3Da-wings and related stuff

jay-mo

I started this build about 5 years ago. My plan was to build this fighter based on the studio model, then add a canopy hinge, landing gear, and ROTJ style pilot. I know that there was a lot of size discrepancies with this fighter, but I went with the studio model which I thought scaled up to 4.8m. Well long story short, I gave up in frustration because my pilot wouldn't fit without altering the cockpit details I already modeled. Seeing Binkerman's thread kind of renewed interest in this build.


So here's where I'm at.


pilot: I went with a single stick control. I know the a-wing cut-a-way shows dual stick controls, but I thought this would fit better.


best guess at cockpit details


tight fit without cockpit details.

I'm just going to keep pushing things around until it fits.


I'm still not completely happy with the overall proportions, but I want to push on so I can get to the canopy hinge and landing gear. So since there is no references that show either, I'm open to some ideas. Keep in mind I want to keep as much detail the same as the studio model.

McC

This is some really nice work! I love the thought you're putting into making the A-wing functionally usable.

evil_genius_180

This is looking great so far. I also like the thought you're putting into this.

You'd think when they designed something as small as a fighter for these movies, they could at least design them so that a standard cockpit and pilot fit inside. After all, it's not like trying to fit an interior into a larger ship, which is considerably more complicated.

spacefighter

evil_genius_180 wrote: »

You'd think when they designed something as small as a fighter for these movies, they could at least design them so that a standard cockpit and pilot fit inside. After all, it's not like trying to fit an interior into a larger ship, which is considerably more complicated.

agreed, though i think fitting interiors into big ships can be easier than interiors in small (corvettes and such) ships. in a big ship model you can often spare a higher proportion of space wasted by the difficulty of fitting square rooms into curvy hulls because the parts of the interior that need modelling are usually less parts that need to be shown that on small ships (on a large ship you don't need to model every cabin for example, you can just show a closed door as nothing significant is ever going to take place in most of the cabins). model looks nice though i'll agree it is a very tight squeeze to get in that cockpit. all those small details look great.

jay-mo

Thanks for the comments guys.

I have to say, I love the fighter to pilot proportion of the studio scale model. It's a beautiful model, but too bad they didn't put a complete pilot in there. It's not like they didn't have the skills to do that. The only other option I have is to scale the a-wing up to maybe 5m. I think I've heard that a comparison against the Millennium Falcon in ROTJ put it at 7m, and officially somewhere around 9m.

anyway, here's a look at the front console. I based the displays off images from Google.

McC

Wow, that's awesome!

evil_genius_180

The console looks great. :thumb:

spacefighter wrote: »

agreed, though i think fitting interiors into big ships can be easier than interiors in small (corvettes and such) ships. in a big ship model you can often spare a higher proportion of space wasted by the difficulty of fitting square rooms into curvy hulls because the parts of the interior that need modelling are usually less parts that need to be shown that on small ships (on a large ship you don't need to model every cabin for example, you can just show a closed door as nothing significant is ever going to take place in most of the cabins). model looks nice though i'll agree it is a very tight squeeze to get in that cockpit. all those small details look great.

With a fighter, you simply design the ship around the cockpit. I haven't done one in years, but that was how I did it.

spacefighter

control and instrument panel has a nice style to it but looks to have far too few functions on it.

TALON_UK

Nice work, loving the level of detail, and yeah, the scale of the A-Wing is always a bit tricky to nail. Interesting look you've gone for with the console. Though that top display represents the trench run rather than standard crosshairs/rangefinder. Perhaps switch it for the classic green oval crosshair graphics you see in the Star Wars: A New Hope Death Star battle sequence? Oh, and that pilot looks awesome.

Looking forward to seeing more.

Coolhand

evil_genius_180 wrote: »

The console looks great. :thumb:



With a fighter, you simply design the ship around the cockpit. I haven't done one in years, but that was how I did it.

yes even with a large fighter, it must be designed around the pilot, the crew are *not* an afterthought;)

Great work Jay, really like the pilot figure, nice to see you're still around:)

jay-mo

Thanks Evil_Genius_180 and McC.

spacefighter: Thanks. I based the design off of what I could decipher from the studio model images. I probably missed a few things.

