Modelling a spitfire, I hope.

[Gord.T]

***********Edit: Mar 2008:
I've uploaded my RCAF museum pictures at 800x600 res that I used as a reference...
http://s179.photobucket.com/albums/w289/TheRaptor365/Spitfire%20Pics/?start=0


Also, most of the following (last year) I did as a learning experience so, heh, a lot of it was wrong.
I was playing with splines then but in the end used box modelling so keep that in mind.

I've also begun a new version currently being updated at the end of the thread.

End of Edit.

************

Mar 2007:

I've decided to semi document my trials modelling a spitfire. I'm learning this as I go so if
anyone would like to join in or comment that's cool. I've decided to use nurbs. I've tried box modelling
and cylinder but didn't like the results. First I located a free blueprint/plans drawing from the web
to model it.

...update - links added
resources...
http://www.aviation.technomuses.ca/collections/image_bank/imagebank.shtml
http://www.supermarineaircraft.com/

cockpit photos and more…
http://www.militaryfactory.com/cockpits/index.asp
http://www.ualberta.ca/~khorne/solid/spitfire/Spitfire.html
http://www.ipmsstockholm.org/magazine/2001/12/stuff_eng_detail_spitfire_ix.htm
http://www.ualberta.ca/~khorne/solid/spitfire/Spitfire.html

plans here…
( This ref I found Nov 13, 2009.
http://plans.am.free.fr/
Look for post #56. It's a dxf file for a spitfire MK IX. You'll need a conversion program to view it. TurboCad is what I had it done with. They have a free limited demo version available that may work. I had someone else do it. Worth having a look at.

If you'de like the 30 meg jpeg copy I have instead, PM me. It looks better than the wylam version. It's 1/9th scale it sais, so there is no need for measurements other than how big you want to scale it. In 3D that's a cinch.
)

http://oldbeacon.com/plans/resource4/resource_page-4.htm
switch to english for these…
http://www.airwar.ru/other/draw_fn.html#2
http://www.airwar.ru/other/draw_fw.html

I'm using wylam-spitfire.pdf. I forget where I found it but it was from one of the above sites.
I screen captured bits and pieces of the pages and put it back together because I didn't have
a pdf-to-jpg converter and the trial versions suck.

--------------------------

This is my first half decent attempt (5th try after experimenting).
I don't like the wings and I had trouble with UV unwrapping which I'll show.

This is the unwrap of the fusilage.

The problem was I had cut out the canopy and inserted the cockpit structure and joined them.
While I need to remove the canopy the cockpit innards must be left seperate else
the UV unwrap gets a bit messy. I also need to split the fusilage down the spine and
unwrap each half seperatly to get a clean unwrap. I plan to use a symmetry on 1/2 of the
fusilage but the seams have been hit and miss. More later.
Here's how the splines were made using the plans as a guide.

Applying the loft nurbs to the splines. I found that the number and relative position of vertices should be
the same from spline to spline else it gets wonky. I started with the first spline at the nose. Once set, I
copied it and moved it to the next position.

More later. Right now I'm going back to watching nascar and am taking the rest of the day off. Model burnout you know.
I'll hopefully update in a a day or two.

 

[Anhar_Miah]

Hey I like the progress so far

keep up the good smooth modelling! its starting to take good form. Keep us posted.

 

[Gord.T]

Redoing the fusilage. Testing UV unwrap. Canopy seperation.

Redoing the fusilage. Testing UV unwrap. Canopy seperation.

I've redone the tail splines because it was a bit bumpy before.
I've made the fusilage editable but first made a backup copy just in case.
I selected all polys and made a cut straight down the middle spline.

With symmetry off.

With symmetry on.

**** Testing unwrap:

To get a good unwrap I had to position the fusilage lengthwise in the front XY viewport. I then used the 'frontal' projection.
This rotation now has thrown off my symmetry so I readjusted the fusilage position along the z axis to get a good mirror again.
The unwrap looks better so I guess I'm safe to proceed. That will make texturing easier later on.

**** Cutting out the canopy:

I Selected all polys and made a cut. I wanted straight edges.

Once that was done I made a copy of the fusilage that will become the glass canopy assembly.
For the fusilage I used the polygon selection tool and selected the polys for the canopy.

