DinosaurJR's Random Grab Bag of Stuff...

[dinosaurJR]

What on earth is this mad man doing?!?!?!?

Seriously, I dont really know myself - its just a model that Ive been playing with for the last couple of months...

I was planning to do the roughing in in MS3d, then export to Blender to do the fine work - to really see what Blender can do...

Its standing at around 4250 polys now - and thats just the head... so its probably not suitable for A2... anyways... just though I would share... Not too sure which way the shape is going to be honest - its really heading down the BSG design route now - but who knows what it might turn out to be...

Oh - and any other random (Non Halo:FC) that I come up with - I think I will chuck it in here too... Should be interesting...

 

[Majestic]

Oh very nice design, very nice indeed.

 

[dinosaurJR]

(Flips switch - lightning flashes, thunder crashes)

Arise necro thread ARRRIIISSSSSSSSE MWAHAHAHAAAA!!

ahem...

sorry, I got a wee bit carried away there...

Thanks Majestic, for the kind comments - that model is still in my to do list, but as my to do list is less of an actual ordered list of things to do and more of a parallel universe populated with everything I ever wanted to do ever (regardless of my ability / skill / the laws of physics / any actual basis in reality...) I dont think it will be getting finished any time soon...

Now. The real reason I got all Frankenstein on this thread is this...;

Spoiler: Can you guess what it is...?

I have always had a hankering for modeling some of my favourite WW2 warbirds, and this is my all time favourite.

A pint of bitter and possibly some sandwiches to teh first to correctly guess what on earth it is... An additional pack of chocolate biscuits to the one who can also name the mark and variant (yes, it is possible from the little detail there is so far...)

She stands at a little under 9,500 polys just now, but as I have no intention of putting her in 2 (or any other game) I dont think it will be a problem...

What do y'all think...?

 

[Hellkite]

P-51 Mustang ,,,,,

but the the is no scope

so a Messerschmitt Bf 109 ???

 

[dinosaurJR]

Sorry Hellkite, not a p51 or a 109... The answer is in the shape of the wings... The bonus is in the details... Good guess though.

 

[Jetfreak]

Whatever the case, I'd be mighty fine for pic making when done. Looking forward seeing it done and textured.

No guess though lol

 

[Hellkite]

if not the 109 it has to be the

the Supermarine Spitfire

 

[kjc733]

Hmm, it does look distinctly Spitfire-ish to me.
Wing looks like the E-type, twin 20mm and twin 50cal. So I'd have said Mk9E... except didnt the Mk9 have a 4-bladed prop?

 

[dinosaurJR]

if not the 109 it has to be the

the Supermarine Spitfire

DINGDINGDINGDING!!!

Hellkite got it right... No bonus though...

So - a pint of bitter and a selection of sandwiches to that man...

Hmm, it does look distinctly Spitfire-ish to me.
Wing looks like the E-type, twin 20mm and twin 50cal. So I'd have said Mk9E... except didnt the Mk9 have a 4-bladed prop?

kjc733 gets the bonus pack of chocolate biscuits and Bully's special prize - an all inclusive break for two at the wonderful, wonderful Pontins holiday village for spotting the mark and type, and the special prize for spotting the DELIBERATE MISTAKE...

Yeah - as far as I know, all Mk9 Spits had the four blade job, apart from some early production ones, which were upgraded to the four blade prop later... I actually realised this about 20 mins after posting... honest...

Well, most of the blocking out is done - I really need to have a look at the canopy part, its a little wobbly, and also tidy up the general shape here and there...

Spoiler: Holy Spit!!

To be honest, I think I will have another go at the whole canopy area, the prop and the landing gear - the wheels dont sit flush with the underside of the wing - due to both the limitations of MS3d, and my limited skill... It would involve deleting out whole panels of the underside then building up the wheel wells a bit at a time. Not particularly fun in Milkshape, very time consuming and not always guaranteed to give good results... But possibly worth a try...

As for the texture, well, I guess that will come next... then after that, maybe a crack at animated landing gear...

Oh, and at the mo, it stands at around 12,500 polys...

Sorry Hellkite, Im affraid its gonna be another double post here..

I got her ready for texturing... The wheels now can sit flush with the wing, and I totally re modeled the canopy - I think it looks a million times better. However, I have missed one detail... The interior! I think it can wait til later though...

