Hey guys...

[Razer]

Just thought I'd say hey since andy just showed me this forum. I'm currently modeling some WW2 aircraft for an online flight sim and fiugred I'd show you guys what I've done with AC3D.

Here is the game website. You can check the screenshots for pics of the planes. Pretty much all planes but the japanese ones were made with AC3D.

http://web.targetrabaul.com/index.php

Here is some pics of work i've done with AC3D.

http://www.fshangar.com/tr/036.jpg

http://www.fshangar.com/tr/041.jpg



Tony "Razer" Martin
---------------------------
http://www.fshangar.com
http://web.targetrabaul.com

ModelMaker/PixelPusher

[StarTux]

Awesome work!

Still trying to get the basics down here :).

Takes time and patience as far as I can tell as I want to add planes to FlightGear (about the only Flightsim running on Linux, but its actually pretty good...).

Matt

[-WOODY-]

Great job Razor. I love the old weathered skin jobs you've done to the planes. The Navy Dauntless skin job looks great as well.

[Cowboybebop]

That's some great work Razor :o

Any tips or list of do nots for us newbies ?

[Razer]

a ton! :) I pretty much learn something new everyday and always finding new ways to do things.

I've helped a good group of people learn AC3D for another sim I use to work on and some of my old ways no longer need to be done with the newest version of AC3D.


Any areas you're having problems with?

[Cowboybebop]

Well I only been using AC3d for about 2 weeks now.

But my buggest problem would have to be texturing using the texture coordinate editor. A example is when i first did the car tutorial, I was able to get the sides of the car textured fine but when I tried the top it would take backwards, then the whole texture and the more I tried correcting it the more it got messed up.
Some other problems are I saw a few models of modern planes and wanted to try a few(I was expecting poor looking ones, my skill level) but I have problems drawing a smooth fuselage/cockpits the only way I can get things to remotely resemble shapes of models I want is to edit every vertex.
Curved surfaces- example doing the car tutorial with rounded bumpers and overall appearance.
Currently I started on a beach scene small island, rock, and a palm tree. When I added water it seems to take away the 3d perspective of the land(land slopes so it appears to blend into water flatly) so I tried using a texture with a alpha channel in hopes that it would show the land underneath but still reflective when rendered in povray but it's not really working. Also I have no idea where to start with the palm tree branches, palms or whatever it's called. Each approach seems to work intensive(drawing each one) and yield poor results(looks horrible)

I guess overall I'm making the transition from hand drawing to computer drawing. So I think I need to look at it different but I don't know how, with hand art it's easy line, color, light, shadow and etc. With Computer art I know lighting is important and textures that's about it. I know some terminology but haven't worked with 3d modeling before outside of trying a few demo products.

[Cowboybebop]

I hope I did not scare you off :cry:

[Razer]

i'll go into more detail about the TCE later but to give you a better idea of making planes in AC3D you need to use the ellipse command a bunch. Draw an ellipse when move the vetices where you want them. Great blue prints or 3 - view drawings of the plane is a must on making the plane so its 1:1 with the real plane.

Load up your planes in the windows (i'll go more into this as well) then draw an ellipse and move the vertices to say the shape of the middle most part of the fuselage.

Then drag the ellipse to the nose of the plane and extrude it the lengh of the plane making sure you have enough segments to mold the new cylinder the shape of the fuselage. Don't worry about gear doors, cockpits, or tails. your just wanting the basic shape for now then you can go back and add details.

I'm heading off to work but i'll fill in the blanks more when i get back.

[-WOODY-]

The most important thing to have when it comes to modeling is patience. Everthing is done in stages, a little here, a little there. Even a great oil painting is created in stages. You start out with a rough sketch then add in your basic shapes. You then go on to build up layers of color until you have the finished product.
Think of modeling the same way. Don't have it in mind that when you start, it's going to look like the finished product right off the bat. As far as your texture editor, when you bring it up just click and drag a box over your vertices to select them all, then in the lower left hand corner you'll see 2 buttons that read "cw", and "ccw" which stands for clockwise and counter clockwise. Just hit the button till your texture spins around to the right direction.
As far as plane modeling, you'll definately need at least 3 views of a plane to go off of. Top, side, and front view will be needed. When you start, just go to front view and create an elipse and size it so it matches the size and shape of the nose. Select all the vertices then click on "surface" then extrude the elipse maybe an 1/8 of the way toward the back of the plane. Now select all vertices of the newly extruded section then look at it in top view. Scale it to size from the top view, then go to side view and scale it to height while moving it up or down to match the picture.
Continue doing this, extruding and scalling, till you finish off the tail. Depending on how much detail you want, you may only have to extrude 7 to 10 times.
As far as your water thing, you can adjust the reflective level and transparency levels by right clicking on the color in the bottom left corner the select edit.

[Cowboybebop]

So just get good basic shapes and slowly build on them ? Ok, I thought I was missing something because some people come up with this stuff overnight it seems, thanks you 2, for taking the time to talk to me and for your kind words.


I really what you guys to know your words really help me, I popped open AC3d and Instantly knew what I needed to do to finish the scene. However I'm going to take my time implementing the changes :) so far so good I pulled the land out of the water and raised it up a bit it helps with the 3d look, I'll revist transparent water when I know how to do it :oops: . I'm going to start making the palms from circles and after that get back to the plane. I even made the land bigger cause I plan to add a hut. :D

[Razer]

people that do things over night (like myself) have been doing this for years and we've learnwed a few ways to speed up the construction.