I then deleted the polys. I'm left with alot of unused points so I used Function->Optimise with only 'unused points' selected to get rid of old vertices.

The fusilage with cut out.

To get the canopy, I selected the polys like before then inverted the selection.
I took me a few tries to get it right because there were some very tiny polys I missed and didn't realize that until I zoomed in.

The canopy.

The canopy still needs more work.Another cut, the roll cage as I call it and three new glass panels for the front of the cage.

(Note to self. Make screen grabs smaller.)

 

[Gord.T]

The canopy and cage.

The canopy and cage.

*** Working on the canopy:
I copied the canopy symmetry object for backup. I made the canopy editable and deleted the caps. Then dragged the object out of the symmetry
so that I just have one object and renamed it canopy.
Then made a copy of that because I think I will use the vertices to model the cage. Not sure how to do it yet.
I cut the canopy for the cage with a knife.

I selected the unwanted polys and deleted them. Ran optimise again to get rid of unused points. Renamed it canopy glass.

The canopy cut.

Now the cage. I believe there were about 40 models of spitfires.
The cage structure varies with the model so I'm going to use some poetic licence here and pick the parts from different models that suit me.
That applies to all of the parts such as the exhaust style.
I'm using all viewports to draw a spline around the front of the cage.
I used a linear spline because it gave me more initial control.
It was actually quite tedious to position the points.
Once done I selected all points and converted them to soft interpolation and made a few minor adjustements.

I'm going to use round tubing.
I added a sweep nurbs object and a circle spline primitive.
In the heiarchy the circle is above the spline and those are children of the sweep object.
I extended the bottom of the tube somewhat so that I can cut/reposition it later if I have to.

The rest of the cage was done in the same manner.
This was very very tedious. Some touching up on the tubes is still in order.
I might try some 45 degree cuts later.
I added some glass to the cut canopy and looked at it.
I then tried the full canopy with glass added.
I think I'll just use the full canopy for now without redoing the seperate 3 panels.
I can change my mind later I suppose. If I have time later I'll probably reposition the
front 2 cage bars and redo the glass quarter panels but I don't think it's anything major.
I would like to move on to the wings and get them out of the way. Then come back
and do touch ups where needed.

/I didn't like the front panel. The quarter panels were okay.
I used a cylinder scaled and position over the front glass area.

Then I cut around it and cut out the same area in the full glass canopy.

 

[capt chuck]

It's looking very good so far. I like your approach of documenting your workflow of both what worked well and what didn't. I think this kind of thing could be valuable to beginners because they often see do step one, two....45 and bingo there is a model. Then when they try it on their own they get frustrated because it doesn't work perfectly the first time as in the tutorial. Kind of gets to the "why" as well as the "how"... 'I used the front viewport because that was what was needed to get a good unwrap' vs 'use the front viewport '

 

[Kholi]

Cool mang. C4D is the bestest.

 

[Gord.T]

Hey thanks Chuck. I enjoyed your bowling vid. Kind of like the old mouse trap game. I'm including my mistakes and thoughts as I go. This is learning on the fly.

Hey Kholi. I see your doing some FX for spyfest. Cool.

 

[Anhar_Miah]

I'm liking the lines, they have a natural flow, are you using mirroring or doing it whole?

 

[Gord.T]

Redoing the cage

Redoing the cage

The fusilage uses a symmetry, sort of the same as a mirror in 3dsmax.
The canopy glass was converted to a complete mesh because I wont have to unwrap that. Just add a glass material.

I'm going to redo the cage again. That was alot of work and I still don't particularly like the tubes. I've thought about an easier way to just cut out the panels from a glass canopy copy and extrude out the polys a bit.

I had a chance to go out to the RCAF museum Monday but it was open only from Wed-Fri. There is a spitfire in the outside yard. We walked along the outside fence (yes it's barbed) and got within 40 feet of it. Pulled out the digital still cam and behold the battery was dead. One of those days.
If there is not much snow on the ground we will be able to go out in the yard and take some hi-def photos. This will help me alot in visuallizing and give me some good texture materials. We'll try again Wednesday I hope.
Just seeing that thing sitting there was awesome.

