Embraer 195

[samen]

Are you using curves to make the wing?

[Rafael Fernandez]

Yes and no, take a look heres a better shot of the wing.

[gilbenl]

If done properly, you should not be able to see the cut marks, and you certainly shouldn't see any changes in shading. When you made the cuts, how did you come about those flaps and ailerons?

[OlaHaldor]

I don't know how the cutting tools are in Blender, but for LightWave I'd either make a copy to two new layers and make the general shape of how I'd like the cut to be, and boolean with "Intersect" and "Boolean". This way I'd get the wing with space for the flaps, and I'd get the flaps. As far as I know, it wouldn't leave a very noticeable mark with strange shading.

This is just theoretical by the way, since I don't do airplanes, I really don't know. But that's what I'd do if and when I'd do it. Just mentioned this in case there's something similar in Blender.

[Goran_M]

I found the best way to make these things.

And it works flawlessly.

You can get a nice cut in about 10-15 minutes with very little to no triangles for a complex cut like main gear doors or windows.

I won't explain it here.  It's a bit complex and detailed.  I'll probably put up a tutorial soon when I have a spare hour or 2.

And it's geometrically 100% accurate in it's method.  Very clean modelling.

Goran

[Rafael Fernandez]

Ive never really modelled a complex wing so I kind of taught myself and made my own process. But if it is not right id have to learn the right way. Simply what I did was align my wing model to the backround image and just selected the top and bottom vertices and seperated them then made the flaps from scratch and placing them correctly. I will explain more when I get home.

[Rafael Fernandez]

retopo... yes. Here is the way I did it. Is it right?

[Goran_M]

Rafael, there are many different ways to model in Blender.  What's important is you get the best possible result.

The way I made my wingbox is different to how many other people make their wingbox.  Same with the control surfaces.  I did them in a very unorthodox way but they actually turned out exactly how I wanted them too.

You will find, in the course of developing this project, new and better ways to model things.  Until, one day, you find a workflow for every object, cut, shape, whatever you model that works best for you.

That's what ultimately makes this an artform.

Keep working on it.  What you do today will probably be deleted and re done somewhere down the line anyway.  You won't get it "right" the first time and at times you will want to quit.  Believe me, I wanted to, more than once.  But you learn from the experience.

Goran

[Rafael Fernandez]

:/ I know. I think I went throught that with the fuselage and still am. But I just want to know is if it can be done this way. Im probably going to do it over and over again. After September 22nd the work will speed up.

[Goran_M]

I've said this to other people who were interested in creating any kind of 3D model and have asked me some questions.

If, after you model something, you can sit there, look at it, and honestly say you've done a good job, then you can move on.

YOU will know if you haven't done something properly.  It's when you finish it, move on to something else, but that little voice keeps telling you, "The ***** you modelled is no good!  You need to fix it!"  And that voice gets louder and louder until you go back and finish it.  Then the voice changes to "That's a kick ass ****** you modelled!!".

Learn to be your own worst critic.  In the future, if you do end up doing this full time, not many people are going to tell you whether something looks good or not.  It's YOUR responsibility to judge that for yourself.  And you're at the RIGHT age to start learning that.

It would surprise the hell out of everybody here if you model something, are completely satisfied with it, and then make a post that makes jaws drop without asking anyone else if it looks good.

As with ANY creative process, it can take a few days to learn the basics of modelling in 3D, a few months to get pretty decent at it, but it takes YEARS to master it.

It's hard to tell whether what you have done "looks" right.  You would need to provide wireframes and object views from a lot of different angles.

When you finish a section and you need help, post it and see what happens.

Goran

[Rafael Fernandez]

I understand now. I have to teach myself through my mistakes. Here are more pics and wireframes

[OlaHaldor]

The images doesn't work.

[Rafael Fernandez]

strange... maybe its the forums

[-TheoGregory]

Its the forums because you've uploaded them to direct to x-pilot and x-pilot cant find them.

It would pay to tell Cameron about that.

[tkyler]

FYI, Cameron is out of his home country at the moment.  I have no idea when he'll be back, but I DO know that he's probably not concerned about internet access while he's gone.  So it might be a few days before he's able to do anything.

[Rafael Fernandez]

I have completely restarted the fuselage for several reasons.

[Rafael Fernandez]

New better fuse photos. 1rst shots of them in the sim they look ok. As you can see mannnyyyy details and fixes need to be made but this is my best yet nose.

[Rafael Fernandez]

made some slight fixes and thickened the fuse walls.

[gilbenl]

First off, I commend your patience and desire to actually do this right...good first step in learning how to do this properly. Now, as for your fuse: Do not, I repeat, do not "thicken" the walls of your fuse in any way. If you look at any other fuse (you know how to import obj in blender...) and you will notice that the walls of the fuse are one layer (IE: Thin). When the time comes to add a VC or a cabin, there is a very specific way to go about this, and maintaining the efficiency is the reason why you will go about it in this way. As for now, you need to model the OUTSIDE of the acf. By trying to "thicken" the fuse, you're going to get incorrect geometry, and a boat load of wasted polys.

