Mi - 24 Hind
 

A new project I am working on. I have several different directions in mind to take this.But first I need to get a good model, which Im finding quite hard.

Hi Ben
Looks like a good start, what are you finding hard?...........dave

Edit: just seen what you put in the hummer post

i remember this in the first metal gear solid

The overall shape looks good Ben but be good to also see a wire frame to help get a better idea as to how the geometry is put together. My method is to keep things as low as possible when modeling, keeping in mind where the details are going to be. This enables me to then go back and begin improving the model by adding details. This also makes life easier when adapting areas and will allow you to change the edge flow quickly to accommodate what is needed. Not sure if others use it but I always hit 3 to show the model when subdivided. I tend to work with this on the majority of the time and find it a great help. If you could get a wire up it would be a great help though and enable me to give you some advice on the model.

Cheers all.

Murambi: Only ever played the last MGS. It does remind me of the helicopter in 'Wasteleand', on MW2 though. Not sure if it is actually it.

Leon: This a screenshot with the 3 button on. I switch between 1 and 3 constantly, and work in both also.

This may be a little misleading as a wire though, as remembering the apache tutorial from this site, the guy's approach was, model now, clean up the mesh later, so you can see where, like around the cockpit area, and on the bulk of the body, there are tri's and 5+ sides, which I havnt accepted as final, but have gone with with the attitude of, 'I'll tidy up later'.


What I notice on your helicopter though is, say, around the windows, there is some definite panelling going on, like the pilots main side window, theres a protruding part that goes around it, following the outline of the window, and below that, the opening under the cockpit has a similar 'panelled' look, that looks (from your wireframe shot) that its actually modelled into the main body geometry. Its details like that stand out to me, that if I were to attempt similar, would probably end up causing problems elsewhere with the extra edgeloops they would create. Your topology looks so orderly for what looks like a very good, detailed model.

Yeah the topology needs work but like you say you already know this. I would probably have my edges organized very differently though and hope you dont mind me posting this quick paintover to show what I mean. Also excuse the crudeness as I am without my wacom at the mo and am not great with ps with a mouse . :headbang:
This just demonstrates how I would have the edges flowing into each other. I would model the windows separately but there would be edges flowing into them. This would enable me to easily add the trim underneath so the windows will match the base and follow the flow of the model. I always look at what I am modeling and work out the best method as to where I am going to have my edges as the 1st polys you lay down go a long way to determining the overall flow of the entire model. In this sense it is very important to get this right early on or else you end up fighting yourself further into the modeling process to try and get things where you want.
You do have a good base though but I would go back and re model over it with a different approach to the edge flow. This should be a lot faster as you have a good base to work from, allowing you to focus on the edge flow and topology, as you already know where your polygons need to be positioned. Hope the crit does not seem harsh as I know how difficult this is and you have made a good start but just feel the edge flow may cause you problems further down the line. That said you did mention that you were going to be changing this anyway and may already of planned what I am suggesting.
Keep up the good work though and look forward to seeing your progress.

another nice ref image there leon, cheers. Im gonna persist with where im at for the time being, but Im more leaning towards redoing the whole cockpit shell, as a seperate piece of geometry like you suggest.

Ive been working on some of the other areas today. Still stuck on the panelling idea. Might have a look at using z, maybe a bump, or, if i really want to do my own head in, a displacement.

This isnt the final texture just something I threw on for a render

some more work today

Hi Ben
Looking good Ben, I think the key to this model is the canopy get that right then all other parts will fall into place............dave

Edit:I think the hind has 5 blades yours looks like it has 4?

Yeah, I am still going to remodel that area. Im taking Leon's advice and gonna plan the edge flow of it first, and I have a rough idea in mind of how to redo that part.

Hmm. 5 blades. Im not sure. I shall have a check.

I think its coming along ok. Hopefully if I can create good uvs for it it will step it up a level when I get proper textures on there to, spec, colour, bump etc. So still a long way to go. Im thinking of buying a hard surface texturing tutorial from the Gnomon website to follow as I texture this.

I had a little time to go back and do some more work on this. Started texturing...still a ways to go...Im not too happy with it, and still not really sure what Im going to do with it in the end. I guess I'd like to do a little animation and maybe make a couple of stills with some compositing

and some more work today

Liking this better now. Still playing with textures and the material

Hi Ben
Looking good, lacking a little shape around the rotor area looks to straight. I think the texture is realy good...........dave

that material is way too reflective. model looks good tho. just tweak the shader.

Cheers Dave, I have a little piece of Geometry sitting on my low poly version for up there which I havn't proxy'd across yet.

And glad you like the texture, I'm pleased with it myself. Still got some more to add to the main body, then I'll map all the extras, like the rotors and weapons and radars and stuff. Then when it's all done im going to try and paint out some of the seams and model little bits of extra miscellaneous detail to cover any problems or, just to make it look better.

Hammer: Yeah, its a pain. I was playing last night with different maps in different slots, it kind of appeals to me more visually with the higher reflectivity, but I know you're right, and I saw it myself too, for a 'real' helicopter, it's too reflective. I will tone it down at some point.

Think Ive got an idea which I like ofr the scene/setting. God knows if i'll ever see this out or be able to do it. But the idea thats formulating is thus... The helicopter is going to be on some kind of landing pad, in one of those big sci-fi settings like in The Matrix. The camera will basically pan in an onto the helicopter, then it will start up, and fly away into the distance. Got an idea how to do the background, though not sure whether it will work. Im thinking of basically kind of matte painting, and then, keeping the geometry very simple, break it up to use it as a texture map. Basically like skyscrapers but on their side, as if theres loads of little lights everywhere in the back there. Whether they'll show up as 'lights' im not sure, but im thinking I can screen or linear dodge that layer over itself in AFX or something, to make it more effective. And then I might do a second matte painting to show the outside world to the right, mostly sky but maybe a couple of buildings or something.


