Wednesday, December 21, 2011

My Start in 3D Modeling





Hello there,




Ok, where to start. Well the first step is to gather information on modelling and what program to use. After reading many posts on modelling in the FlightGear forums I decided to go with the most popular and chose Blender and it's free!!!


Then I looked at some tutorials and stopped on the ones I will talk about: The first two are done by Emmanuel Baranger who is a very prolific aircraft modeller Creating An Aircraft in Blender is good but if you understand French like I do you will be better served by the French version Creating An Aircraft in Blender (French Version) as the English version was done with Google Translate.


I also found as series of videos made by Peter Haig on how to model an aircraft in 3D with Blender. I took a look at them and decided I would be using them as my starting point. I started with this Video Tutorial and it took me 4 hours to get through the first 10 minutes or so of the video to have the same results as him, Blender is very powerful and therefore has a very steep learning curve. But by replaying the video and reading the help files I managed to get this far the first day.








The next time went a lot faster, it only took me a half-hour to finish the fuselage, I have to fix the radome as it is an extension of the fuselage and should be round instead.


I did this a few weeks ago so I hope I haven't forgotten all I have learned.





I hope to have some time over the Christmas Holidays to work on the model so that I can show you some progress soon.




Bye for now...And Merry Christmas!!!




Bob

7 comments:

  1. Nice! I have tried this myself and quit after the 1st hour of frustration! hehe! Looking foward to fly this beauty! I'm already in love with the dch2 and dch6!

    Best of luck and success!
    Bruno (callsign bsiq)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hello Bruno,

      Thank you for your comment. I will be posting soon to keep everybody up to date. I have permission from the DHC-6's author to use his FDM as a base for the Buffalo so it should be a sweet flying machine.

      Delete
  2. Replies
    1. Hi Charles,

      Yes I am, I've had to re-start a few times to get things right and have been sidetracked with other projects. I will post an update soon.

      Delete
  3. Hi Bob, I am working on a few aircraft that I'd like to post to FlightGearCanada but could not find an email. I've started work on a Bristol Freighter, Bellanca Aircruiser, and the Avro Jetliner. I don't have a blog but would like to post current status on your website if I can. I've also been adding more scenery objects for BC and would like to post that as well in case anyone else is doing the same. Thanks, Owen.

    ReplyDelete
  4. BTW, I am excited to see the Buffalo in progress, it is one on my favorites. Living in Maple Ridge, BC, it rumbles low over our house regularly and I'll miss it when it is retired. I got some great shots of it on approach to Abbotsford during the airshow this year. I think I communicated to you earlier in the year that I'd like to see the prop vortexes modeled. I experimented with particle systems but I think it will need to be incorporated into the model itself. Looking forward to your next progress report. Owen.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hi Owen, I've been very busy in RL but I hope to get back to it when the snow flies :-) I do remember a message about prop vortexes a while back... I'm going to have to add posts about my other interests so people don't think I'm a slacker ;-)

    ReplyDelete

Please leave a comment.