in which pic in particular?do you think same issue is present in the video? i can turn down the specularity value if it helps but that may mess up other effects. i'll give it a try tomorrow, see if i can get good images with it turned down. how overly shiny do you think it is at present, just to give an indication of how far i should drop it(specularity of main hull material is currently at maximum intensity but using a fairly dark colour.) . anything else you've noticed?
thanks
ok thanks. i'll post(when i get a chance) some images of the fighter with a variety of different spec values and you can judge which is best. anything else you can think of, i could do with knowing of any other visible problems ASAP. also can you see any shading/smoothing errors that stand out particularly badly?
thanks
ok, this is as low as i can get the spec values on the hull
is this better or should i raise them back part of the way to what they were earlier?
any other issues you can see?
thanks
the first tow images show it with a very bright light shining on it, the thrid image has the intensity of that bright light reduced to 60% of it's initial value. hh spec test1.jpg hh spec test2.png hh spec test3.png
OK, i'm calling it finished now. I'll post some shots of the finished model in an hour or two. the next model i work on will not be started for a few months, i'm too busy at present. a simple but high quality turntable animation of this will be posted within a few days but anything else will have to wait.
you're not meant to keep on bumping your own threads like this, there's a fair amount of leeway on SFM but no one else does it to this extent. I've just merged your last 3... its unfair to the other posters here and it even puts more load on SFM's server unnecessarily.
From now on limit your thread updating to actual updates of the model, and reply to multiple posters in the same post.
my apologies, coolhand. by the way some of the things had to have two posts as each post only accepts ten images, the rest i suppose i didn't really think. images(all in 2000x1400 pixel resolution) of completed model from all angles are now on my blog, link is below. some turntable videos will follow shortly and be added to this post.
be warned the blog page may take a while to load, there are a lot of images on it http://sendinthejagdpanther.blogspot.co.uk/
two videos uploaded to youtube of the model, managed to waste hours uploading them as high res videos straight out of blender when youtube drops the quality afterwards anyway. looking at these now the model seems to have come out really well and i'm now satisfied with the design. i'll post more stuff in a few weeks but for now far too busy for any serious modelling or animating.
landing gear mechanism
I like the basically design of this fighter (aside from the rear upper part with the two additional engines and wings - but thatAâs just my personal taste).
The lower engines looks really cool IMO.
I like the basically design of this fighter (aside from the rear upper part with the two additional engines and wings - but thatAâs just my personal taste).
The lower engines looks really cool IMO.
since completion i've been having a few doubts about this, really just in regard to one point which i will outline clearly here. the main intakes are geometrically AWFUL! this profile.jpg
hideous profile is the cross section of the area which the rear of my intake structure must connect to, can someone suggest what sort of shape i should use to either get that to morph into a circle by the front of the intake, or some other way of creating an intake fairly inkeeping with this design style which can sprout from that shape of "hole" without having really nasty messy geometry. this mess shown below is the current structure of the intake, which is nasty in general and comes out quite badly in blender. please suggest a better shape to use, it will be a while before i can get much done on this but the sooner i post it the more likely i am to receive ideas by the time i do need the help. thanks. intake geometry.jpg
Seems fine to me how ever you do not need all that geometry that is there pretty much every thing from the circle to the back can be removed as it is uneccrsary there is no need for it to hold the shape you have
Seems fine to me how ever you do not need all that geometry that is there pretty much every thing from the circle to the back can be removed as it is uneccrsary there is no need for it to hold the shape you have
i don't get what you're saying here, the problem is creating a clean shape with good geometry that allows the weird 2d shape posted in my previous post to morph into a circle as you move along the axis normal to the shape. the current shape does it but renders badly and is rather messy, i'm asking for alternatives to it's form or totally alternative intake designs that fit with the style of the rest of the ship. removing evrything between the circle and the back just results in a circle sitting free in space infront of the "weird shape"
Easiest way to start out is to have the number of edges on the circular part match the number of edges around the odd shape. Then just create the faces in between (see edit below). You don't even need those edge loops you have between the base edge loop and the circular edge loop, unless you want to have a smoother curve between the front and back of it, instead of a straight angle (which you currently have and looks awful, TBH).
All around that is the exact same number of faces (144 to be exact), no matter what shape. The narrowest point is a perfect circle, the widest points (the main hull sides and the sides of the hammerheads) are round and the tops and bottoms of both are flat. There are no tris in there either - they're all quads - and the only edge loops I have between either end of the tapered section were put there to facilitate making the windows.
Edit: Blender has a neat little feature* where you can make two edge loops that are completely separate, select them both, and with the press of a button, it will automatically fill in the faces between the two edge loops. If you have the same number of edges in both loops, then it's pretty straightforward. The fact that you don't have the same number of edges in your geometry between the base and the circle is why Blender is having fits when you try to do something with it.