Second, I can see that on the corner of the rear left window you have some (what I call) poly stretch. Basically, it appears as if you have a sharp corner vertex which is attached to polys quite a distance away. Attached is a close up of the MD-80 fuse mesh. Granted, the windows are very different, but you should notice two things: First, everything is "paper" thing. Second, that corners are very carefully managed and blended into the existing lines. If you post an image of your mesh, I will circle the areas that need improvement.

Good Luck,

Nick

[Goran_M]

I have to say I am partly at fault for the walls.  Rafael asked for my opinions on the fuse and I mentioned the walls are too thin.  If he wanted to add thickness, to make slightly thicker.

But you are correct.  Rafael, model thickness once you have everything in the fuse completed.  Otherwise you will spend hours "cleaning up".

Goran

[Rafael Fernandez]

My bad nick,

    Ill be sure to undo those walls when I can, as for the sharp corners as well. Thanks for the advice heres a mesh. P.S its very sketchy and looks messy because of the thickness. Ill fix it later.

[gilbenl]

Make it look like this:

The yellow lines (w/o arrows nearby) indicate where the edge should be. Doing this is simply a matter of deleting the edges I erased (delete EDGES...not faces or verticies!!!) and simply fill in the poly. A trick to this would be to do the following:

Notice the lowest HORIZONTAL yellow line on the side of the fuse, which is connected to the second vertex from the right of the window frame. Now, refer to the original horizontal black line directly below it. Now, assuming that you managed to make that line continuous (IE were able to make those two vertical lines towards the back), all ya gotta do is click the little magnet button on the bottom of the window, select a series of verticies, extrude them, and while moving them hold CTRL. This will snap the vertices's to a nearby one, thus maintaining the circle. You want to use this because if you simply create an edge, then subdivide 100000 times, your going to end up with a big old flat spot, forcing you to move the verts by hand...which never is perfect. This technique will take some getting used to, in particular, knowing where to position the mouse to get the right snapping each time. Also, notice: If no matter how hard you try, you can't seem to get the extrusion to snap to the vertex you want (Assuming you've been able to execute this technique successfully in other situations) try moving your view. At first, move just a bit, but a major move may be required to be able to access the target for snapping. Lastly, be absolutely sure the thing snapped to the right vertex before you start doing other things, especially in wireframe view. When I first started using it a lot, I could list at least a dozen times when I mistakenly snapped to the wrong target vert, didn't notice, and moved on so far that there was no undo avail before I realized.

Okay, back to the point at hand...The little arrows indicate that the vertex line/loop is not in line with the rest. Easy fix: Notice the smallest arrow and horizontal yellow line on the upright of the window on the far right. See how the line preceding it is lower than the vertices's it attaches to on the window frame? Not a major problem, but something you want to avoid. Here's how ya fix it. In wireframe mode (which makes selecting multiple verts easier with the B (Press the key...its cool) tool) select the verts that compose the endpoint of the line which make the line non-well, Linear. Next, hit ctrl-E--> edge slide. You can now slide a series of verts along an edge without distorting their geometry.

You then can use this tool in a similar fashion for the lines on the top of the fuse. Notice the two arrows up there. The original black lines immediately behind the tail of the arrow are the subjects, and the line in front of the arrow tip is roughly the target. You should select all the verts in a single arch between the window frames, not including the vert on the window frame. Now, with these verts selected, use the edge slide function mentioned above to slide these lines to about the area where the target lines are. These targets are not perfect, but they should give you an idea of where to go. Keep in mind, your ultimate goal is to keep these arches/circles as vertical as possible at all points.

Here's the bad news: Once you move these, you're probably going to need to even further refine the mesh, or possibly subdivide (VIA LOOPCUT) some surfaces to get things right. You may be asking why. Here's the reason: When you model, you always want to try and make your polys as square as possible, and your triangles as close to 45-45-90 (perfect right triangles). If you have a bunch of crazy rhombuses and parallelograms, and especially obtuse triangles, the rendered result will have strange facets and the normals will be funky...I know that's a weak explanation, but going into detail would involve some concepts which I just don't wanna get into. Anyhoo, make the changes, and repost the mesh, then we'll go from there.

[Rafael Fernandez]

Nick, thanks for taking some time to explain the fixes to me Preech ill fix it ASAP which will probably tomorrow-friday

[Rafael Fernandez]

I unthickened the walls, ill do all the fixes tomorrow or after... nevermind. Im going to a blink 182 concert wednesday

[Rafael Fernandez]

Here is the new fixed Fuse. Nick told me to make these changes and, well they look alot better. Ill just wait for him to check it and ill start working on some more of the engines. I decided to mirror the fuse so I wouldnt have to make those changes twice.