Hi guys,
My course is now finished so its time to work up some old pieces (texturing and rendering) as well as creating some new pieces.
This is the start of a mk1 bristol blenheim light bomber used during world war 2. I'll be initially keeping it low res and then upping to a high res version to generate normal maps etc for a game model and realistic rendering.

Bristol Blenheim:


Reference plane setup. I found some really good blueprints but they needed a fair bit of work to match and update with extra detail etc. This bit took by far the longest time to sort so far:


Basic body (using preview smooth):


Blocked out wings:


Engines blocked in:


Rudder blocked in:


More to come
Simon

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Examples of bTraffic - a traffic animation tool for Maya
bFlocking - a tool for Maya 8.5+ to generate flocking and swarming behaviours
Jan/Feb Challenge 2007 Entry and W.I.P
May/Jun Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Mar/Apr Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Jan/Feb Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Nov/Dec Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Sep/Oct Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Jul/Aug Challenge 2005 Entry
www.flash-fx.net

hey
looks really nice
im not a big fan of airplane and those things...
but when it comes to 3D im totaly fan
and with all those image reference im sure it will be perfect and your modeling is looking good now
cant wait to see the final

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Maya modeler - current project Avatar - purplemikey

oops, missed the current view:


Simon

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Examples of bTraffic - a traffic animation tool for Maya
bFlocking - a tool for Maya 8.5+ to generate flocking and swarming behaviours
Jan/Feb Challenge 2007 Entry and W.I.P
May/Jun Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Mar/Apr Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Jan/Feb Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Nov/Dec Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Sep/Oct Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Jul/Aug Challenge 2005 Entry
www.flash-fx.net

have you got enough reference images t1ck? i guess you can never have too many!

looks like a great start - must be nice to be done with your course.

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arran3D

arran3D blog

lol arran, I spent half the day yesterday trawling the internet for photo reference and the other half chopping those blueprints up and resizing, altering and marking them for later use

Yeah its great to have finished and take a little time off to relax and work on a portfolio.
I've got some development ideas for encompassing the flocking and traffic tools with another *hush hush* one that will give people a lot of power to do some cool things but at the minute its back to good old modelling with an aim to really push the texturing and shading part that is always neglected

Hows it going with your various projects? You've been knocking some cool stuff out recently but I haven't had the time to keep track.

Just added some more tail parts to the model:


Simon

---

Examples of bTraffic - a traffic animation tool for Maya
bFlocking - a tool for Maya 8.5+ to generate flocking and swarming behaviours
Jan/Feb Challenge 2007 Entry and W.I.P
May/Jun Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Mar/Apr Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Jan/Feb Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Nov/Dec Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Sep/Oct Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Jul/Aug Challenge 2005 Entry
www.flash-fx.net

ha - your references look excellent - this will be a great texturing project and a lot of fun to build.

just posted about 5 renders of my office scene. there are a few things here and there that i could adjust but i want to move on to zbrush for now.

looking forward to seeing that portfolio and future bflocking and btraffic projects.

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arran3D

arran3D blog

Looking really nice mate!

Fast going too!!

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"No pressure, no diamonds" Thomas Carlyle

This looks like a pretty sweet start. Nice choice of plane too. I would have picked the Lancaster myself

Anyway, glad to hear you completed your course! So congrats on that...... though this may sound bad, but what was your course? (I guess I wasn't around when you started it)

Anyway, nice work! Looking forward to seeing the final product.

-Steven

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www.stevenegan-cgi.com

"Your weapons are no match for ours! People of Mars, surrender!"
"Um, this isn't Mars. This is Earth."
"Earth? Earth-with-nuclear-weapons Earth?"
"Yes."
[long pause] "Friend!!"

arran - I'll be having a look in two secs at your progress

steve - cheers maybe pop a lion or two in the cockpit?

steven - Thanks yeah I was tempted to go for the more well known ones as there is a ton of reference info but decided on a slightly less common one. I'm playing IL2 sturmovik online a lot at the minute and its a pity that you cant fly this baby.
The course was a Masters Degree in Creative Technology at Leeds Met Uni (UK) which didnt have everything I wanted but was spread about and made me get some of the old 2D digital skills going again. Fun bits in the course were making the warcones game and creating the flocking and traffic tool. The rest was just hard work for the 13 months of the course.

Simon

---

Examples of bTraffic - a traffic animation tool for Maya
bFlocking - a tool for Maya 8.5+ to generate flocking and swarming behaviours
Jan/Feb Challenge 2007 Entry and W.I.P
May/Jun Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Mar/Apr Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Jan/Feb Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Nov/Dec Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Sep/Oct Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Jul/Aug Challenge 2005 Entry
www.flash-fx.net

hey Si

nice going mate, I always found the Bristol Beaufighter a better looking plane than this one though, its very similar but has a better looking cockpit/front end area. This one reminds me of the old WW2 gliders...

nice job though
Jay

cheers Jay
yeah the beaufighter has a cool small nose and cockpit area, 'cuter' if you could call a warplane that
Depending on how this baby turns out when textured I might go back and make the mk4 or mk5 version with the extended nose and possibly with the extra turret under that.

Here's the last bit for the night, cutting the engine shape out to fit the wing correctly and opening it up so that I can add the undercarriage (the wheel remains visible in that oval gap when its retracted). Got a few edges not smoothing perfectly but its not an issue yet:


Simon

---

Examples of bTraffic - a traffic animation tool for Maya
bFlocking - a tool for Maya 8.5+ to generate flocking and swarming behaviours
Jan/Feb Challenge 2007 Entry and W.I.P
May/Jun Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Mar/Apr Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Jan/Feb Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Nov/Dec Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Sep/Oct Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Jul/Aug Challenge 2005 Entry
www.flash-fx.net

Nice Si

Looks very clean, could you post up some wires when you get the chance?

good work mate
Jay

cheers Jay, wires as requested

I'm concentrating on the smoothed vertice positions so the unsmoothed might look a bit funny around the cockpit untill it gets detailed and the wings as the cuts need evenly spacing.

lowres (1500 polys):


smoothed:


lowres:


smoothed:


Simon

---

Examples of bTraffic - a traffic animation tool for Maya
bFlocking - a tool for Maya 8.5+ to generate flocking and swarming behaviours
Jan/Feb Challenge 2007 Entry and W.I.P
May/Jun Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Mar/Apr Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Jan/Feb Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Nov/Dec Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Sep/Oct Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Jul/Aug Challenge 2005 Entry
www.flash-fx.net

adding a turret:




Simon

---

Examples of bTraffic - a traffic animation tool for Maya
bFlocking - a tool for Maya 8.5+ to generate flocking and swarming behaviours
Jan/Feb Challenge 2007 Entry and W.I.P
May/Jun Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Mar/Apr Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Jan/Feb Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Nov/Dec Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Sep/Oct Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Jul/Aug Challenge 2005 Entry
www.flash-fx.net

and a bit of turret detail:




Simon

---

Examples of bTraffic - a traffic animation tool for Maya
bFlocking - a tool for Maya 8.5+ to generate flocking and swarming behaviours
Jan/Feb Challenge 2007 Entry and W.I.P
May/Jun Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Mar/Apr Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Jan/Feb Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Nov/Dec Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Sep/Oct Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Jul/Aug Challenge 2005 Entry
www.flash-fx.net