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Old 20th November 2005, 05:45 PM   #1
Anders
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Default Make air intakes to a plane

Hi,

I'm having a kind of 'trouble' here.
I'm making a plane, and want to add some air intake(s) to the cowling/front part like in these pics:
FRONT


SIDE


Can somebody explain how to comstruct 'em in the plane-object?

Thanks!
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Old 20th November 2005, 08:15 PM   #2
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With the view that zoomed in, it's hard for me to tell what's going on there.

What aircraft is it, and can you show us a screenie that's a little bit more zoomed out?

Is this a "scoop" style intake, like on an F-4 jet or under a P-51 Mustang?
Or is it just a duct on the side of the aircraft?

If the latter, consider handling that in textures, if they won't need to articulate.
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Old 21st November 2005, 09:02 AM   #3
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It's a Piper PA38.

I want the air intakes in the model, not as textures.

Thanks!
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Old 21st November 2005, 01:38 PM   #4
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OK, now I can see a bit better what you're trying to do. I found some images of the plane via Yahoo, and can see here what you're up against.



From your side view closeup, it looks like you have vertices close to describing the aperture already. Add some new vertices so you can better describe the aperture shape: In Vertice Mode, select adjacent vertice pairs, and then add new vertices between them (Vertice Menu/Insert Vertice), and then work in all 3 viewports to line them up to accurately describe the rounded aperture of the intake.

Once you have the shape of the intake described, go to surface mode, select all those surfaces that make up the "inside" of the aperture and Extrude them inward into the body. By doing so, you'll automatically create the interior surfaces. You'll probably want to do more than one interior extrusion to get the proper contours of the entire intake: there's the outer, fiberglass body part and what looks like the (dark grey) metal engine housing part. You might even want to Bevel the outermost edges for a more accurate shape.

I still can't tell how the intakes work: if you look at that photo closely, the "grey" portion of the intake is further forward on the left side, while it's way back inside the body on the right, closer to where the old man is standing. Do these retract inward as you change the intake setting, or this just a "mid-repair/inspection" photo? And I'm not sure what's covering the intake: if it's a grille over an airduct, or rotating slats which when closed form a "wall". Depending on what that is, you can create rectangles that either rotate about their center (slats), or that stay stationary (a grille). Or, most likely, a nice texture will do the trick.

The same thing will work for the smaller intake on the bottom of the fuselage. Or, if it's a protruding box, you might actually try selecting the surfaces on the underside and extrude these OUT and away to create the duct, then select the frontmost surface and extrude that INWARD. If that's too messy, or doesn't work with the fuselage contours, you could make a box object to the proper dimensions and just graft it onto the underside of the fuselage; Merge it to make it all part of the one fuselage, or nose, or whatever.
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Old 22nd November 2005, 03:23 PM   #5
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you've basically got the engine block after passing the intake.

I would make the whole intake, and then add an object representing the structure around the propshaft, this may well be quicker than messing around with the curved sides.

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