TALON_UK: Thanks. You're right about that top display. I'll try to find that display you described. I should have some updates today.

Thanks Coolhand. It's been a while. Glad you remember me. I'm digging the 2d stuff you're doing, by the way.

jay-mo

Thruster control almost done. A few more details to figure out. I'll render a better lit image when it's complete.

Starrigger

I really like the Star Wars models on the site. Yours is no exception! Great stuff!

evil_genius_180

That looks great, from what I can see. I'm glad I have a bright monitor.

jay-mo

jay-mo wrote: »

Thanks Coolhand. It's been a while. Glad you remember me. I'm digging the 2d stuff you're doing, by the way.

A bit embarrassing Coolhand. That 2d comment was meant for someone else I was chatting with while I was making that post. Can't keep anything straight since I passed 40. I'm sure your 2d work is fantastic anyway.

I'm glad you can see the details, my monitor is a little dim.

Just started rendering so more updates soon.

evil_genius_180

Having a bright monitor can be a curse at times. I have to watch stuff I post so that it's not too dark for others to see, even though it looks fine to me.

jay-mo wrote: »

A bit embarrassing Coolhand. That 2d comment was meant for someone else I was chatting with while I was making that post. Can't keep anything straight since I passed 40. I'm sure your 2d work is fantastic anyway.

Well, now the cat's out of the bag. See, he has been posting 2D work lately, so if you'd not said anything nobody would be the wiser. However, now we all know you're getting senile. (just kidding, of course)

Wiz

Damn not seeing the images... maybe firewall here at the office has deemed them dangerous will check it out when I get home!

Coolhand

jay-mo wrote: »

A bit embarrassing Coolhand. That 2d comment was meant for someone else I was chatting with while I was making that post. Can't keep anything straight since I passed 40. I'm sure your 2d work is fantastic anyway.

I'm glad you can see the details, my monitor is a little dim.

Just started rendering so more updates soon.

You're 40? well that makes me feel better;)

Yeah I just thought you were talking about some of the paintings i've posted in the past few years!:)

jay-mo

Coolhand wrote: »

You're 40? well that makes me feel better;)

Yeah I just thought you were talking about some of the paintings i've posted in the past few years!:)

I remember from back in the day that you had some of the coolest original universe work. When everyone was doing ST and SW you had that space fleet going, wasn't it soviet based? I think the last thing I remember seeing from you was in the Aliens genre. You'll have to link me to some of your those paintings you were talking about. Oh, and by the way, sadly I am 42.

Wiz: My images are coming from my photobucket account. Is that the problem? Sorry, but I'm not that technical when it comes to this stuff.

Sorry about the delay in posting. I found a serious problem in my mesh in the last render. I think I modeled in too much perspective distortion from my reference images. Nothing fit right when I added the engines so I've been working out that issue. I should have something today or tomorrow.
thanks for the comments.

jay-mo

Finally got around to a post. Most of the aft detailing done. It all fits now. There is a few alignment issues to work out, and some of the greebles might be off scale a little, and a few place holders.


Need to move the rings around the engines, there a bit out of place.

evil_genius_180

Great job on the greebles.

spacefighter

damn, how can people do such great stuff SO FAST!

Vortex5972

Practice.

Looks fantastic.

Coolhand

jay-mo wrote: »

I remember from back in the day that you had some of the coolest original universe work. When everyone was doing ST and SW you had that space fleet going, wasn't it soviet based? I think the last thing I remember seeing from you was in the Aliens genre. You'll have to link me to some of your those paintings you were talking about. Oh, and by the way, sadly I am 42.

Hey man, thanks yeah I think that was me. I vaguely remember making that stuff, ah we were all young once.;) I won't clog up your thread with links, my sig if for that - you would probably enjoy a peek or two at my blog, not my other blog (never, ever, look at my other blog) but my blog... which has some new stuff, stuff I haven't posted here *cough* covenant spaceship for HaloIV *cough* some old stuff...

I think you still have the same avatar as years ago? - If so I applaud it sir - that robot still looks good.:)

spacefighter

now you've brought it up ...
coolhand, that excellent stuff from your "sol war(?)" project, i'm surprised you haven't posted more renders of those awesome models from other angles etc. if i had managed to do any modelling and design that good those models would be saved on a usb stick round my neck for the rest of my life!

jay-mo

evil_genius_180 wrote: »

Great job on the greebles.