[Cowboybebop]

That says a lot about this program, that veteran\elite 3d Modelers use it :D

I'm more comfortable with my basic level of skill now and I'm just trying to push it to the limits :oops: (already there) Seriously though I can't explain it you and woody helping me or just interacting with me keeps me just as motivated no, even more so than just before I was reasearching AC3D. I do have a couple more questions; when editing vertices and you delete a certain one and the line turns blue how do you patch\fix that ? I use to use optimized vertices/surface but on certain shapes they skewed the model. And Lastly what additional tools do you use ?

Woody introduced me to pov-ray and I am loving it :D

[-WOODY-]

Well if you've accidentaly deleted a vertice, the only thing I can think of to do is just "control-Z" to get it back.
If you can't get it back by doing that, just select each vertice around the hole in a counter clockwise motion then select "vertice" in your menu then go down to "create ordered surface". Hopefully that'll get it back.

BTW Razor, have you thought about doing any kind of modding for Battlefield 1942? I wish AC3D had a plug-in for that.

[Razer]

why do you need to select the vertices counterclock wise?

I did models for old school Rainbow 6 with a weapons pack i did. Started to work on models for Flashpoint ww2 mod but then halfway thru we found out you need oxygen to model (something just for flashpoint). I've also done a ton of planes for a great flight sim called Fighter Squadron (best phyics in any game ever made) then started working on a Medal of Honor Pacific mod but that did work out with project leader problems and while working on textures for Warbirds 3 I got into TW stuff witht he game you see above.

If i had more time i've love to do something for BF but most of the cool ideas are already in the works.

[-WOODY-]

If you select your vertices's in a counter clockwise progression, it will cause the normal to face outward the right way. Clockwise will cause the normal to face inward.

Yep, there are tons of mods for BF, my favorite being Desert Combat. That's about all I play anymore. Haven't played many flight sim type of games. I have an old copy of LII Stumovick ( spelling? ), but hardly ever played it. It was fun, but I'm more of a ground pounder. Nothing like firing a shell in a T-72 to get your blood pumping.
Modding for it is tough because EA wont release an SDK. At least not yet.

[Cowboybebop]

Hey woody, now when I try rendering in pov-ray no matter what the 3d view is I get a black screen. The only thing I can think of is if I made things to big, is that possible

[-WOODY-]

That's probably your camera view, not Pov-Ray. When I open a saved file or I just got through saving my current scene, I just go to view in the menu bar and select "view to orgin" then re-adjust where I want the camera to point at.
For some reason you have to reset it now and then or it just points out into space which is probably what happend.

[PeteyPixel]

Instead of extruding out the shape with ellipses, did you ever consider just using the convex surface function in the vertex menu? It will automatically drag the shape of the fuselage through all of those verts. Not always perfect, and it should only be used to model simple paths (ie. just the fuselage, not fuselage and wings). The good thing about it is that the vertex's on each ellipse don't have to match up or be the same number and you can move the vertex's after the shape has been created. Much easier. Then you can boolean out your holes or just cut the fuselage yourself with the insert vertex function. Just some info. Peace

[PeteyPixel]

With booleans, make sure the model is basically done and the spot that you are going to cut or union isn't going to be included in any type of vertex or bone animation. Booleans achieve their drama by mish mashing the vertex's into one congruent shape. Congruent but not orderly. Try smoothing or splining an intersection and you'll see what I mean. Make sure the object, sphere or cylinder is set to the right resolution level. If you can't achieve what you want you can still use the convex function by placing an ellipse where the cabin is or where the wings extend. Then just extrude the wings or move the verts in the cabin into position after deleting out the shape.

[Razer]

here is a good tut from another game i've done stuff one and its for AC3D.

http://www.wingswithwires.com/chickencoop/se5a/index.htm

[-WOODY-]

Is that just a single player flight sim or can you get on-line and and have multiplayer dog fights?
Those planes look really good!

[Razer]

it has multiplayer and there is a whole group working on WW1 that has bombers and everything.

http://www.openplanesims.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewforum&f=5


here is the forum for the WW1 crew

[Andy]

Razer,

Did you manage to get the plugins compiled against AC3D 4?

Andy

[Razer]

i didn't since i don't really work on models for that game unless its to help someone out.

[Cowboybebop]

Instead of extruding out the shape with ellipses, did you ever consider just using the convex surface function in the vertex menu? It will automatically drag the shape of the fuselage through all of those verts. Not always perfect, and it should only be used to model simple paths (ie. just the fuselage, not fuselage and wings). The good thing about it is that the vertex's on each ellipse don't have to match up or be the same number and you can move the vertex's after the shape has been created. Much easier. Then you can boolean out your holes or just cut the fuselage yourself with the insert vertex function. Just some info. Peace Can you give me a example of what your talking about I am trying to do it but I can't figure it out. Using the extrude method I get lines at the point of extraction that I don't know how to get rid of.

[Andy]

The convex surface/object function is illustated in the manual with a fuselage example.

Andy

[Cowboybebop]

thanks, sorry for the oversite