Goran_M

A small update that took most of the night. Finished the control surfaces, rounded the root of all of them, cut out some more polys that could be cut so I can get back some more fps, tweaked some more shapes, finished the air intake on the tail. I'll do some more tomorrow. Modelling should be completed by some time in the next 2 weeks. (I still have to model the overhead panel and cabin.) That's when I'll hand over the UV maps to Theo for texturing and while he textures, I'll be doing all the animations. Then come the datarefs, making sure the panel works, some test flights and fixes if necessary, then I release it!!

1 of the last batches of screenshots of the 3D model before I start animating and texturing. The vertical fin took 2 days worth of modelling, deleting, re modelling, etc... (that perfectionism rears its head many times) Especially the top section which was another merge of ellipse to square (Square part is on the top). Elevators have been cut and will need to be modelled correctly (Rounding off the root of the elevators). Overall, this aircraft is turning out EXACTLY how I want it. There will be other minor tweaks here and there to fix some shapes but they are very small and will take minutes. Air intake at the base of the vertical tail will be added. APU exhaust will be moved. The gap that is visible between the rudder and the top section of the vertical fin is actually there on the real aircraft. Release will be a lot earlier than anticipated. No firm dates yet but it will be soon. As always, feedback and comments are always welcome!

It'd be a real fluke it was the same method you use.

Update for the Hawker 4000. I made a post on the .org forums and got a pretty good response from people there. I had some help from Scooter (aka Ari) for modelling the rounded edges of the wings where the wing lights and nav lights are located. He sent me a couple of screenshots of wireframes and it looked pretty good. However, not taking anything away from Scooter, I found a new way to model the rounded edge as my wing looks different to the wing he modelled for his Hawker. (The cross section) So his method would not give a smooth result for my wing. I actually came up with this method while I was in the shower. Believe it or not, I get a lot of ideas for modelling the objects when I'm in the shower, shaving or brushing my teeth. What is this new way? TOP SECRET! (For now. I think I can tweak it to give an even better result. When I finish with this method, I'll put up a tutorial in the 3D shop section.) Anyway, more screenshots and a nice close up of the wing edge. Also a wireframe showing all the cut control surfaces and a semi built rudder and tail section. I've also heavily cut down some vertices and tweaked the entire shape of all the objects slightly to smoothen them out a bit more. It's coming together.

Not much to post for now on the payware version. It's 3am and last night and yesterday I was deleting vertices that aren't visible and/or not needed and "streamlined" the aircraft to maximize FPS. There was 1 part in the cockpit that I modelled and subsurfed. I re modelled this part and it went from 45000 vertices to 684. Yes, 684...NOT 684 000 but 684. I hate subsurf! I built the tail section, flap tracks and rebuilt the wings to make them resemble the actual wing more closely going by photos. All control surfaces are cut. A few more things to model, add some lights, fine tune the model in Maya or 3DS Max, UV mapping and then I start animating! Goran

Beta version of the PM version of the Hawker. Have to fix it so it works with 9.30. So far, the FADEC doesn't work. Livery done by Theo Gregory (Also a beta. A few things will be "tweaked". Who made up that word anyway???) Goran I almost forgot. This will be freeware..obviously

A Hawker 4000 transformer? Nah. But just the animations and rendering look phenomenal.

OH MY GOD!!!!! Guess who's exporting a Hawker 4000 to Lightwave?

Haha Always put your pennies away for a rainy day. I was lucky that I had a big jar that could hold a lot of pennies. ;D Release date is hard to say. It's been just over 2 months since I started working on this project and I gave myself a maximum time frame of 6 months to finish it, but I can probably see it getting released earlier than that. Specific time (eg, end of August) is hard to say. I don't know how much trouble I'm going to have with datarefs and possibly some plug ins. Rest assured, I'm working very hard on this and I want to fly it as much as the next guy. Goran

All parts assembled minus the rudder (Which I still have to model) and the cockpit which is on another layer. I haven't merged the cockpit objects into 1 object yet. Still a few more things to add and tweak before I apply the mirror modifier but it's getting closer to being finished. Also, a small footnote. I'm probably going to do some fine tuning and a few additions in either 3DS Max or Maya. They both have a few more tools than Blender.

LOL, Nick, did you bring the crosses and Holy water as well? I pretty much don't like the Boolean either, but I think in some cases, it works well. I don't like the way Blender does it sometimes. It works well with simple objects but not so well with more complex polys. I tried Retopo with the holes that are in the main wheels (Teardrop shape) but it was a real problem for me. I tried Boolean and it worked great, albeit with a few extra vertices (Read few as a bag full of them). But I wasn't going to work on them after that so I think the wheels turned out exactly how I wanted them to.

