Agusta/Westland 109 SP
Alright, I have this helicopter I'm working on. I've been assigned this to model for work. It needs to be pretty nicely detailed, but not to an insane degree, just enough to look really nice and to be functional. The doors and such will open, and therefore I'll be doing an interior. I'll also be rigging this so it will work mechanically.
This is purely for hi-rez rendering, so there'll be no low poly, casting, texture painting. That's not to say that it won't be nicely textured later, but I'll more than likely handle that with mental ray shaders (procedurals and texture maps when necessary.) I'll start by posting a few reference images so you know what I'm working with.
Now, I'll add a qualifying statement here. Modeling is not my expertise. That's not to say that I don't feel confident in my ability to make a model, it's just that it's not my strength and I'm sure there are things about my model I'm doing wrong or perhaps not as efficient as someone more versed in the matter might be able to do.
That's why I'm posting here. I've come across some road blocks in my process and I'd like some help.
This is purely for hi-rez rendering, so there'll be no low poly, casting, texture painting. That's not to say that it won't be nicely textured later, but I'll more than likely handle that with mental ray shaders (procedurals and texture maps when necessary.) I'll start by posting a few reference images so you know what I'm working with.
Now, I'll add a qualifying statement here. Modeling is not my expertise. That's not to say that I don't feel confident in my ability to make a model, it's just that it's not my strength and I'm sure there are things about my model I'm doing wrong or perhaps not as efficient as someone more versed in the matter might be able to do.
That's why I'm posting here. I've come across some road blocks in my process and I'd like some help.
Replies
I began by tackling the fuselage main section on it's own. This seemed to go along fine for a while. The main problems came about in the clumping around the corners of the 'holes', as well as the puckering, or 'sinking in' in places. These problems should be visible in the below image.
As I got the overall shape of the fuselage down, I then go back and cut out the appropriate pieces, and continue from there.
I'm feeling better about where this is headed after restarting, but I'm still having some visible issues and would like some tips if anyone has any.
Thanks in advance.
Keep up the good work man!
I'd like the whole form to be smooth and the sections for the doors and all to be fairly unnoticable until I actually do the detaching, but as it is now it's not quite there.
I have some other sections to work on, such as landing gear, rotors, and some other things, so I think i'll get on those and wait for some feedback on this.
How you model dem shapes?
I'm lead to believe that in specific areas pentagons can be a good thing.
Any thoughts?
In short, get pushing those verts around!
Personally, I think you're cutting out those other chunks way too early. If I were going about this, I'd get the fuselage as a whole shape as accurate as possible, and then I'd start separating it out into smaller chunks for more detail. I don't know why you're modeling the nosecone separately at this point, and you don't have the tail at all. Once the overall shape looks good, then it's much easier to cut your model up into smaller chunks to give it more detail.
Agreed.....get the shape correct and flowing with no lumps and bumps, then worry about the doors
Thanks for taking time to look at my post and reply. I have to say though, I'm not really sure how telling me that you think I don't understand the overall process and basically telling me to dump work helps me at all. This is not some pet project, this is actual work, and I'm seeking advice because I want this to be as good as it can be.
I stated at the beginning of the post that I don't feel that modeling is my strongest asset. That doesn't mean I don't understand it or that I can't handle something, just that I may not know a trick or two about how to get a specific goal accomplished, like someone with more experience might know.
I think if you were to go look at my website...
www.randallmanning.blogspot.com
... you'd see that telling me I don't understand the basics might be a little premature.
Again, I appreciate you taking the time to look and post, however.
I understand the logistics behind how interpolated smoothing works, but I appreciate you taking the time to explain the bascis thinking that it would help. Unfortunately, my knowledge of "how" it works isn't really at play here, but rather specific techniques for getting compound curves correct.
The fact is that it would be very simple to get the overall shape of the aircraft, in fact I started that way. I don't have the tail on there because it will be very simple to extend that part out once I need to.
I'm at the point where I NEED to worry about the doors. The lumps and bumps were worked out some time ago. I'm getting the lumps and bumps now because I'm attempting to move the topology that's already there in place to allow for the opening of the doors.
Am I at a point where I need to go back a bit to the smooth overall version ( I don't have a pic of that posted, I'll do that later when I'm at work and have access to those files) and go up a subdivision level so I have more geometry, then manually cut out the holes?
I know in a simple case, like say, cutting a hole in the side of cylinder, an 8 sided cylinder isn't enough to hold the hole without some warping, so some extra geometry is needed. Is that the case with something like this? Does the topology of the overall mesh need to be a bit denser before I cut the the doors out?
Hey thanks, I fixed it.
I've done that a couple of times now, and I think what I'm doing is putting just "www.blah blah" instead of "http://..." and it's generating a broken link.
In either case, the link listed above in the previous post should work now.
on your website you have a nice smooth looking Volkswagen GTI, and from what i can see its made of mainly quads and it turned out great... are you simply just looking for something new to learn? i suggest just sticking to what you know at the moment especially if this is for work, and save the new techniques for personal projects where you have more time to figure things out (assuming you are under some sort of time crunch at work)
Because I told him to try it out in certain scenarios. It is a cool technique in rare occasions. And in one of the examples I showed him on his previous helicopter it worked. That being said, we sort of tossed around the idea of him starting over and nailing out the basic shape, while leaving edgeloops that hint and where his doors/windows/breaks in the model would be.