*In Edit Mode, select your edge loops, go to Mesh>Edges>Bridge Edge Loops
Edit#2: I went ahead and made an eyeballed intake based on the pics you posted. I started with a 32-sided circle. First pic is a wire in edit mode with Smooth on. Second is in Object mode with Smooth and one level of the Subsurf modifier.
thanks for your "same number of edges on circle and weird rear end cross section" tip. i'll put it into practice when i next get a chance to work on the model, and your suggestion of curving rather than using a straight side. those edge lops i added because i thought that higher poly geometry would improve it. i do notice some of the faces in your blender model(thanks for demonstrating the idea) are not co-planar, considering what they connect they can't possibly be. i am doing this mesh work in sketchup still so non coplanar faces are not possible for me though.
The fighter came out great. It's nice to see it done after all of that hard work. (I somehow missed that it was done before now :shiner:)
done in some senses but as i'm saying the intakes are starting to p*ss me off and need fixing when i next get a chance, but yeah it isn't going to look much different overall to the current images posted here. thanks.
i managed to find a 3d model of a pilot which was rigged and in a format i could import to blender, which will be rather helpful for checking some scales of parts of the fighter. just one problem, i'm not sure if the new pilot model(shown in the middle, in a pose perfectly scaled and posed to fit the seat of the hellhound with each hand on one of the two joysticks) is correctly proportioned. from some angles it looks to be the right size but fro nothers it seems out of proportion, not in overall scale, that is easily dealt with, but in things like height versus build etc. is this my eye deceiving me or is there something wrong with it's proportions, i could use knowing whether it is out of proportion before i adjust the cockpit sizes to fit it better (move the foot pedals etc). the two pilot models on either side were the ones i used as human figures when initially modelling the cockpit , they were in sketchup format originally so could not be easily posed.
I'll be doing some more last adjusting of the fighter after friday, clearing up intake, removing folding on wings(it isn't needed and it gives rendering errors) fiddling with cockpit.
thanks Attachment not found.
Especially Curviloft would be perfect for this as it overtakes the funtion of creating planes between two set of lines(from Blender ), then you just have to define the intermediate lines and it will do the work, you can even chose different connection styles(more curved, straight and you can play around with the connections themselves before they are really created)
The intermediate lines can be done with the bezier plugin as it allows you to create rounded lines like blender or other programms easily.
been fiddling around with the cockpit, changed the position and angle of the main control panel so it is now in easier reach of the pilot. also been altering the seat, but that is still in need of some more work. will be making the HUD bigger and thinking of mounting some instruments on panels hanging from the canopy frame. have yet to decide on exactly which controls will be kept on the new smaller control panel and which will be replaced by MFDs. i know that the edge of the cockpit is very high relative to the pilot but i'm going to justify that by saying that the lost visibility is less important than the structural strength and armour protection gained. i've settled on not significantly modifying the rear of the engines but the intakes might atleast get a bit more smoothing to avoid render errors, i'll deal with them after i've reworked the cockpit. also i found a feature in sketchup that lets one calculate the area of various surfaces, i now know that there is about 360 m^2 of hull so i can begin working out the mass of the armour and then get a good estimate for the engine power/thrust/deltaV needed. i have 39m^3 for fuel.
i need to ask a quick question which someone here should be able to answer for me. basically, given the type of harness you can see on the pilot( images attached) where should the belts come out of on the seat. the seat here isn't an ejector because it makes more sense to stay with a stricken ship(vent the atmosphere to stop fires, vent the reactors to deal with radiation problems) that to take one's chances floating in the vacuum light years from the nearest help. i removed my old strap arrangement so i would like to know where new ones should attach, both to the harness on the pilot and to points on the seat, it would be really helpful if somewhat marked those points onto images of the pilot and the seat(just a quick brightly coloured cross over the points done in paint ) so i can clearly see where the straps shoudl go.
thanks
as one other quick question: which of these three concepts looks best to you for the new control panel layout. the one with the instruments in a small vertical space at the top of the control panel is one i know i can do alright , but it has reduced panel space and it might not look as good as the others could. the others with the instruments on little hanging bits from the cockpit canopy frame give increased panel space and a more sci-fi look but they further reduce already poor visibility and they would be harder to get them "looking right". which of these 3 ideas do you think best?
I think the panel layout of the second image could work best.
You still have plenty of room for instrumentation, but you're not tucking all the vital readouts along the top. I have a personal gripe with control layouts that do that, due to the sight-lines to them being blocked by the slightest extrusion along the top lip/rim unless you duck your head down.