Sometimes I hate schematics. It's an easy fix though. I might tweak it a bit more though next time. UPDATED: This is actually more like it.

I need a drink! BTW, it's 130am. And yes, the wingbox will be chamfered at a later date. I'm just glad the wingbox nightmare is over! Clean lines, clean joins and no "kermingles" AND I did it with a boolean cut. ;D UPDATED: Chamfered edges.

Use the Boolean cut with caution. It works in some cases, but in others, it leaves dirty geometry and can be harder to work with. In the case of doing a cut in the cockpit, select the external cutting object first, move it into position, Shift right click the fuse, press W then select "add difference modifier". You might get a copy of the cutting object stuck in the fuse. In that case, go to edit mode and delete the vertices that are NOT part of the fuse. You will find though, you will be left with a nice cut that contains a ton of extra vertices. Post back with results Goran

Haha Believe it or not, it looks pretty good. I think a lot of people have problems modelling the fuselage around the windows as Dan describes it. The other way to do it which is cleaner imho, is to model the fuse and cut the cockpit out using a boolean cut. No dodgy edges then. A little more work involved but sometimes it can be a better result. Keep going. Goran

Me too!!! It's progressing quickly. And because I don't work (I sold a business I had about 4 years ago) I can spend an insane amount of hours on it. I pretty much wake up at 9am and work on it until 1 or 2 am. But yes, I do take a few breaks during the day and having a daughter is another job for me.

I might have stumbled onto something with the wingbox. I'll give it a go and see how it finishes up. Problem is, the more I try to merge it to the fuse, the more the photos show the wingbox to be a separate object just bolted on to the fuse.

I'm trying to stay zen about the whole thing.

*sigh* I'm now on my 10th wingbox. After spending about a day trying to get the squared section in the centre from a rounded fuselage and merging the square section to the rounded front and rear parts, I have decided to start the whole thing again using some of the techniques I have used in previous attempts. Perfectionism. It can be a curse.

Jason and anyone else who is interested. I have discovered, by accident, the "Kermingle" of polys at the rear and front of the wingbox that joins on the fuselage is a "visual casualty" of the non rendered raw Blender model. I was cutting out the windows for the fuselage and saw the same problem happened because of the boolean operation. Boolean cutting creates an insane amount of vertices and polys around the edges of the cut that join it to the the nearest edge. This appears to throw the poly alignment out of whack. BUT, as I said, it is a visual casualty and after rendering the model, all appearances of distortion are gone. Basically because there is no distortion in the rendered product. Hope that makes sense. Screenshot might help explain what I am talking about.

I think I have you beat. I spent 4 hours building a 787 wing box! I rebuilt it 3 times before it started looking anywhere close to the real thing. To add insult to injury Boeing is rebuilding their wing box! :-\ Yeah, but I have you beat in quantity. I built 9 of them

Yes, but as you say, I have to force myself to do this. :-\ I do it sometimes and then I just keep building and forget to continue marking edges. And strangely enough, I COMPLETELY FORGET to do it after midnight. I'm working on it though. Anyway, in saying that, here's another screenshot of the main landing gear. I've managed to cut down some of the vertices. This took me the better part of a full day. God Bless the Mirror and Duplicate functions!! Oh yeah, I know what the blackened parts are on the render. Duplicate vertices have been taken care of.

Like a tax audit!

Good eyes. I'm coming back to that in the next few days. It's proving tricky to get rid of. Should have seen it while I was making the wingbox. 90 minutes of the wingbox was spent on merging the front and back of it to the fuselage and making it look like part of the fuselage. Current progress on the main gear minus the wheels. (Which are completed) The compressable strut is positioned vertically purely for ease of work on it. Once it's completed, I'm rotating it to join the vertical strut that will be connected to the horizontal section of the gear arm. Couldn't they make the gear like NORMAL aircraft??? The brake lines will be fixed. Have a look at how many vertices in that small section!! (Mostly the brake lines.)

A small update to progress. I've redone the nose again, tweaked the gear, completely reworked the engine nacelles (Photos show a straighter top edge when viewed from the side and more rounded overall shape). I plan to tweak some things in the VC (lengthen the centre pedestal, adjust the shape of the parking brake, add more buttons to the centre pedestal) Also, a payware developer has asked me to model a 3D cockpit for 1 of his payware aircraft. I cannot divulge details on who it is or what aircraft yet, but I will have it modelled within the next 2 weeks and closer to completion I will let you all know the details on it. Here's a bunch of new screenshots. Goran