. This should now eliminate the need for a second light from below.
The strong lighting from below is caused by the clouds. To compensate, put a semi-transparent white to black gradient on top of the E-Light bitmap. The white top will add more light from above while the dark bottom will cancel out some of the reflected light from the shadows.

Also your directional light needs to be stronger, as your lighting looks too diffuse now. I'd recommend test rendering without camo textures to get a better feeling for what's really happening

by Kevjon
I've now increased the segments setting of e-light from 2 to 4. On my main direct light I have increased my shadow map size from 1024 to 4096 and set the sample range to 5 and made the light stronger. This is giving me much better shadows and shading without artifacts.

LIGHTING SETUPS

by Skyraider3D
My light setup is rather simple, but effective (or I'd like to think so). I use one directional light (sun) and E-Light with a desaturated version of the background photo to act as environment light.
Subtle raytraced reflections help too (but are a bastard on rendering time).

by Kevjon
Do you do your profiles the same way ?

by Skyraider3D
Yup. My profiles are simply sideview renders without background.

Sounds easier than it is, I'm afraid. Matching up your lighting to a background photo is very tricky!

Not only creating an accurate representation of the lighting is very difficult. Once you have accurate lighting, it doesn't always bring out the details you want from your composition. This often leads to either cheating (adding non-illuminating lights to affect the specular only), comprising accuracy (moving lights slightly to a different direction), re-adjusting the composition (effectively making it a different image!) or replacing the background altogether to make your current composition work (i.e. starting from scratch with the lighting). Been there, done that, many times...

So prepare for a good few hours of increasing frustration which should eventually lead to something more or less satisfying (as your initial setup rarely ever works, the end result is always a bit of a hard-fought compromise...).

Of course if you make a 3D background you may not have these problems, but I personally don't enjoy making sceneries... nor pilots, hehe

As you can understand, making profile renders is a breeze compared (no background to match, and you have freedom of lighting to bring out the details you want) and the light setup rarely takes more than 5-10 minutes!

by Kiwi123
Skyraider is right, it is difficult. I use radiosity myself, which is basically similar to what Skyraider does.
I find that reflections do add a lot to the look, just do not make them overpowering. Try blurred reflections with a falloff for the reflection amount depending on angle of viewing.
Another issue to keep in mind is the specific color of your aircraft. To see what I mean, do a test with a light grey material, try and make it look good in a simple blue sky dome. Now try it with brown-green camouflage...much harder.
Then there are specular highlights, actually they should come from reflection, but it always helps to give extra attention to certain beveled edges etc.

by Kevjon
Kiwi, I'm a little uncertain what you mean by reflections. Do you mean I should blur a copy of background sky image and add that to the reflection channel of aircraft texture map ?

by Kiwi123
Ok, I meant raytraced reflections, but vary the amount of reflection depending on whether you are glancing along a surface or looking straight at it. You can blur those reflections (with a heavy penalty in render times) probably with some flag in Max...

by Duderender
Also, don't forget to apply an alpha to the reflection! Otherwise your object reflecting will look like a mirror and that's NOT what you want. Basically a reflection works on the "top" layer of a material and thus you still see the under laying color and texture of the object that is reflective. If it was a perfect mirror, there would be no color to the reflecting object.

by Skyraider 3D
Duderender, not sure what you mean with alpha on reflections. You mean like a mask? So panel lines don't reflect and for instance chipped paint areas exposing metal reflect a lot?

I generally use my specular level map for this. To tweak the amount I instance my specular level map into the reflection mask slot and stick that into a so-called Output map, so I can tweak the amount of reflection and tweak the curves if necessary. Works a treat and saves on memory

And blurred reflections are a must and unfortunately a F pain in the A! So slow! You'd think that since the reflections don't have to be so accurate, it would render faster... but nothing is further from the truth! Since you blur it, it needs to sample the same rays many times over to blend them. Yuk...

by Duderender
Two words.... RENDER PASSES
Too few under utilize this. Blurred reflections are an excellent candidate for a render pass with blurring done in post.

by Kiwi123
Agreed, you can do a lot in post. However... the further away a reflected beam bounces, the blurrier the reflection should be. This is automatically done at rendertime, not so in post.
The other thing is that you can not just blur the whole reflection pass. Cockpit glass would not be blurred, therefore requiring a separate pass or mask. And there are more issues. Plus the rendertime isn't all a big problem for still images, more so for animations.

by Skyraider3d
Yes, rendering passes seem to cause me more problems than it fixes. Often inconsistencies appear (such as in missing reflections of reflections) or bump effect around small details get lost. Generally I just start the render when I go to bed, and see what happened next morning. In a more time-sensitive production environment though, it could be life saver!

