Hey guys,

I'm a student from Germany and I'm currently working on a P-51D Mustang for a small cinematic scene. (I hope it's ok that the model isn't destined for a game - I urgently need a bit feedback ^.^ I don't know if it's good what I am doing there )

I am new in using Maya, so it's a lot of try and error for me while modeling my first complex model. Any advice is welcome

Here are a few screenshots of my work:



What do you think of it?

Thank you for your advices and comments!

looks great so far.got inspired by red tails?

haha yeah. But here in germany it's very difficult to get that awesome movie. :/ No cinema, no dvds or blu rays ^^ But yes, it inspired me since I saw the first trailer. A friend of mine and I planned to do a short animation, Red Tails gave us an background for it. So now we're working on a scene which takes place on an airfield (also inspired by Red Tails :p). Anyways we're trying to make our own thing (personal style and look).

Here's a little update of my progress



What do you think? Any advise or critic?

Yeeha. One more update!



Come on guys,...pls let me know what you think of it!

Im an expert in aircraft and modeling them and have done a few P-51's myself. The shape looks a bit off to me. Are you using a good 3 view to model from, or are you eyeballing it? The best way to model these aircraft is to apply a 3 view texture to flat plane objects in the background, and use them as templates. Let me show you what I mean.



You can see how I aligned the 3 view drawings. I can make the objects im modeling slightly transparent to see through them and align it with the 3 view drawings. You can get these 3 view drawings from online. Here is a good source.

http://www.airwar.ru/other/drawe.html

This looks like a good set for the P-51.

http://www.airwar.ru/other/draw/p51wita.html

Sorry the web page is in Russian, but its easy to navigate for the most part.

Also, here is a tutorial I made on how to make wings very easy. This shows you the process I use with the 3 views VERY well.

Low Poly Wing modeling in 3DS Max 9 - YouTube

Here is another tutorial on how I model props. I think this can also help you.

Low poly prop modeling in 3DS Max 9 - YouTube

I hope this helps! I think you show a lot of promis on this and I hope you contenue to sharpen your skills!

Hey. Thank you for your comment.

Hm...im using a 3 view imageplane and my model fits very well to it i think:

Thank you for the link and the tutorials! There are some techniques that might help me in future projects. For the wings I didn't had a wing profile like in your video or on the new blueprints. :/ They would have been be very useful - I worked hours on the shape for the wings and I am still not comfortable with it

Do you have any advice for the cockpit for me? I can't find good pictures of it which makes it very hard for me to imagine how it looks like.

What do you mean with "promis"? I'm very sorry, I'm german and not as good as I want to in english.

And a last question: Do you model all these planes for fun or is that for your job?

Promis = potential. And yes, I do this for a living and work on flight sims. Im currently trying to branch out into other area's.

Here are some resources for good references for at least the external model.

http://www.primeportal.net/hangar/domeric_barbot/p-51d/

http://www.primeportal.net/hangar/don_busack/p-51d/

http://www.primeportal.net/hangar/ha.../p-51d_411622/


As for the cockpit, thats really a difficult thing to do. The best resource I think would be to find a pilots manual.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/34811808/N...raining-Manual

That should get you started.

Ahh okay, thank you ^.^ You make me blush

wuhey, thank you very very much for these HD pictures! I think they will help me a lot.

I found this manual 2 weeks ago, too, but thank you For my animation it's no detailed cockpit recommended anyways...but I think I will finish it later when I have more time for it (It's currently a project for my application for university).

So now I will go on with detailing the model in parts which you can see in die animation later..I'll keep you updated.

Thanks for your answers!

Little details