I work on AC-130 and MC-130 aircraft all day doing Electronic Warfare maintenance, and I notice the layout for the pilot/co-pilot dash doesn't place many vital instrumentation too close to the top, instead placing it centered on the console. The only stuff that typically goes there would be your Master Caution and other warning indicators. Not sure how much you can take from that, since it's a different style air-frame (not a jetfighter after-all) but I figured you might like some insight.
i need to ask a quick question which someone here should be able to answer for me. basically, given the type of harness you can see on the pilot( images attached) where should the belts come out of on the seat. the seat here isn't an ejector because it makes more sense to stay with a stricken ship(vent the atmosphere to stop fires, vent the reactors to deal with radiation problems) that to take one's chances floating in the vacuum light years from the nearest help. i removed my old strap arrangement so i would like to know where new ones should attach, both to the harness on the pilot and to points on the seat, it would be really helpful if somewhat marked those points onto images of the pilot and the seat(just a quick brightly coloured cross over the points done in paint ) so i can clearly see where the straps shoudl go.
thanks
Well 2 of the pots are already there for you on the back part of the seat put the other 2 points midway on the bottom part there you go it's really not that hard of athing to figure out
so far i've got this(the side control panels are in progress, the main one i haven't started yet, most of my work has been at the bottom of the cockpit so far) but somehow the interior doesn't look "sci-fi" enough. can you please give some tips on how to make it so. i'm sorry i can't be more exact but i really don't know how to describe the thing i'm sure it is lacking.
You want it more Scifi use touch screen things like the lcars from star trek or use holographic setup there isn't much you can do to to make it more Scifi then this 2 things or have it piloted by linking it to the pilots mind
the interior seems a bit simple(plain old flat metal sides and such) at present. what about making the shapes and environment of the cockpit more sci-fi as well as the type of interface. how would i do that?
Start by taking a look at the most modern real-world fighter cockpits. Look at the F-35 for example...it has 1 large widescreen MFD and very few physical controls. Hell the Embraer Ejet I fly for a living has a more advanced panel then what you have rendered thus far and that Pro-Line system is a dinosaur compared to what's in the 787.
Anything more advanced then what we have today like a true aerospace fighter won't have a cockpit that resembles the cockpit of a 60's era fighter so keep that in mind. Much of the functionality that you depicted on your detailed panel design would be automated thus eliminating the need for a physical control or dedicated indicator.
The best suggestion I have is to do a Google search for space fighter cockpits and get inspired. That's how I come up with a lot of my own stuff when I'm stuck.
thanks sorceress, i've taken a look at the f35 and all the fifth generation fighters i could find. they clearly use the screens as the main part of the control panel where i've been overusing instruments (digital and analogue readouts) and switches each with one dedicated function, partly because most of the photos i had used for reference were of older aircraft types (the previous cockpit here used a yellow tinted surround metal because i'd been looking at migs which had painted structures for the cockpit(greenish blue on all of the russian planes it seems)). I must say that the fifth generation interfaces don't exactly look sci-fi, but then again they mostly have the screens turned off when the photos were taken. I'm going through various search terms for space fighters and futuristic designs now. one thing i have noticed though is that most designs have a low edge to the canopy, mine is very high at only 20 cm below the pilot's eyes(looking in from the side or front only his head and neck are high enough to be above the canopy edge). I cannot lower the edge of this, which is annoying but the way the cockpit is arranged changing it would be impossible, so know there will need to be something in the cockpit to compensate fro the reduced visibility. what should that thing be, should i just use projection onto the pilot's visor/eyes? another thing is the cockpit structure, the metal sides, the plain flat sheets, i know these need something doing to them but i can't tell what, as they are now the actual structure of the cockpit seems too dull.
thanks for your tips
Posts
in which pic in particular?do you think same issue is present in the video? i can turn down the specularity value if it helps but that may mess up other effects. i'll give it a try tomorrow, see if i can get good images with it turned down. how overly shiny do you think it is at present, just to give an indication of how far i should drop it(specularity of main hull material is currently at maximum intensity but using a fairly dark colour.) . anything else you've noticed?
thanks
thanks
ok, this is as low as i can get the spec values on the hull
is this better or should i raise them back part of the way to what they were earlier?
any other issues you can see?
thanks
the first tow images show it with a very bright light shining on it, the thrid image has the intensity of that bright light reduced to 60% of it's initial value.
hh spec test1.jpg
hh spec test2.png
hh spec test3.png
OK, i'm calling it finished now. I'll post some shots of the finished model in an hour or two. the next model i work on will not be started for a few months, i'm too busy at present. a simple but high quality turntable animation of this will be posted within a few days but anything else will have to wait.