[kevjon]

RENDERING MULTIPLE AIRCRAFT IN A SCENE

Q by Kevjon
What’s the best way to render multiple aircraft into the scene. How do you guys go about it ?

A by Kiwi
To get the composition right you need to have them in the scene together. If you render them separately it gives you more control in photoshop to tweak position and do post processing. I render them in separate passes, with the whole scene complete, so the interaction of reflections and lighting are correct (so I hide the other planes for the camera, but not for reflection etc). If the memory load is too big (which happens too often) I will try to manage it anyway by reducing the texture size on the aircraft that are not rendered. If that fails I remove them from the scene.
For animation for instance it is much more essential to render in separate passes to get more control over your colors etc.

by Skyraider3D
Since I use E-Light for my renders, I can only render one at a time. I set up the scene with both aircraft and play with the composition till I'm happy (use shift-F to aid you with this - it gives you the exact framing and "safe area").
Then I render the planes separately by moving the E-Light dome to their respective centers. Then, like you said, you can replace the background image with the newly made render and work your way through the formation from the back.
In the next version of E-Light I will have multiple dome support and include/exclude options, but that new version won't happen anytime soon, I'm afraid. Rendering separately is in fact faster too. I even go as far as to render the cockpits separately (region render) and hiding the pilot and glass bits in the rest of the render. Saves a lot of time calculating raytraced reflections. Also make sure you exclude the glass bits from reflecting itself, or the raytrace calculations will last forever! Setting raytrace depth to 1 or 2 saves a lot of time as well.
Make a habit of rendering in passes. Once you're used to it you will come to appreciate the many benefits it has. Even with multi-dome support on E-Light I will probably continue to render each plane separately, as it gives me more control and the render times are much lower

by JerryB
I usually render any aircraft in my scene all at the same time, unless there is just too much going on.
Sometimes rendering times can depend on what sorts of light(s) you're using, as well as various other factors (i.e. poly count, etc.). The trick is to get the lighting consistent across a whole scene, if you're intending to show more than one aircraft. This can mean that you have to spend some time setting this all up to your liking.

POST PROCESSING (PHOTOSHOP)

by Skyraider3D

To the raw render I basically add the following effects:
- contrast tweaks
- colour tweaks (hue, saturation, ...)
- bloom
- motion blur where applicable
- lightwrap
- filmgrain to match the background photo
- slight blurring/scrambling of the hard CG edges
- some vignetting
- any smoke, fire or tracers

Here's a good example of before-after:
Raw render (http://skyraider.allaboutwarfare.com/files/modelling/NA-57_900_raw_render.jpg)
Final render after post editing (http://skyraider.allaboutwarfare.com/files/modelling/NA-57_900_colour.jpg)

Maybe this particular image is a bit over-processed, but a lot of people don't take their image beyond the raw render. As may be obvious, a raw render has a lot of Photoshop potential, which is often left unexploited. It can really make a difference between a "3D plane smacked on a photo" and a pleasing piece of aviation art. In general I spend more time in Photoshop than in MAX, setting up the render. It's simply faster and you can basically tweak anything in 2D.

GETTING A RHINO NURBS MODEL INTO MAX
(From the Gloster Meteor thread)

by KevJon
After spending sometime trying all different methods, I think Option 1 is the way to go.

Option 1
Use Rhino's internal mesher and output subassemblies to max via 3DS. Then you need to clean up the mesh in max on the high poly model because Rhinos internal mesher struggles at seams between the nurbs surfaces and creates some bad areas (but at least it welds the mesh together in these areas). Further subdivisions and welding inside max fixes these flaws. Quite a few hours work though.