Challenge and a half... or just a nice idea in theory...hmm

that looks awesome, love the texturing done on it!

Yeah great job Ben, looking awesome. Might be worth adding some more of the details around the rotors as these copters have some intricate stuff going on in that area. Keep up the top work though as you are making great progress.

cheers guys.

Texturing is coming on ok I think. I hope I can get the platform to match, cause Im sure Ive tried large panelled surfaces before and Ive found it hard.

Leon: Possibly. Im worried that with another couple of large maps Im going to start pushing my memory limits. Im keen to start texturing the platform, and then, I guess i'll see how long the render time goes up and where best to spend any extra space after that.
Come to think of it, I dont think i'd quite finished modelling the rotor areas anyway. , the rotors arnt quite 'attached' yet.

Update of todays work. Mostly texturing the platform. Still more to do with the color and bump also which Ive not really started. Changing my mind about the background again, but figure I'll be best to finish all the foreground elements and get the animation of the helicopter and camera right first so i know how much space I'll have to fill with any BG.

Got a third large texture map going, with all (almost) the leftover bits and pieces. Maya didnt like it too much at first and crashed a couple of times, but it seems to have got used it now...wierd how it does that...When i first used the new map in the scene the render time went up to about 5 and a half minutes, but its come back down to just over 3 again now. Still got alot more to do with the texturing, want to get base colours on everything thats grey now, and then all go over everything adding finishing touches and highlights and stuff, and extra bump/spec maps if i can get away with them. I added some landing lights into this as (if I get that far) , I'd like to have them in the animation for takeoff, turning on and off on some kind of loop. Not sure how i'll light the final scene if I animate it after what I learned about rendering animations with FG in my phone project.

Hi Ben
The texturing is tacking over a bit to much could you try toning it down a bit.................dave

Yeah, I had wondered. I wanted to keep it busy...thinking of like computer game cinematic sequence. But I guess I could lower the opacity/saturation on some of those layers. Once its all finished and textured I'll get round to start thinking about how I'll light and render and stuff and adjust it where necesary then...

presume you mean the textures on the landing platform Dave?

this any better?

Yes, have you tried a occlusion pass to bring up the detail on the platform...................dave

Gonna tone down the red stripes on the rotor blades too...


Havnt tried an occlusion pass. I almost went to do one the other day for a test, but, my plan is to render the animation out in diffuse, occlusion, and key lights layers, and then comp them together after


p.s, there was a slight bump on the platform but I took it off to cut down render times while I was working on the colour maps. When the colours are all done, I'll start bringing back in the bump and spec maps as and where needed, depending on how well they work compared with how much they push times up and whether I have the memory to do it.

What sort of sysem are you running Ben and how much memery...........dave

Its 32 bit, Core(TM)2 Quad CPU 2.4 GHZ, 4 gig of Ram.

Windows Vista

Simular to what I have but its a 64 bit with 6 gig of memory. I dont know why you are having crashes. What size are your textures?..........dave

I think I overworry about it, but they do happen. Maya seems to destabalize sometimes, so like, last night, I introduced a new texture map into the scene, and Maya crashed. But I know from experience that if that happens, I turn off, turn on again, and chances are it will work. But there will come a point where it wont take any more. At the moment, I have 2 2048 maps and 1 4096. One of the 2048 ones is duplicated in some spec and reflection slots. Render times are about 3 and a half minutes at the moment, which goes up to over 8 when I add the landing lights in there.

I just duplicated the scene file so I can carry on in the direction I was going to finish the texturing and everything, but felt like having a test with some lighting. Initially I wanted to give it the feel that there was some light from the sky falling on it, and tried a couple of spots. Also did an occlusion pass. I got this render which I quite like, and it has given me some ideas of perhaps another direction I could go in.

if you are having problems rendering it. you should render it in parts and comp it together.
you don't need to worry about lots of passes. just make a surface shader and set the matte opacity to black. apply that to the helicopter (or background depending on what you want to render.) when you render it now, the helicopter will have no alpha and will render black.
so once you have done this for both the BG and the helicopter you should have a background with the outline of the helicopter and the hind by itself on black. now you can use nuke or shake, toxic or whatever to over the helicopter render onto the bg.

Thats better Ben, the texture for the landing pad looks a bit to course and the next time I post on your thread I will only say positive thing............:attn: ...........dave

Phew...starting to feel like I cant do anything right! :)

Yeah, that texture a little too stretched/large for a close up like that I think.


p.s hammer, I forget about that method...will keep in mind.

Got a little bit more texturing done today and played with some ideas for the animation. I took one of the renders into Photoshop to play, and ended up with something I think I could turn into a matte painting that I could use as the environment. Will have to go over some of my old matte painting notes to go over a few things, its been ages now. Im planning on having the helicopter at the bottom of a lift shaft on teh landing platform. Then the platform will rise up, and when it gets to the top, and the helicopter will take off and fly away. Below might end up being what the outside will look like, roughly.

That looks cool Ben................dave

yehaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyy!!!!:)

I did say the next time I posted it would be positive and that is what I did. Your rotor blade need a little work as they look to square. The glass area look like solid glass. I cannot see a front landing gear it looks like your model is blanced on the rear wheels.......Ben fix these three things and your last render will look greate.................dave