Thanks!

spacefighter wrote: »

damn, how can people do such great stuff SO FAST!

I don't think anyone has ever called me fast, unless you count on and off of this project for over 5 years fast. Actually I had lots of place holders in place that I didn't show. It is just a matter of turning them into greebles.

Vortex5972 wrote: »

Practice.

Looks fantastic.

Thanks. Yeah, I've been at this hobby for years.

Coolhand wrote: »

Hey man, thanks yeah I think that was me. I vaguely remember making that stuff, ah we were all young once.;) I won't clog up your thread with links, my sig if for that - you would probably enjoy a peek or two at my blog, not my other blog (never, ever, look at my other blog) but my blog... which has some new stuff, stuff I haven't posted here *cough* covenant spaceship for HaloIV *cough* some old stuff...

I think you still have the same avatar as years ago? - If so I applaud it sir - that robot still looks good.:)

Thanks! You can post anything you want in my threads, and yup, same avatar. I think I started using that since 2002.
I've been to your blogs. RESPECT MAN! I've spent countless hours watching and re-watching those episodes and playing the missions. Although they blew up your ship, it was glorious. I see your dabbling in 3d printing. This a-wing build was originally for a studio scale 3d print. It still might happen, so any advice would be appreciated. We will using a DLP printer, possibly a Form1, with a resolution I thought was 0.001. Anyway I'm killing my self trying to model all the details, will it be worth it? I think the studio scale model is 60 cm, but need to check.
This greeble drove me crazy. (doesn't belong in that spot)


Anyway I lost hours of work detailing the engines and adding fins in a computer freeze. I thought no problem, it's in the autoback. Of course it wasn't. I was pretty frustrated so I decided to pull up some of the other a-wing related stuff and play around.

My take on McQuarrie's a-wing.


Kit bashed the a-wing console for this ship.

Side by side comparison


Thanks for all the comments guys.

evil_genius_180

Losing all of that work sucks. Unfortunately, I'm sure we've all been there.

Those look great. I love the concept A-Wing. Richard Long (REL777) scratch built one of those a few years ago, it was wicked.

Zanussi

My favourite fighter in the old X-Wing Vs Tie Fighter game, tough and manoeuvrable.

Yah I am sure we have all had the sudden sink in the stomach followed by a frantic search of the recycle bin. I transferred all my files to a new disc the other week and then promptly formatted the new one. Sigh, file recovery software always manages to pull up the rubbish and not the good stuff you really really want back.

spacefighter

i make it my daily duty that in the evening when i finish work on it i either upload it as an attachment to be stored in my online email account or i write it to usb. i only lost a model once when i wrote over it with another file, that lost me one day's worth of work as the previous version was saved elsewhere.

evil_genius_180

It's all fun and games until your back up disk gets corrupted. :shiner: (yes, I've had that happen) I've started uploading my models to cloud storage. Though, of course, that doesn't help with the type of issue Jay-Mo had, since what he lost when his computer froze was progress from that day. I had that yesterday, when a one second brown out rebooted my system. I was working on some textures. Though, fortunately, I'd only been working less than an hour at that point.

jay-mo

Thanks for the comments guys.

evil_genius_180 wrote: »

It's all fun and games until your back up disk gets corrupted. :shiner: (yes, I've had that happen) I've started uploading my models to cloud storage. Though, of course, that doesn't help with the type of issue Jay-Mo had, since what he lost when his computer froze was progress from that day. I had that yesterday, when a one second brown out rebooted my system. I was working on some textures. Though, fortunately, I'd only been working less than an hour at that point.

Yup, that's exactly what happened. :thumb:

Almost back to where I was. Tweaked the hull to better match my references. Hope to map out panel lines and cut out those slots on the sides soon. Fins aren't complete but in place.




Been playing around with self illuminating material for engine glow. It's just applied to a disc. All the geometry around it is closed with no un-welded seams, but I have light bleeding all over the place. Using 3dsmax 2014 with mental ray. Any know a fix for this?