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Old 29th March 2010, 07:50 AM   #1
Simon_Lister
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Question Internal cabin for a helicopter

Hi everyone,

I'v just started creating a Westland Sea King helicopter for a flight sim I use called Flightgear. The external model is almost complete but what I'm needing to learn is how do I go about making an internal cabin so I can start adding the cockpit, floor, walls, ceiling etc and texture them. I tried using the replicator and it made a copy of the oringinal model for me (smaller) but I just cant get it the right size as parts of it show on the outside of the main body, can anyone help on this matter? Also as I am wanting the windows and doors to be on the inside cabin also for when I'm ready to animate, should I cut them out first or after? All in all it needs to be a solid object (when I say solid I mean 2 seperate objects somehow linked together) so when you look at it from the outside you don't see the gaps between main body and internal body.

Hope I havent confused anyone

Thanks in advance for any help

Simon

Last edited by Simon_Lister; 29th March 2010 at 07:53 AM.
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Old 29th March 2010, 01:43 PM   #2
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Default Re: Internal cabin for a helicopter

UPDATE......I have managed to create the internal cabin and cockpit, could someone tell me, do I need to cut out the windows or do I just texture them with a transparent texture? because if I cut them out there wont be anything there to texture if you get me?
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Old 30th March 2010, 12:52 PM   #3
Stiglr
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Default Re: Internal cabin for a helicopter

I would suggest cutting the windows. Not knowing your aircraft, or having a screengrab to go from, I'll try and wing it (bad pun, I know) and offer some general advice:

If there are some surfaces that roughly describe the window area (and, if you're modeling the exterior, I'm sure there are), perhaps you can simply "cut away" those surfaces into separate objects and assign them a material that's 95% or so translucent. Depending on the level of detail you want inside the cockpit, you may or may not need to indent them to create framing around them... you'll perhaps want some photos or detailed plans of the helo to work from to help you craft the interior.

As for the interior itself... it's really little different a process than creating the exterior. To start with, make a copy of the main body, hide the rest of the model and paste the copied body. With the entire part selected, and in surface mode, make the object 1-sided. Reverse all the faces so that they face inward. Go to object mode, and scale in all three dimensions to 98 or 99%, so that the surfaces of the exterior and interior bodies don't occupy the exact same space (and "visually vibrate" as a result). Voila, you've got your interior cabin.

After that, when I'm creating aircraft, I will then look at the interior and identify bulkheads and panel lines/rivet lines that "jut into" the cockpit. I'll use rectangles and the Knife tool to "describe them" and then extrude them into the cockpit to create the "framework". AC3D now has a great "Extrude by distance" feature which keeps you from having to move various areas of the framework separately. You can often grab an entire framework that goes all around the cabin and extrude it all at once. Only if, for example, the horizontal frames are not the same depth as the vertical framing, will you have to do more work to create that look.

I'll often have to "seal off the pit" by finding where the bulkheads are, but with a helicopter, the nose is likely the front of the cockpit... so you may only have the rear bulkhead to consider. Personally, getting the "edges" right: the bulkheads, the canopy coaming, any window opening/closing apparatus to be the hardest parts to get perfect, and are often the sources of the most frustration at doing properly. But stick with it, and use photos as your guide and eventually, you'll get it.

After that, it's a matter of creating the gear inside the cockpit. Again, because you won't usually find "3-views" of interiors, you'll have to rely on photos or diagrams and create objects using primitives: cylinders for the collective control and for pedals... polygons for panels, disks for gauges; boxes for seats, switches and internal panels and mounts. The same way you used a box or a cylinder to create the aircraft body. Same concept.