/There are alot of canopy variations. Here's one photo I found with the style I'll try and mimick.

I decided I was going to draw some splines in the side view in the shape I wanted the cuts in the canopy to be made.
I ran into a big problem. The shape of the front of the canopy is curved inward. I did not detial it properly when I first made the fusilage.
Preparing spline shapes and noticing the problem:

In a desperate effort to fix it I selected a few pixels of the upper left canopy and dragged them upward in an attempt to straighten out the visual line.
This usually is disasterous for me and results in distortions.
But when I got done and rotated the view around, I looks okay so I was
really lucky this time. I was nervous it was not going to work.

The front canopy pixels repositioned and the spline shapes in place.

I made a backup copy of the new glass. Selected the mid cutting spline, copied it and repositioned both beyond either side of the canopy.
Then put those into a Loft nurbs object ready to perforam a boolean operation.

The I added a boolean object to the whole thing and set boolean type to A without B.

When I was happy with that I made the entire boolean object editable so I'm left with just one object.
Then repeated the process for the other splines on the previous edited canopy.
Here's with all of the boolean cuts. As you can see I have a new problem.
The wobbly edges are a result of my moving the pixels up before.
Looks like I didn't completly get away with it after all.

In an attempt to fix I dragged the edge pixels out using the top viewport and hope to use a knife to cut them back into shape.
Notice in the side viewport the edges are still straight.

Making the cuts. Luckily the knife snaps to existing pixels.

Once cut I deleted the unwanted polys and ran optimize.
I had to make a few further minor adjustmens to a few pixels.

1/ I tried raising the cage a bit and extruding it but it looked ugly.
Also alot of triangular edges.

2/ I tried scaling it up just a bit and that seemed to work. But I still wanted extrusion
so scrapped that.

3/ I subdivided the mesh by 3 first. Then extruded a bit. Then adjusted the height a bit. It is still a bit bumpy but a real cage is not ideal either.
I added an aluminum material to get a feel for it. An actual texture will further hide some of the bumps.
But I like this cage alot better than the tube one. I can always touch up later.

I'll do the back window later. I'ts just a cut like I did with the canopy.
Next the wings.

 

[Gord.T]

cage * canopy one more time.

cage * canopy one more time.

I wanted a better cage so I redid the whole thing over but kept the original fusilage splines and the boolean-cutting splines for the cage. This makes my 6th attempt.
I reshaped the canopy during fusilage construction like I should have at the beginning. I had a problem on the canopy. The seam had close points on either side of the center line that caused a seam when extruded.
So I had to weld them all to the center before extruding.

The best method I found for a clean cage was
subdivide cage by 2 to get more fine polys, boolean-cut the openings
then extrude.

It was too hard to get the angles of the front window cage that I wanted so I cut the entire front out of the cage instead of quarter panels and a front panel like I did last time.

I created a temporary spline as a reference and positioned it where I wanted the front bar to go. Then created a plane with just for points and made it editable. Then positioned the bar roughly and connected the plane and cage objects into 1 object.

(This is actually the wrong picture. I screwed up here in that the bars were angled wrong.
But I did the same thing as shown. Just that the bars were reangled properly. I'm going to sleep now.)

I picked points on the cage that I thought were close to where the plane points should go. I copied the values of those points into a text document then pasted those values one by one into the plane points and welded them shut.

Then extruded the whole thing.First time I extruded, the plane portion extruded in the opposite direction of the cage because the normals were pointing the wrong way. So I had to do it all again making sure to flip the plane 180 degrees. I suppose I could have just flipped the planes normals.

After that I deleted one side of the cage polys (it was already split from before) and used a symmetry on it to get the bar on the other side. Then made it editable again.

The new canopy. Still not perfect but it's my best so far.
I added a temporary aluminum texture to the body and cage.

Wings, wings, I need those wings.
We're off to the museum again tommorow. Maybe we'll get some pics.

....

I cut the windows out this morning. It took me a few tries to figure out the back window flashing.
I englared a copy of the subdivied back window, cut an inside hole then extruded.

I popped a sky texture in real quick as a bit of a self motivator.
Again, the textures are temporary and all photos are quick renders.

