Monday 6 December 2010

Modelling the Spitfire















The spitfire model was made in very much the same way as the Lancaster bomber. First the reference planes were set up using a plane then applying the blue print diagram to it as a material. Self illumination was set to 100% to make it viewable from all angles. The UVW Map modifier was applied to enable to bitmap to be rescaled to the correct ratio. Once again the gizmo tool was used to move the bitmap image around the plane into the correct position for each angle of the Spitfire. The plane was duplicated twice to make the Y and Z axis views. Finally the planes were set as frozen so they could not be edited accidentally.

A box was created and set to an editable polygon. The symmetry modifier was used as before to mirror the plane onto the other side to save time. The quick slice and cut tools were used to divide the box into subsections that would align with the reference images in the X, Y and Z axis. A turbo smooth modifier was applied and interations turned up to 2 to give a smoother result. The extrude tool was used to create the rear wings then the main wings. The vertices for the wings were manipulated into a wing shape. The engine exhausts were made in a similar way using the scaling tool and cutting tools. It took a long time to manipulate the vertices into the correct positions, but after enough time it started to look like a Spitfire plane. Once again special attention was paid to keep the four sided polygon standard to avoid possible pinching problems with the mesh later on. I decided to model the glass of the cockpit separate from the rest of the mesh with this model so I could model the inside of the cockpit. I originally planned to have a cockpit view of the plane in one animation but decided against it when animating the plane as the plane motion was too rapid it was hard to follow the camera angle.

To texture the Spitfire I applied and Unwrap UVW modifier to the mesh under the symmetry modifier. Using the polygon sub mode the Spitfire was divided into planar sections. The ‘fit’ and ‘align’ buttons were used to best unwrap the texture. In the edit dialog box the vertices and polygons were checked to see if they were inverted or overlapping. Any problems were corrected. Finally a chequered pattern was applied to the model to make sure the texture was not pinching in any places. The UVW template was then rendered in order to create the material texture.

Macromedia Fireworks CS4 was used once again to create texture. Decals were found using Google images. The plans were once again faded into the texture to add definition. A bump map was applied to create the effect on the planes skin. The material was set to be 2-sided. The glass windscreen material around the cockpit was originally created using raytrace as a refraction map. I decided although it made the glass look slightly more realistic it was not necessary as the planes would be moving so fast around the scene that the reflections would not really be seen and appreciated plus the increase in the rendering time made it not worthwhile. Instead the opacity was turned down to 50% to make it look see through and the specular level turned up to make it look reflective.

The propeller that was created for the Lancaster bomber was then imported by merging into the file and attached to the Spitfire. Finally all items were grouped ready for exporting.

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