UH-60A Desert Hawk - Nurbs Of Course
 

Well, I want to do something different. Originally (beside the xwing = freeze) I wanted to model the F-14 Tomcat, but the plastic kit I bought had HORRIBLE "blueprints". The alternative was the UH-60 and the Hughes AH-6A Night Fox, anyway the two choppers seen in the movie "Black Hawk Down".

Heres the first results, and happily, I seem to have come about an improved modeling technique without too many nurbs-curves.

I got the wheel 100% done but the bump map doesnt show right now.

I'll try using the "Nurbs --> Attatch Surface Without Moving" to create a seamless and beautiful surface, covering most of the chopper. But this must be done before any trimming is made, as the attatch surface without moving doesnt seem to work with trimmed surfaces.

A wheel
 

Not much to look at, but the "holder" was initally a set of four pieces. One of my first attatch nurbs-surface action ever.

edit:
new pic

Coming along nicely so far!

Darkon

looks good unseth, keep the detail up everywhere and the model will be awesome. :)

lol, off he goes again!!! good on you mate!! nice job so so!!

nice start undseth.. :p

More nurbs
 

Soo easy as I have a plastic model acting as a guide.

Dude your the best techincal modeler I have seen =) keep it up great work!!!

Rotors with simple color mapping.
 

Can hardly wait to start with the windows and the smaller stuff.

edit:
Learned some practical things with the convert nurbs to poly tool.
The rotor blades were first turned into a monster of 200 000 edges, but then I chose the "per hull" option, and reduces the whole rotor blade (tip incl.) to only 2000+ faces big.

thought you wanted the whole thing to be in nurbs :confused:

Looking great
 

That looks great!! You could teach me a thing or two about NURBS!!!



Keep it up



-SuperDave71:banana:

Oh, nurbs is great for modeling, but I want to convert most nurbs-surfaces to poly-surface for easy texturing.

About nurbs modeling:

Do some planning and watch the shit hit the fan :)
But after some time I usually feel comfortable about the result.

Damn undseth, dont you sleep? :D

HaHa, well actually I haven't spent much time on this (thanks to decent "blueprints"), but I also want to say that I am doing NOTHING these days, so I often work at night. :)

I saw a photo
 

...and I just had to add details to the rotor. I also got some great close ups of this chopper, so i figured that I may well invest in adding some details for close-up-renderings.

Simply incredible! Hope one day I can model even half that good! :D

Found this the other day. Maybe it can be useful.

HELICOPTERS

Thats a lot of choppers! Thanks! Every pic has that little something to add to my experience with choppers.

I just love nurbs! I even got to learn to use the surface fillet tools properly. I'll use this tool when I have skinned the whole exterior of this helicopter.

I have finished tweaking the surfaces in this pic.

edit:
Oh and thanks guys, and just ask me for advice, it is so fruitful to be handed over a solution when you have a problem you either cannot solve or dont quite understand. It speed up the learning process I think, having a teatcher to help you out on those questions and be done with it, and move on to other problems.

great going undseth... would love to see the finished work...

very acurate work!, would luv to see the finished work too!

skills
 

Undseth this is a really good shot, man i can't wait to get where you r now. Keep modeling.

What kind of lighting are you using for those test renders?

Very nice whirly bird so far.
Nice rotor detail :)

Thanks guys!

dave_baer:
I usually stick to the default lightning when modeling, but the one shown last is lit with a directional ligh. It is nice to have some shadows to create a better spacial effect, rather than a kind of ambient-looking light, with the defaults.

I usually use raytraced shadows, im not too good with the depthmap setting.

Man, this took some hours :)
 

Air intakes done. Glad I'm through with it!

Another pic
 

Hope you dont mind guys.

Mind what? The fact that your such a kick ass modeler that you make the rest of us want jobs at McDonalds asking people "You want fries with that?" :D

:beer:

watch it now. McDonalds has some pretty good insurance for employees....

A nose job
 

Haha, well here's some more development. Actually I plan to show you how I make the nose;

1) I first wondered if I should simply make half of a nurbs sphere and tweak it, and then attatch it to the rest of the fuselage BUT I made some tests and it did not work as I expected. so...

I have now started to model the nose by copying the fuselage and tweaking it. This will of course generate an issue with the nose tip, as the non-tweaked suface isn't capped.

So, I will take Mtmckinleys advice and simply scale the end-hulls/vertices close to 0. I will put these vertices at the same single vertice position later, for making the surface to a polygon object later on (after I have finished all the modleing on the fuselage).

A nose job II
 

Additional isoparm have been inserted and the hulls have been tweaked.

To be continued...

A nose job III
 

The bottom side of the nose is close to perfection. After tweaking the hulls earlier I had to start tweak both singel vertices and pairs of vertices (for some reason, the basic shape wasn't 100% symmetric on both sides.

To be continued...

This is great fun!
 

Not finished with the nose, but heres a pic. The rotorblades will have a more bend to them.

Starting to look really good, I really like all the detail you are putting time into,
Brian

this kicks butt, i just need to learn how to patch model with nurbs and ill be comparing some with you...

cant wait for the video with like the seals fast roping from the choper

The hardest part to model I'm sure is the nose. Maybe I should have skratch buildt it with curves. This is tweaking hell :)

Comming along really nice undseth!!!

undseth, if the nose does not want to work, just put in a human nose and you at least have a funny thing :D

Ahem... cough... anyway... ;) (not funny)

The nose is so hard to get right. Takes quite some adjustments, but I think I'm on the right track now. I dont want to rush it, since the nose is quite importand to the choppers characteristics.