Down the road I'll likely make the canopy movable, add a track and maybe some bolt heads.
I'm making a coffee then getting started on the wings while I wait for a ride to the museum.
I really want to see how the wings attach to the fusilage beacuse right now it's a bit hard to visualize.
My next post will be the wings absolutely positively. Should be back in a day or two.

 

[Gord.T]

The wings

The wings

The wings have a flashing where it meets the body. That will be the next post.

I made the biggest spline in the side viewport and set it closest to the fusilage but not into it.
It has the airfoil shape. Notice also the flashing shape above it in the picture and where the airfoil ends meet the body. The bottom of the fusilage is also flat over this range.

Then copied, moved, scaled and repeated.

When done I used the top view to rescale the lengths.
Then put them all in a loft Nurbs then a symmetry.

(The splines look longer because they are all selected to give better view.)
The spline closest to the fusilage body (the starter spline) was copied and dragged
to the fusilage center.

Proper wing airfoil shape.

Next is the flashing from the wing to the fusilage. That is going to be tricky.

 

[Anhar_Miah]

excellent, its comming along nicely.

 

[Matt Grunau]

Wow! I can't believe I missed this thread so far. Great work. C4D is proving its might.


Keep those pics coming!

 

[Gord.T]

Wing flashing.

Wing flashing.

This part I make the flashing that joins the wings to the fusilage.
When I first made the wings I made a spline that defined the airfoil and used it
to start the wing. I've copied that same spline here. This is one of two construction
splines I'll use as a guide to construct the flashing splines.
I called this one wflash.
I set all of it's points to Hard Interpolation so they didn't get all wobbled out of shape.
and using the top view dragged the points out in the following shape on the wing.
The bottom screen is the front of the spitfire. When done I converted all
points back to soft interpolation. I checked to see if it had the same
front-view shape as the original by copying the original with my new one.
They were the same.

The second construction spline:
In the front view I drew a spline around the flash outline.
I used Linear Interpolation and when done, converted it to soft points.
I counted the topmost points on the wflash spline and it was 10.
I called this spline 'fflash' and counted 13 points. They didn't match so I
put them both into a Loft Nurbs to check it and it looked wonky on the outer reaches
so I converted these to Hard and deleted 3 then converted back to soft
and made some adjustments. The rightmost corner points were made hard for good sharp angles.
Then checked with the Loft Nurbs again.

I made the fusilage visible, turned off wflash and the loft, dragged out fflash
away from the fusilage so I could see it in the side view port and renamed it fflash_guide. I set all of its
points to Hard Interpolation.
Looks like this.

Now for the really fun part. Using the left view I need to draw another spline onto the fusilage polygons
using fflash_guide as a guide. But as soon as I begin laying down points the points on the guide will disappear
so I moved the spitfire behind the z axis so as not to block points.
In order to draw a spline onto the fusilage polys I did this in C4D.
**********************
* Snapping a spline onto an object.
*
Deselect any objects.
Select 'Model Tool' from left toolbar.
Goto the Attributes panel, select Mode->Tool to open the snap settings.
Check 'Enable Snapping'.
Type = Snap 3D
Set the radius value to some value, say 4 or 8.
Check 'Polygon' only.
Make sure 'Grid' and 'Grid Line' are unchecked. All unchecked except 'Polygon'
Draw in 2D viewport.
*
*
**********************
I set my left (YZ) viewport diplay to 'Lines' so I could see the polys better.
I had to experiment with different values of snap radius to get the best catch pattern.
And I zoomed way way in to each point before clicking to get the most accuarate lock.
It was tedious and took several tries before it completely worked.
Also by keeping all 4 viewports visible I could immediatly see if the point had attatched to the side
of the fusilage.
If you don't have C4D you'll have to find out how to do it in your app or drag them in by hand.
They'll probably need tewaking later anyways.


The result. You can see the new spline outline on the fusilage.