One thing that helps: if you have an illustrated flight manual or repair guide that has a good, clear, straight-on view of any control panel... it is sometimes helpful to get a scan or graphic of the panel, use it to texture a rectangle in your workspace, and then "trace" it to create an accurately shaped polygon. Then, if you know the radius or dimensions of any gauge on the panel, you can create disks of the same radius to use as a scaling guide to accurately size the whole panel... then extrude it a little to get some thickness... and drag it into position in the cockpit.
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Last edited by Stiglr; 30th March 2010 at 01:10 PM.
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Old 30th March 2010, 04:57 PM   #4
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Default Re: Internal cabin for a helicopter

That's great advice, thanks Stiglr, I'll post some pics later or tomorrow of the actual Wetsland Sea King and my model as I'm just redoing it at the moment. I'm still very much in the learning curve here but I try and try. At the moment I'm scared of moving onto the next stage incase the previous parts arn't upto scratch but after you see the pics you will hopefully be able to offer more words of advice.

Thank you

Simon
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Old 30th March 2010, 07:38 PM   #5
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Default Re: Internal cabin for a helicopter

Sure thing.

And don't worry about "how good it is". Especially if you're new. You will likely make many, many models before you really start to be satisfied with the results... and your quality bar will be going higher as you get better.

I will say, though: KEEP EVERYTHING YOU DO, no matter how wretched it is. Your awful, first attempts will serve you well in the coming years to show you just how much better your modeling is! I take a look at my first projects as a reminder of how bad I was when I started, so I don't get too cocky! But, as I said, I can also look at the positive side, noticing how much better my work is today and how far I've come.
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Old 2nd August 2011, 07:38 AM   #6
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Default Re: Internal cabin for a helicopter

Hi peeps,

Sorry to bring this topic back up but it has been a while since I have had time to do much work in AC3d.

I am now cracking on with this helicopter and adding details. (The helicopter is not my own, it is from Flight Gear which I use and have the permission of the author to modify it and try and bring it to life a bit more).

What I have done up to now is remapped the main fuselage, added a refuel probe and am cracking on with the winch.

So.....the problem I have....stretched textures I know this has popped up in other posts before but I thought I had it sorted, obviously I was wrong.

He are some screen shots of it so far...
This part of the texture is fine as it is a flat surface


This part is OK but starts to stretch towards the end (left and right if looking from above)


Now this is where I am struggling, on objects of a cylindrical nature, I am trying to add rivet effects but when the texture gets to the top of the object it is stretched and looks silly


I tried to use the UV Map in TOOLS menu and set it as cylindrical, didn't work, tried mapping both sides separately but still getting the stretched effect.

Any advice/help would be muchly appreciated .

Thanks
Simon
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Old 2nd August 2011, 12:07 PM   #7
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Default Re: Internal cabin for a helicopter

Myself, I don't use any "auto UV mapping" tools whatsoever. I find they always let me down.

Rather, I unwrap the model manually.

I make copies of each part of the model (so as not to disturb the end product), separate the various sides and rotate them so that they have that more optimal 90 degree angle to the flat aspect of the texture file; then, I arrange and proportionally (re) size them so that more "important parts" get larger areas of texture and less important or less visible ones get less space on the texture map. After I get everything on one large square texture (which I create with a large rectangle in "Locked" mode), I zoom in and take a screen shot of it. This becomes my texture image, which I can paint. But even before I do that, I can texture my model with it, and later assign the parts to a more developed version of that texture file.

and set up my own "plastic model flue" style guide, take a screen shot of it, and make my own texture guide. The way I set this guide up, I can anticipate panel lines and rivet lines and set it up so that when I'm in Photoshop or PaintShopPro, I can draw these lines "straight" through or across the various parts... then, when I assign the texture to the model, it works much better.




Note in this guide graphic for an aircraft fuselage, how I set up the "model flue" so that, when I draw a panel line that will circumvent the fuselage, I draw one vertical line on the graphic, and it will be sure to line up all the way around the model when I texture it. Other texture artists rotate parts in various ways to cram every part in to maximize space... but I find this counterproductive when getting alignments accurate.



If you're having stretching problems the culprit is usually that your surfaces are being covered by an area on your texture that is "viewed from a high angle off' rather than the optimal 90 degrees. Hard to describe in words, but that's what causes "stretching". You try to defeat that when creating your UV map by maximizing all the spaces, so they're as close to 90 degrees relative to the view as possible.
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