Now... regarding this.
I completely agree with this this statement and when we talked about starting over I didn't know you were going to take the pentagons and run with them as much as you have. I was thinking more along the lines of, as tonysladky said, getting the whole shape down while just hinting at doors by keeping edgeloops in the gereral area. I do think you are getting too detailed too soon and I would try an NGon in a situation that is giving you problems just as an option. Not necessarily as the default topology.
Now you said you are at the point where you need to worry about doors. And awesome. Do that. As I tried suggesting earlier you should probably detach them and start refining the shape and topology.
The point where you detach them is the point where you want to start getting the shapes of the door down, and trying all the tools in your arsenal, pentagons being one of the last ones if quads are not working.
Careful on the tone guys >.< It was getting slightly warm in here.
Keep up the effort man and I hope all of this makes sense. I feel like it is partly my fault for not being more specific when I was helping you.
I got rid of the pentagons (there might be just 2 due to symmetry.)
I did a bunch of work on the general flow of everything and I feel like it's coming along okay.
I'm still not quite ready to completely commit to detaching all the parts, but I feel a lot closer. I'm posting images that show the parts detached to paint a better picture of where I'm at and where I'm going.
I'd appreciate further input if you have the time.
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Aside from the fuselage, I've pretty much finished the rotor head assembly (minus the actual blades.) I'll be making the rotor shaft assembly with the swash plates and all that soon, as well as a simplified transmission. The modeling on the rotor head assembly is a combination of sub-d stuff as well as some old-school straight up modeling (like extruded splines and booleans and stuff.) The parts made that way will have their rounded corners handled by the AnD material (so handy.) I went about it this way to save time. Some of the parts are very complex, and since this isn't going to be casting normals or anything, all that really matters is how it'll render.
Depending on the way the training module is written, I may even get to add a fully functional rig with complete articulation of the entire process from the cyclic and collective all the way through the rotor head.
This last shot is actually a nitrous viewport grab, btw. Nitrous seems pretty well suited for this kind of display.
Cool thanks. Yea, as even mentioned previously in this thread I've been through some of that thread already, a good amount really. I'll continue to read through it as time goes on, however. Lots of good stuff there.
I made this thread to show progress as well as hiccups/frustrations/road blocks in this particular project and hopefully get feedback from this awesome community to, in theory, continue to improve as an artist.
So far so good I think.
In case it wasn't already obvious, click any of the images for higher resolution versions.
Thanks for any input you have.
This point was probably going to be the hardest part because smooth surfaces are going to be the ones that are most noticeably wrong. All the mechanical stuff you can get away with pinching and fudging things because it is more just a bunch of shapes creating visual noise.
...hope that makes sense.
Keep the stuff coming man.
I've gotten the vast majorty of the fuselage done now. I'd really love to go in and get all the tiny details, because that's what I feel, in the end, makes a good model great, but this isn't about what I want; it's about what is needed for the project.
In this case, for training purposes for pilots, major divisions in paneling and significant breaks in the sections of the fuselage are paramount.
Again, if not already obvious, feel free to click any of the images to view larger versions.
Since the last update these are the major changes. Lots of edge loops were added and plenty of manual manipulation of geometry flow was needed to get things looking right.
I began to love 'pro-boolean' again as it was very good at combining extruding shapes with topology flow. Many people may not end up using it because the immediate result is atrocious, but after some cleaning up, it worked really well.
This pic is another example of the panels separated to show they hold their individual shapes well, but all flow together well to form a strong fuselage.
I mentioned pro-boolean before, and this was a part where it was very important. Getting a hole in one curved surface is a challenge enough, but I had to get it cut into these two separate panels, as well as have the lower panel having the inner lip flowing into the shape. It took a bit to get it cleaned up, but I was happy with the result. There's no odd pinching and it flows well.
The mesh on the engine cowling allowing a view of the interior was simple. There was enough geo on that panel to be cut straight out, tweak the edges, then up the subdivisions, and finally inset all the faces just a bit. After inset, the faces were deleted. For what it's purpose is, it doesn't need thickness really, so it's left as is.
Below are a couple of links to short quicktime movies of the heli rotating on an axis so you can view the geo without wires, and from multiple angles. Since they're quicktime you can easily use the play-bar slider if you want to see frame by frame.
ROTATE #1
ROTATE #2
Hey all, I haven't posted on this in a while since it kinda got put on the back burner a bit. I started working at a new place and handed off some of this to a friend. I stayed with Avstar a bit and did stuff on the side, but on a very limited basis.
So this video is a major progression forward on this helicopter. I'll make some additional posts really soon to show some detail wire shots or whatever, but I wanted to go ahead and get this posted up.
My friend did the landing gear on this.
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this is how I would do it may take an extra second or two but will keep clean quads and topology
thanks for that. I think that's what I was doing before, and was wondering if there's a faster way. If this seems to be the common route, cool.
If you want to view a quicktime for frame stepping CLICK HERE.
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