Option 2
When you bring the Rhino model into max via IGES and convert the nurbs surfaces inside max to a mesh you will have much more clean up to do and welding of the mesh because each nurbs surface creates a separate mesh whether they were joined in Rhino or not. You will also end up with a tri mesh in max rather than quads.

I have no experience of Maya. It might have better options than max at converting a nurbs surface to a mesh via the IGES route.

Some other thoughts on Rhino.
I need to find a better way of creating the subtle blends between wings/engines and wings/fuselage in Rhino. At the moment I have only tried network curve but there are other ways in Rhino of creating these fillets. I will try other techniques on the next aircraft to see if I can get these fillets closer to the real thing than I have on the meteor.

If the Rhino people can give the software a good mesher...it would be an outstanding program for the work I want to do. It needs a mesher like max's (and other applications) meshsmooth that has nice quads that flow with shapes. It also needs to smoothly flow over the joints between nurbs surfaces rather than creating a mess like it currently does. The Rhino mesher also struggles along the leading and trailing edges of the wings, tail planes etc creating many useless subdivisions in these areas.

[stefanino]

Thanks Kevjon to have put back the bible of the 3d modelling!

[Cirric]

Thanks Kev!

This info is extremely valuable! Glad you had a copy lying around!

[Skyraider3D]

Top job for putting this back, mate :)

[kevjon]

No problems guys, this information is too valuable to lose in a MM crash.

[denders]

:eek: Thanks, a lot of useful information there, especially for those of us who are starting.:)

[roma_ua]

Hey guys, thanks for the tips. Have you ever thought about making aircraft video tutorial? I`m sure it would be much more comprehensive and easy to understand than existed ones. I saw a couple of them (for example Spitfire modeling in Maya, the newest XSI modeling of I-16) and the final result is far from your artworks. (Skyraider3D, kevjon, kiwi, and other guys).

http://3d-palace.com - has some awesome, very detailed tutors that deal with modelling of robots, space ships and etc. Car modelling tutors are also easy to find on the Web, BUT there is no DECENT VIDEO TUTOR about modelling aircraft.

[kevjon]

I know Kiwi was going to make a DVD on modelling aircraft at one stage but not sure what ever become of that project. He is the modelling master but I tend to model in a different way than Kiwi as I do more of my stuff on the high poly mesh rather than keep everything in low poly.

I know when I was trying to learn how to model aircraft about 2 years ago that I really wished there was a DVD on how to do it. I learnt from following a car tutorial than adapting a lot of those skills to aircraft. I also picked up lots of tips here at MM by watching other artists WIP threads and the way they tackle certain things.

[roma_ua]

TO ALL GURUS OF MM
Guys, many newbies in modelling desperately need your experience in aircraft modelling, so if you have got some free time, I think detailed video tutorial will be the solution. I`m sure this DVD(s) will be in GREAT demand. Actually, by saying "modelling" I mean the whole process from the first primitive, to a final hi-poly model, then lighting, texturing, and finally creating decent background and integrating model into.

[kiwi123]

As Kevin mentioned, I had indeed planned to do two DVDs on digital aircraft creation for the Gnomon Workshop. The first would be the modelling aspect. The second would be UV/texture/light/render. I have the contracts ready and waiting to be signed, prepared the two models that I wanted to use as an example (spitfire high detail and HE111 low detail). All I need to do is record the actual DVDs. But believe me, it takes a LOT of work. Time that I just haven't been able to find, with an art exhibition last year, a second baby coming at the end of may and a very very busy professional career.

Don't expect them soon.

[Faust]

I've been trying to model a plane in Max and where the wing root meets the wing is troublesome. I tried bridging the wing and the root with less than stellar results.

[giant551]

TO ALL GURUS OF MM
Guys, many newbies in modelling desperately need your experience in aircraft modelling, so if you have got some free time, I think detailed video tutorial will be the solution. I`m sure this DVD(s) will be in GREAT demand. Actually, by saying "modelling" I mean the whole process from the first primitive, to a final hi-poly model, then lighting, texturing, and finally creating decent background and integrating model into.