Oh, and after tidying up and re modeling some parts more simply, she now weighs 13,500 polys or so...

Spoiler: Ready to texture

 

[Starfox1701]

Rats with thoughs wings I was thinking a hurracane

 

[Majestic]

I noticed a few smoothing errors that you may want to fix. In this first picture it's on the right landing gear housing. The circle indent where the wheel goes up when in flight.

Spoiler: Image

This second it's right near the cockpit.

Spoiler: Image

But overall an amazing job, it's great to see a non-scifi job for a change. I love WW2 stuff. The model here reminds me of Blazing Angels, a great game that I really should see about getting back to at some point soon.

 

[thunderfoot]

Nice piece of work, DJ. The Spit was and is a beautiful airplane. More art than war machine. The version you've chosen to model is one I fly quite often in the IL-2 series. She's a handful. But this is because she's a thoroughbred.

 

[dinosaurJR]

Thoroughbred indeed - I agree - more an exercise in art than a war machine.

I have begun to add a texture to her now - This one is an example of a Spitfire Mk IX (although she is wearing the colour scheme and ID number of a Mk Vb) belonging to 41 squadron, RAF, around 1942... Once the texture is done, I will make the required changes to back date the model to Mk Vb spec...

Ive started working on a Mk XII as well (with the Rols Royce Griffon engine, it totally changes teh lines of the 'plane...)

I also hit on a really good modeling technique for making reference models... I will explain more on that later though...

Spoiler: Holy Spit... again!!

If the mood takes me I might do a Battle of Britain Mk1a too... And if I get really excited, a Hurricane Mk1a and BF 109e... who knows... Maybe even a Bf 110, or an HE 111...

EDIT - I almost forgot - thanks Majestic, I fixed the fuselage mesh error, but the one under the wing was a wee nightmare...

 

[Majestic]

It can sometimes be a nightmare to fix an error, I am glad you got them fixed. The model is looking great.

 

[thunderfoot]

"Shirttail Yellow Four to Shirttail Yellow Leader, Tally Ho! Spitfire, twelve o' clock high!"

Nicely done! Wonder what she'd look like in Aussie or Kiwi warpaint?

 

[Hellkite]

"Shirttail Yellow Four to Shirttail Yellow Leader, Tally Ho! Spitfire, twelve o' clock high!"

Nicely done! Wonder what she'd look like in Aussie or Kiwi warpaint?

Ask and you shall receive

 

[dinosaurJR]

Wow - great reference pics Hellkite - An ANZAC Spitfire, eh? getting right on it!!

Well.... Its not finished... but...

Spoiler: fighting Aussie

Yep - I like the name too...

 

[Jetfreak]

Very cool man, any thoughts to what do with her once done?

 

[dinosaurJR]

Thanks mate.

To be honest, I have no idea what to do with her - at over 13000 polys, its a little resource heavy for a fighter... plus, the Spitfire, no matter how cool has no real place in game...

I had thought about a Battle of Britain strategic mod, whereby you could be responsible for the placing of whole squadrons of fighters to intercept incoming luftwaffe raids, or plan and direct the raids and the AI would try to defend their airbases... but that would take 100s of aircraft, and alot of work to implement (Im not even sure A2 could do what I want it to do...) Just another one of my crazy ideas...

I might release the mesh with a couple of different texture sets (RAF, RAAF etc...) as an "as is" release, allowing people do do with it whatever they want...

 

[Jetfreak]

Ah sweet, I'd certainly like to try my hand on doing some pics with the model. If I can just replace the game backgrounds with skies, then we may have something eh? Worth a try ^_^

 

[Majestic]

Thanks Dino, I am honoured that you'd named the RAAF one after me.

A A2 mod would be awesome. Could have have air ships *** bases. Have them mobile with no resource collecting just a restriction on how many that can be built at once. As Jetfreak has mentioned, replace the backgrounds with skies and remove all the planets and nebulas etc.

I am sure it would be something everyone would try out over time. Something to think about after the Halo mod eh?

 

[dinosaurJR]

Jet - I think that would look great - although I think it might Need a Zero to shoot at...

Majestic - Its was nothing, really - I just saw the red mark below the cockpit on the image Hellkite posted and I thought the Spit needed a name... Majestic is a pretty cool name for a Spit, plus its Australian, you're Australian... it really wrote itself... Im glad you like it though

I have been thinking of an Air War type mod for years now... just never got round to doing anything about it... Would be cool though...

