While trying to get a smoke simulation finished for a current project and also help get me a bit more motivated I decided to go back to the subject that got me working with blender in the first place. I originally used blender because I wanted to model aircraft, though of the two models about four years ago neither got near completion.
Current Progress
I decided to model the Cavalon autogyro. I’m not much of a sculpter so I decided to use a base mesh that was in the shape of the fuselage. from there I am using the shrink wrap modifier to create the topology for the doors and windows. The fuselage is getting close to done, those parts below the fuselage were just quickly modeled for reference I’ll be going back to those soon. Also looking over my reference photos to see if the front part of the fuselage is actually one piece. Finally I need to reshape the openings for the lights, right now they’re a bit to large.
Thanks, there’s actually not much of a trick, when doing the retopology for the doors I just modeled the topology of the perimeter of the door and left the glass area open. then the retopology of the windows was modeled to fit inside that area.
I actually still need to do another retopology on the glass as I found that there’s supposed to be a hole near the bottom left corner.
Also working on getting the lights in which is giving me a little trouble at the moment. mainly because I’m still searching for a close up reference image of the lights.
Making some progress on the rotor, found some close up photos of the lights so I’ll be working on those soon; also trying to find some more close ups of the rotors so I can get more detail on the individual parts. I also just started work on the engine which I’ll post soon.
Just put in the tail and propeller. Still need to do some tweaking on each. Making progress with the lights but they’re still going to need a bit of work to get the right look.
Added in the navigation lights and tweaked the propeller a bit. Just about ready to start work on the interior. Also testing some compositing in this render.
A close up of one of the lights, materials aren’t finalized and the glass isn’t showing up as much as I’d like, (I used the method of having the light path factor into the mix node of a transparent and glass shader to reduce noise).
Lastly I need to fix up the bolts around the engine.
Again, a lot of fixing up still needs to be done (at least I think there needs to be some fixes)but I’m pretty happy with how this is turning out so far.
A little outdoor test to help me decide if I want an outdoor render. I’m very much considering that so now I’m going to begin building some grass which means I need to do some research into grass species.
Currently working on trying to model bermuda grass. I’m going to start creating a library of grass/weeds to put into scenes. Right now this grass has 9 variations but I’m going for at least 20. Also need to work on a texture for the grass.
Just a test plane of the grass/weeds I’m going to be using in the scene.
The test plane just has one grass species, an attempt at bermuda. along with attempts at poison ivy and mile a minute weed. I’m working on more varieties for this scene but mostly trying to create a library of grass/weeds for future scenes.
The scene itself is going to be outside a hangar on a grass runway. so for the runway I’m researching into common grass species for runways.
Nice model! I especially like its details.
Did you think about making the instrument panels?
It seems that the pround owners of this little aircraft keep it polished like a jewel - on most of the pictures there are no trace of any dust or dirt… For such this model you can use materials similar to the cars :).
Thanks Witold,
Currently I’m not entirely happy with the area where the instrument panels should be, so since it won’t be visible in this render, I’m not going to model it just yet. But I do have plans to update the interior with the instrument panel in a separate render.
I have been looking into a car material on blendercookie that I’m thinking of using for the fuselage, right now it’s a glossy diffuse mix.
Started working on annual ryegrass for the runway, trying to get a short mowed look. Also working on longer versions of the grass to add to parts of the runway that are more neglected in terms of mowing.
Same test plane with the grass and some weeds added, just to see how they’d look in a render. I also added a different shader to the fuselage, this one is a variant of Kent Trammell’s blendercookie car shader. it’s been tweaked to allow a little bit more gloss which is what I’ve been noticing on many of my reference photos on this aircraft. Also added in some RGB inputs to quickly change the fuselage color as needed.
Now working on the scene.
Also if I am almost at my final render and have not yet added the front cockpit instrument or fixed up the bolts around the engine, please remind me, I keep forgetting to do that.
Trying to work on the scene but not entirely sure how it’s going to go. Thinking of dropping the grass runway and just doing something outside the hangar.
Started working on a studio styled render in case I can’t get any of the scenery ideas to work out.
Been working on the outdoor idea but can’t quite get it to work. Also having issues with the hangars. Currently trying various styles but I don’t think it quite works.
Here’s one of my hangar concepts
I’m confident I can get the hangar modeled but I’m not sure if I should model a sharp hangar with a smooth aircraft such as the Cavalon. I tried the smaller more cylindrical hangars but they looked a bit too confining in the renders.
hangar feels like jail for me. Are there any specific problems with outdoor environments? I only do vehicles (I will continue once I am able to shape blender to my style), and do not like to use photos (HDR-backgrounds). It does not have to be totally realistic, does it?
