Classic British Flight Sim

nazca_steve wrote:Wow, nice video there, Jab, thanks for sharing that. I do indeed plan to paint the RN historic flight version along with a 1,000 or so other schemes (joke, but there will be a lot, since it has such rich markings). As for the smoky startup, this is something I've been talking to James (Hobby) about and I certainly would like to try. The main priority is getting the basic model built at first though. Currently I am on holiday back in the UK so no work on the old girl for a bit, although I am planning afield trip to the MAM again to get inside their Sea Hawk, so I suppose that is 'work',

Cool cant wait to get the model now

And thank you for doing a Sea Hawk model

James :dance:

Hi there Steve.
Personally I think I would use more polygons and try and get a more indepth mesh around that area if being honest - but nothing to stop you building the intake seperately then chopping out that intake and welding in a new one with greater mesh density!
What I sometime do if want rounded edges however, is to chop a cylinder or tube in half, scale it, rotate and weld for england!
so, say the pink bit is your wing/top of intake...

then create a tube, chop it half, delete any unwanted (inside polygons) and rotate...

use snap lock to put the pivot on the vertex corner, then snap the decapitated tube to the wing and scale until the bottom of the tube is roughly in line with the lower section of the wing - you can then snap the tubes lower vertices in place to exactly match up with the lower wing section ones (remember to also delete any inside polys from the wing as well)...

then use drag-snap on the verties on the tube to line them up with the wing vertices, and use extrude (on edge) to open out new lengths...

Attach one to other and grab the welder...

you might want then to rotate the corner vertices to keep it looking smoother...
Like so much with 3DS/GMax there are probably a couple of ways getting around the problem that you have here, and they are all correct, as long as they work!... Hope helps
Good luck and all the best
Mike

Thanks a lot for the little demo there, Mike, I will keep that in mind for future, or if I can't get on with the edge method that Skippy explained. Still no progress on the project as I am still on hols here, but will get back to it soon.

Cheers,

Steve

UPDATE: Well, I've got as far as the canopy frame now, but still have a long way to go. I'll soldier on with it of course, but will Paul Foster's soon-approaching release I think my time will go more into repainting over Xmas. Will post more WIP shots on here soon anyway so you can see where I've got to.

UPDATE: Here are two shots from the current frame work. Since you last saw it, I have added the gun ports and shell ejectors, and of course the canopy faring. I'll finish the frame, then move on to the tail and tail plane next I think, leaving the cockpit and surface details till the end.

Hahah! Just in case you thought this was over, well...the project slowly continues, with the tailplane currently under development. After that, it's back to the cockpit. Baby steps:

Well done Steve :prayer: , I keep thinking about dusting off FSDS every now and again, but once I have re-learnt everything I knew, I hit a brickwall of ignorance.....again

I hit brick walls constantly with this kind of thing, but somehow have got through them with a hammer and chisel! I heard FSDS is supposed to be easier than GMAX given that it's configured for the game, which almost made me get it...but GMAX was free so it won over in the end. I would still like to try FSDS sometime though, especially for the scary stage I'm approaching with the control surface cutouts which I'm dreading

I'm a painter and can't wait till I can settle down to that stage of the project. Really.

Well, I've been chipping away at the cockpit now, starting to build some detail in there, but have a fair bit more to do in there, ejection seat of course and other twiddly bits. The canopy frame also needs some work before I split it up for animation :o

Looking at the tail sweep-up from that last shot, I can see it's way too thick at the root now, so I'll have to work on that. Anyway, here's what I've got so far:







Feedback as always appreciated. Cheers,

Steve

Feedback? Well, it's already 10 x better than anything we have at the moment!!

Andy

Steve,

Looking good so far. Two thoughts which you may already have had, the nose looks a bit angular in the plan view, maybe add a few polys there to smooth it out (same way you did the wing leading edge should be painless enough!?!). Also how are you modelling the tail, is it a separate part to the fuselage or does it grow out of it? I found when I made the tail for the Wyvern (due sometime before the apocalypse) it's easier to blend it in if you delete some faces in the fuselage and then attach the tail there and weld the vertices, you've then only got one object to play around with to get nice smooth lines.

If you like I can send you the Wyvern's ejector seat as a .3ds file, it should be the same as the one for the Seahawk.

Skippy

Thanks a LOT for the tips there, Skippy, I will certainly have to try them out. Currently the tail is extruded from the main fuselage as one section, but for some reason appears to be a separate welded section, and therefore not seamless as I want it. I'll try the face deletion to try and get that smoothness. As for the nose, yes, it is a bit angular, and does need some more work I think. I already added more cross-sections there than I thought acceptable for frame rates, but it does look a bit off still. That said, I am leaving it a blunted at the mo so I can model the air intake in the nose tip, so we'll see how that comes out.

Regarding the ejection seat: yes please! I was thinking of asking someone for one, or better yet, one with a pilot, as I really don't want to make one right now. You can email me through the 'email me' link at the bottom of my web page (link on my profile page). I didn't know you were on the Wyvern, sounds good though, and the due date sounds strangely familiar too... ;-)

Cheers in advance there Skippy.

Steve