Unbelievable, I've actually spent a ridiculous amount of time getting decent textures onto the two meshes for the gear assembly housing and front grille...like two hours a night for a week now tiling and placing home-made bitmaps. Just nuts to even get that front grille to finally look decent. Had some fun with editing alpha channels for different levels of reflectivity. I've sort of cheated on this set of textures so far...they're not conventionally placed mapped images...I just slap my bitmap onto a material in gmax and then manipulate the hell out of it, then further refine the way it appears with tiling, offsetting, mirroring, etc, in gmax, and with alpha images in 'DXTBMP'.
There will be a few more areas on this model where I can get a way with not mapping and UVW unwrapping in gmax, but then I have to do it right and create some texture templates. Still lots of animation issues to resolve, and a bit of model tweaking, then a bit of a learning curve regarding layering techniques for a realistic and paintable model. Slow going though, when you're a picky hack like me. Ah well, there's not much on T.V. anyway, so it's a great hobby. (obsession..shhhh )
Thanks Mel, now that I have these few meshes textured I can move on to something else fun. I sort of have to learn some bitmap layering next, I think, as I want to have a fully textured wing assembly all done in gmax in order to clone and have my right wing complete upon mirroring. Just a bunch of animation and texturing issues now and the front guns look like crap, so I'll be gettin' 'er done over the coming weeks.
It's sure going to be different. So many tweaks to tweak it's not even funny. Should be good fun when it's done, though. And if it looks like I can see in my head when I'm done, it should be a winner. Flight dynamics are almost poifect, may need to lower the stall speed even further if possible.
Well, I just keep at it, bit by bit as I go through my weekend. Took some time on Sat. and today and got the primary wing top and bottom textures done. (There's two wings on each side.) The textures for the secondary wing top and bottom only have the base texture with rivets done, no weathering yet...I'll chip away at those during the week. I got crafty and modelled each rivet into the wings in 'Anim8or' and took screenshots of all the wing tops and bottoms...and played with adding the panel lines, indents and weathering in 'Pixia' and 'PhotoShop'. If this works out right, I'll have these two images as an overlay layer to go on top of markings and decals etc., and when the layers are merged the whole wing with the paint scheme should look pretty realistic.
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Last edited by harkonnen on Mon Oct 22, 2007 10:12 pm; edited 1 time in total
Right on...wasted a sunny afternoon and lovely balmy evening finishing up the secondary wing textures. It's good to have these done...I've been dying to start texturing the wings so I can be done and venture into the clone/mirror gmax animations mess. Gotta get the wings and jets moving properly and get on with weapons texturing and animation. Holy crap, gotta do those spinning jet fans too. Got those textures done, just need to make and place the 'spinning' disks that imitate the turbines. God I hope this bloody thing looks decent and all the animations are do-able after all is said and done...it's got potential to be really really cool....I just hope I can pull it all off without compromise. I wade into these big-assed, big-idea projects like a blind goof and then realize I've created 80 hours work for myself. Probably good that I get into posting this crap...it keeps me motivated to actually try and get it finished and out there.
Yeah, I know, the small wing textures are a bit dark, especially the small wing bottom one...but if I need to I can set the opacity of the image a little less when I figure out this layer stuff for sure.
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Last edited by harkonnen on Tue Oct 23, 2007 11:50 pm; edited 1 time in total
Well, when you finally do get your hands on this bugger, and press 'Shift+W', you'll see that she has plenty of sting. As for flying the Atlantic....Uh, I dunno...why do you ask me all the hard questions, I'm just a hack wannabe developer that couldn't develop an accurate real-world plane under threat of death??! LOL, all kidding aside bud, the W.A.S.P.V is meant to be a shorter distance, fast-scramble ground-support vehicle. Our men and women in Kandahar are subject to all manner of guerrilla warfare, especially from roadside Improvised Explosive Devices. Typical helicopters would be great as a security patrol instrument to minimize chances for planting these IED's but they become an irresistible target themselves for the rocket-launcher scoundrels that lurk in the surrounding terrain. HARK AEROSPACE was comissioned to design and build a light, fast, armoured STOL vehicle with sophisticated surveillance electronics that could zoom across the desert and mountain terrain or slow down to almost a standstill hover as needed. At this point in time, as the first prototype is being refined and constructed, HARK AEROSPACE has beautifully implemented all military requirements except one.
Seems that all the specs are do-able...EXCEPT...the small size of the jet engines (and respectively the aircraft itself), and small wing-surface area dictate that decent armouring is impossible with conventional materials on this craft, it's just too heavy for proper flight if it's protected to spec. Over the coming weeks and months, extensive testing of various composite materials for an armoured but still light defensive aircraft will be conducted. Several materials look promising....it needs to be done right, as there is no sense having another vulnerable target out there, no matter how light, fast or deadly.
...And to answer your question properly, I fly everything with 'Unlimited Fuel' checked..most of the FS (fantasy) aircraft I have collected would chew up all the fuel on start-up! But this thing, in reality, should be able to go out for an hour of Combat Air Patrol, or a little longer if just going from A to B.
To all the real military types and respected veterans that may frequent these forums...please take my military ramblings with a grain of salt...I only have a faint idea of what I'm talking about and this stuff is presented for entertainment purposes only.
LOL, more like you get halfway across the desert and then realize that you miscalculated fuel use and now need your buddies to come extract you from an unfriendly situation.
Well, I've been looking at these wing textures over and over since getting them done, and I'm realizing that I like the small, secondary wing textures better than the ones that will be going on the large, main wings that were the first two maps posted up there. Those main wings are too light now for my liking....I prefer the smallwing textures as they are fuller and more metallic looking as well. The two lighter textures for the top and bottom of the bigwing have original textures that are fuller and better looking...the original bitmap with just the bare metal and rivets. I guess I can use that as the background layer, then have the 'decal/logo' layer on top of that, then have this panel line/indents/highlights/weathering layer go over that. Then if I have to I can also use the same technique on the darker, smallwing...have a darker underlayer, or background, put the lettering/logos on top of that and then slap another layer of weathering/surface detail over that. I love the concept of layering, it has potential to add realism as some dirt and soot streaks can go over the actual paint scheme & logos, etc. 'ACES' did a nice job of 'paintchipping' on the default Corsair in FS2002. You could spend days just weathering and paintchipping the surfaces of your aircraft...or of course you could get a life. .....NAHHH!
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