From now on limit your thread updating to actual updates of the model, and reply to multiple posters in the same post.
be warned the blog page may take a while to load, there are a lot of images on it
http://sendinthejagdpanther.blogspot.co.uk/
landing gear mechanism
The lower engines looks really cool IMO.
thanks, i'm guessing that your reference to the main engines is about the "turkey feather" nozzles. they took up a heck of a lot of triangles but they were worth it, though technically they probably should have also been bell nozzles like the secondary(top) engines.
some more pics of the fighter
hellhound detail pic1.png
hellhound detail pic5.jpg
hellhound detail pic2.png
more on my blog
http://sendinthejagdpanther.blogspot.co.uk/
profile.jpg
hideous profile is the cross section of the area which the rear of my intake structure must connect to, can someone suggest what sort of shape i should use to either get that to morph into a circle by the front of the intake, or some other way of creating an intake fairly inkeeping with this design style which can sprout from that shape of "hole" without having really nasty messy geometry. this mess shown below is the current structure of the intake, which is nasty in general and comes out quite badly in blender. please suggest a better shape to use, it will be a while before i can get much done on this but the sooner i post it the more likely i am to receive ideas by the time i do need the help. thanks.
intake geometry.jpg
Take a look at the first pic in this group: http://www.scifi-meshes.com/forums/showthread.php?80289-Honorverse-stuff&p=581126&viewfull=1#post581126
All around that is the exact same number of faces (144 to be exact), no matter what shape. The narrowest point is a perfect circle, the widest points (the main hull sides and the sides of the hammerheads) are round and the tops and bottoms of both are flat. There are no tris in there either - they're all quads - and the only edge loops I have between either end of the tapered section were put there to facilitate making the windows.
Here's a wire of the same ship: StarKnightWire.jpg
Edit: Blender has a neat little feature* where you can make two edge loops that are completely separate, select them both, and with the press of a button, it will automatically fill in the faces between the two edge loops. If you have the same number of edges in both loops, then it's pretty straightforward. The fact that you don't have the same number of edges in your geometry between the base and the circle is why Blender is having fits when you try to do something with it.
*In Edit Mode, select your edge loops, go to Mesh>Edges>Bridge Edge Loops
Edit#2: I went ahead and made an eyeballed intake based on the pics you posted. I started with a 32-sided circle. First pic is a wire in edit mode with Smooth on. Second is in Object mode with Smooth and one level of the Subsurf modifier.
Intake_001.jpg Intake_002.jpg
I'll be doing some more last adjusting of the fighter after friday, clearing up intake, removing folding on wings(it isn't needed and it gives rendering errors) fiddling with cockpit.
thanks
Attachment not found.
1. Curviloft
2. BZ_Toolbar(Bezier)
SKP.png
Especially Curviloft would be perfect for this as it overtakes the funtion of creating planes between two set of lines(from Blender ), then you just have to define the intermediate lines and it will do the work, you can even chose different connection styles(more curved, straight and you can play around with the connections themselves before they are really created)
The intermediate lines can be done with the bezier plugin as it allows you to create rounded lines like blender or other programms easily.
both should be free.
new cockpit.jpg
new cockpit2.png
dodgy geometry is still an infuriating problem which doesn't present itself until blender import.
thanks
as one other quick question: which of these three concepts looks best to you for the new control panel layout. the one with the instruments in a small vertical space at the top of the control panel is one i know i can do alright , but it has reduced panel space and it might not look as good as the others could. the others with the instruments on little hanging bits from the cockpit canopy frame give increased panel space and a more sci-fi look but they further reduce already poor visibility and they would be harder to get them "looking right". which of these 3 ideas do you think best?
panel concept1.jpg
panel concept2.jpg
panel concept3.jpg
thanks
quick answers to these would be helpful as i can't continue much further with modelling until i have them.
You still have plenty of room for instrumentation, but you're not tucking all the vital readouts along the top. I have a personal gripe with control layouts that do that, due to the sight-lines to them being blocked by the slightest extrusion along the top lip/rim unless you duck your head down.
I work on AC-130 and MC-130 aircraft all day doing Electronic Warfare maintenance, and I notice the layout for the pilot/co-pilot dash doesn't place many vital instrumentation too close to the top, instead placing it centered on the console. The only stuff that typically goes there would be your Master Caution and other warning indicators. Not sure how much you can take from that, since it's a different style air-frame (not a jetfighter after-all) but I figured you might like some insight.
can anyone answer the other question i had?
thanks
so far i've got this(the side control panels are in progress, the main one i haven't started yet, most of my work has been at the bottom of the cockpit so far) but somehow the interior doesn't look "sci-fi" enough. can you please give some tips on how to make it so. i'm sorry i can't be more exact but i really don't know how to describe the thing i'm sure it is lacking.
thanks
Anything more advanced then what we have today like a true aerospace fighter won't have a cockpit that resembles the cockpit of a 60's era fighter so keep that in mind. Much of the functionality that you depicted on your detailed panel design would be automated thus eliminating the need for a physical control or dedicated indicator.
The best suggestion I have is to do a Google search for space fighter cockpits and get inspired. That's how I come up with a lot of my own stuff when I'm stuck.
thanks for your tips