Here, I have been adding some detail to the top and bottom surfaces, it is certainly not fresh out the box...

Spoiler: Well used...

 

[Adm_Z]

Heh sweet model! Is it missing a wheel?

An air based mod would be awesome. Verry similar to the Naval Armada mod at ff, which, despite the bugs was very well thought out. Alot of work went into it, and I think alot of work would have to go into an air based mod, however, I think the end result would be worth it.

I would also suggest FO as a base because of the extra things you could do with fighters and such, but that is up to you.

 

[dinosaurJR]

He he he, yeah - one wheel is missing...

I just noticed when you said... d'oh!

I think its mainly finished - here are some shots...

Spoiler: Spitfire Mk IX

But hey - what do I know, right...? I missed half the undercarriage...

But seriously, if there is anything you guys can see from the pics that are glaringly needing fixed, let me know - if not, then I might release it as a stand alone model, for converting / pic taking / whatever...

 

[Starfox1701]

looking good

 

[Chiletrek]

Hello:
The model looks very good, and the texture, well I am wondering how you did the "dirty" effect... if you can give some advices that would be awesome .
Keep it up!

 

[Majestic]

Beautiful work mate, quality stuff. I sure hope down the track you do a WW2 flight mod, I would certainly install it.

 

[dinosaurJR]

You know - I think an air war mod might be the thing to get my creative juices flowing once more... I'll think about it... I just need to look into refining the modeling technique to make the models look good and still have them low poly enough to have good sized air battles...

I have actually put some thought into this - since the directors cut feature was removed from A2 - we need to alter the physics to make the planes circle around a point - not sit still - that would be unrealistic - this IS doable, right?

Also - some though needs to be put into how the bases will be made (airships sound like an awesome idea Majestic, gigantic tethered airborne fortresses filled with Hydrogen and packed with fighters... kinda like a hyper realistic version of Crimson Skies...) - either airborne or ground based...

Next - disabled engines... this would result in floating 'planes... not realistic... this should probably be removed... (or have some sort of giant black hole hidden below the scenery that makes up the terrain...)

As for life support - this could be fixed so that it represents the engines - so that you put the enemy on fire (change the steam emitter to a fiery / smokey one) and the crew count could be some sort of timer, as in how long you can survive being on fire for until you crash... (idk - so many thoughts, so little talent...)

Weapons would be quite simple - machine guns / cannon would work with standard pulse weapons - flak could be made with modified art. torps. bombs... a bit harder, I think... impossible...

This could be fun...

as for the dirty effects, I use several different brushes (PSPv9 has three different smoke wisp brushes and one "fuzz" brush. I then set the color to medium gray and the opacity low (around 20%), set blend mode to darken and try my best to control the feather effect, keeping the brush strokes short.as for the oily streaks on the bottom, I set the opacity a little higher, color to black and keep the size of the brush small, then keep the brush strokes long, but controlled, so that it looks like oil has streaked along the bottom of the fuselage (as it did tend to do on Spitfires... )

Just play around with the settings on a separate canvas for a while until you get the effect you like, then use the same techniques on the texture you want to dirty up. Another option is to create a blank raster layer on top of the texture, then add the dirty streaks to that... This gives you greater control to fix mistakes etc... than if you go ahead and add directly to the texture.

 

[kjc733]

I really need to learn how to texture! That seems a good looking bird to me, you've done the Spitfire justice methinks.

I have actually put some thought into this - since the directors cut feature was removed from A2 - we need to alter the physics to make the planes circle around a point - not sit still - that would be unrealistic - this IS doable, right?

Don't see why not. Ships will circle a station if set to defend it, or attacking in a circle formation. And it was also an "unintended extra feature" in the early cuts of the BSG Half race mod that half the time the vipers would make fast tight circles instead of just sitting still.

Some good ideas there, hoping you consider it.

 

[Dominus_Noctis]

[...]Ships will circle a station if set to defend it, or attacking in a circle formation. And it was also an "unintended extra feature" in the early cuts of the BSG Half race mod that half the time the vipers would make fast tight circles instead of just sitting still.

Some good ideas there, hoping you consider it.

If you utilize the FO engine you can get fighters to circle and pirouette easily enough. You can check out Adm. Zaxxon's BSG mod for a look at how that works