I renamed this spline fflash and dragged it into the Loft Nurbs with wflash and turned off fflash_guide.
I'm not done yet but I turned on the loft for a quick check. Looked alright.
Actually I just noticed that my wings were no longer centered with my spitfire because I moved it.
If I moved my spitfire now the points I layed down will no longer be on the body so I quickly
dropped the fflash-wflash points object into the spitfire object so they wouldn't get out of sync but had to
take the wflash spline out of the spitfire object completely else it would get moved too.
Before I did that though I had to turn off 'Enable Snapping'.
Then once the spitfire was centered to the wings I dropped wflash back in. (Sheesh)
I deleted some of the bottom points on the reference splines since I was only splining the wing top,
not bottom so it was easier on the eyes.
I set the snap setting to 'Spline' and Enabled snapping.
Using the refernce splines and the prespective viewport I drew one B-Splin. One point on each ref spline.
Then repeated making my way across the wing shape.

At first I had too many splines and the result was really bumpy when lofted. I deleted every other spline
until it lofted real smooth.

For the bottom back half of the wing I used a Bezier Nurbs which is like a cloth material. Basically
a low poly plane made up of bezier splines. I layed that over the bottom. And after that I thought
I could have saved myself some trouble and done that for the top too.

quick render

And of course that was not my first attempt. I tried a couple of other methods first that did not work well.
That part worried me the most so I'm glad I have something half decent. The rest of the modelling
here on in should be a piece of cake. The texturing I'm sure will have some bugs but looks like
I'm on the home stretch.
Apart from texturing it's all little stuff now. Wheels, cone, tail wings, back wheel, roof mirror, exhaust ect.
And I may revisit that back window. Went to the museum again, got in the yard and took 3 shots of the spitfire
but the camera screwed up again.grrrr.
Probably put the tail and nose cone in next.

 

[Anhar_Miah]

Man, thats looking really good, get those photos, try and get close up shots reference images are so important. This is gonna look wicked when the exra details are put in!

 

[Gord.T]

Thanks Anhar. We're supposed go to back out Sunday and try again but I'm sure they said Wed-Fri. The resolution of the shots are 2560 x 1920 and last time I took at least 25 closeups of different area's so the detail is incredible.
But only 3 uploaded. I think we have it figured out now though.

In the meantime been adding some details and playing around.
I've spent alot of time sewing up some seams where parts meet and also had
the fusilage slip off axis which caused a big headach since I was adjusting points around a bad axis.

Still alot of little stuff to do and I hope to have the pics by next week ready for texturing.

In the meantime here's a couple fun shots with a few more parts on the plane.

 

[Anhar_Miah]

cool, thats just slick, I can just imagine the animation.


One thing you may want to try out (if you get to animating it) is that on the render settings if you have an Area fiter (AA) try using a "video"filter if your film is going to be output to 756 * 520. That slight blending adds a lot of realism away from ang CGI "electronic" edge. Also matching the colour to your film would also boost things even further. Give it a try!

 

[Gord.T]

Pics are in. Thanks go to Arielman. Pics are about 1/4 resoultion.

After June 1 any final project versions I do here will be available free of charge to DVX users in C4D and Max formats including textures.

On a side note there is a WW2 spitfire pilot living 1 mile from me.
He was shot down at the age of 20 in Africa and was taken to Stalag 3.
He was a member on the Great Escape Committee but his name was not drawn.Bro will be talking to him next week.

More to come.

hawker(?) in background

 

[Anhar_Miah]

raptor are you saying that you'll lend the 3d models for free after your project, if so count me in!

keep at it, I know how draining it can be..

Seeing your progress gives me motivation to chip away at my project

have you thought about recording engine sounds of the aircraft?

 

[Gord.T]

Version 7.

Version 7.

Hi Anhar. The model will be free but not until June 1. The reason being it may be used in spyfest which has a June 1 deadline.

I have some sounds already so I think I'm okay.

Oh and your not going to believe this. VERSION 7. ha.
I didn't like the seams on the spline model. They were causing problems and weren't lighting well. I gave myself a few days to put some effort into a box model and voila. I modeled it as one whole object but without the nose.
That way the wings seams were built into the model automatically. It was alot easier than the spline model attempts.

So I've cut it down the middle and cut the wings off. Now back to the cage again. I've done this so many times now it does not take me too long.
This is the model I'm happiest with.

I won't post all the next steps because it's the same process as I did before.
When I get to texturing I'll update again. I wanted to change a few things anyways now that I have the pictures.