You could use my aircraft aircraft video tutorial here (http://www.military-meshes.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1284) its based on XSi but it can be easily followed in other applications. Its not the most detailed model but it will point you in the right direction

[Skyraider3D]

I've been trying to model a plane in Max and where the wing root meets the wing is troublesome. I tried bridging the wing and the root with less than stellar results.Seen: http://www.military-meshes.com/forums/showthread.php?t=89 ?

[roma_ua]

I love Gnomon courses. Have a couple of them.
What 3d application are you going to use? What render?

May I suggest you a couple of issues that worth mentioning in your future course?

1. I tried to model Spit. recently, but failed due to high number of proportion errors in the blueprints. What should be done with the blueprint in this case?
What is the best way to resize them properly?

2. IMHO Spitfire is not the best choice for tutorial of this kind (I understand that YOUR Spit is just awesome, and you did a great job and I also love this this gorgeous plane), but Spit`s engine is covered with bonnet in comparison with F4U Corsair, or P47 (not to mention biplanes). Maybe something with opened engine would be more interesting and hard to model?

Is there any estimated date of starting/finishing work on the project?

[kiwi123]

Hi, to answer those issues right here:

1. throw them away and start with better drawings. Might sound childish, but there is just no way to make bad drawings good. They are the source of your model and therefore very important. So, my plan was to explain to people how to setup your drawings, but also how to get good ones.

2. The spitfire is one of the hardest planes I have ever modelled. An engine is relative simple to build, it's just the same thing, twelve times in a cirlce. And those shapes really are very simple at that. The thing I see people struggle with most is the organic fluid shape that some aircraft have, and even more so, how to keep this fluidity while having to insert holes in to that shape. I think the corsair, but especially the P47 and most biplanes are much simpler in fact than the spitfire. Ya know, a cylinder with wings :lol:

But anyway, I wanted to cover items like radial engines, wingblends etc in separate topics where need be. I have made enough models to be able to pick and choose interesting bits :)


Estimated time of finishing this was last summer. So, I can give you a date, but it would probably be wrong anyway.

[roma_ua]

1. I thought I had not enough skills at that moment to overcome that kind of problems with drawing and put aside that project. Now it seems that I was right, the solution is very simple - get good blueprints :)

2. I`m sure you know what you`re saying. I just hope that your video tutorial will be much more detailed than already existed one from Simplymaya.com http://www.simplymaya.com/movie_pages/tutorial.mhtml?tut_id=106
with tons of small detail. Anyway you could include some modeling tips (for example radial engines, wingblends and etc.) under BONUS button.

>Estimated time of finishing this was last summer.
I like that :) Can`t wait you cope with that.

Good luck.

[Skyraider3D]

Roma_ua, what you are looking for is an A-Z "how-to" guide. Nice as it may seem, it will not be of great help After you finish it you still will not know exactly how to model a plane from new.

The main way to learn modelling it through experience and discovering things yourself. Do some basic tutorials, then try yourself. If you fail, try again and again until you succeed and ask for help when really stuck. It's better than following someone else's techniques step-by-step as it will not give you a complete understanding of what you're doing.

Read the first two pages of this tutorial and try to fully understand them. It's more valuable than a step-by-step tutorial, in my opinion: http://www.wide3d.no/tutorials/Car_nurms_01.htm


PS. Car tutorials are a great preparation for modelling planes.

PPS. "Last summer" is in the past... ;)

[Faust]

Thanks Sky. I ended up just shaping the wing root (like I do in Lightwave) and extrude and shape as I go along. Max takes some getting used to, though.

[3dpointcloud]

When I get into mapping - this will be the place to come!!

Thank you.

Wendell Olson
Aeronautica 3D

[Arjun]

Can someone help me out with these blueprints? F-16A/B (http://72.14.203.104/translate_c?hl=en&langpair=ru%7Cen&u=http://www.airwar.ru/other/draw2/f16ab.html)

The cross-sections are a problem area for me. I tried matching them as indicated on one modelling site (for the P-47 Thunderbolt) and I couldn't get cross-section 1 of fuselage to match the fuselage side and bottom views. I already matched the side and bottom views of the fuselage by keeping them to the same size. I am doing this in Photoshop CS3.