PILOT TIME

I have taken advantage of the incredible generosity of Anders Lejczak http:www.colacola.se to download some of his C4D shared files.  Many thanks.  Follow the link to his amazing work.  And that is where the pilot came from in these images.  Many thanks.  There is a great deal to do yet on my model but it is coming slowly. +Dale Jackson +harley harp 

PICKLE BUTTON in CINEMA 4D

Now there is a “wheel” … which was an oval, more-or-less, a yoke/stick and a pickle button.  Rudder pedals next and some frill for the sides of the cockpit and then I need to think about a pilot.  This is addictive but the nice thing is: you can do all of the detail that you wish you could have done when you were 15 years old and don’t have to get totally frustrated with destroyed work.  You can always “undo” and just do it over.

INTERIOR PLUS GUN SIGHT

The gun sight is a "reasonable facimile".  The dash from a picture.  Yes, they simply wrapped something like garden hose around the metal parts to provide a tiny bit of protection to the pilot's face.  I made them brown.  The front teeth need removed from the adjustment "gears" but I liked how they looked so much I left them for now.  I DO hope there was precious little Lucas electronics/relays.  That would be a worse threat than the Luftwaffe.  

CONNOLLY LEATHER, BUT OF COURSE

What else?  Maybe Bridge of Weir in a pinch.  I'll bet about as comfortable as sitting right on the steel ... maybe a bit better.  But spot on Brit.

OK.  That is it.  I quit for the day.  C4D has had its pound of flesh.

GUN SIGHT

The sight mount needs to be a tube instead of a cylinder and a projection lens put in it.  The optics were just like a modern "red-dot" pistol sight and projected a virtual glowing ring, cross hairs and dot onto the target plane.  The position was largely independent of the pilot's head position taking that element out of the equation.  The diameter of the ring was adjustable (I believe) so that when the pre-defined target wingspan fit the ring it was time to "mash the pickle" under the left thumb and walk the tracers onto the target.  Some of the sight screens were round and some rectangular.  I might make this one rectangular just to make the job of creating a mounting bracket easier.

Blogger is also driving me nuts.  Why is it that the picture size posted is different than that selected and how is the default font changed?  The "instructions" and "results" seem to live in different universes.

GUN SIGHT

This is just a place keeper.  I need to make the base a tube instead of a cylinder and then add a projection lens in the center.  It also needs a mounting bracket for the "hud" plate. These things worked just like a "modern" red-dot pistol sight.  The projected ring, cross-hair and dot seen by the pilot did not move on the target as the head moves (within limits) taking the pilot's head position out of the sighting equation to a large extent.  The projected diameter of the image was adjustable (I believe) so that when the enemy aircraft wing span was near the image diameter it was time to "mash the pickle" under the left thumb and walk the tracers onto the target.  The sight image would not be easily visible from outside the cockpit.  The disc was optically arranged to reflect the image from the upward-facing projector optics horizontally at the pilot.  All of this detail could go on forever.  There has to be a stopping point.  Some of the sighting surfaces were round.  Some square.  A square mounting bracket would be easier so the surface might get changed to square just to make it easier.

Blogger is also driving me nuts.  Why is the image different when posted than when set up in the dashboard?  How can the default font get changed?  What happens and what instructions say should happen do not appear to exist in a mutual universe.

 

THE ARMOR PLATE ARRIVES

I got up at 06:30.  I love the early mornings.  Makes the day nice and long.

This morning I created the armor plate that goes immediately behind the pilot.  When they said in novels that they could feel the strike of bullets against the armor plate it was because the bucket seat is right against the plate.  The plate was apparently a hefty chunk of steel plate just cut to shape with a power saw.  Straight across the top just at the top of the head rest and straight down just inside the cutout in the bulkhead for rearward visibility.

I also re-did the antenna and insulator.  The antenna mast was not round but more oval and it was not straight sided but tapered as a curve and pretty tiny at the top.  The insulator was a frustrated cone.  (Frustrum of a cone).  (The idiot spell checker doesn’t understand frustrum.) 

I am kind-of liking the dirty German camo color with the mottling even though it is nothing like the Brit Spitfire camo scheme.  If I ever figure out how to eliminate the one n-gon that totally messes up the UV mapping for the fuselage I will give C4D “body paint” a try with an educated guess at the shape and color of the rigidly adhered to paint scheme.  (If and when.)  I can delete the offending polygon and put in a totally unrelated substitute as a stand along but somehow that is not hard enough for me.  There just be a way.  Surely.

I find the “U,V” thing amusing.  Since 3D axis are named X, Y, Z by convention, the mapping of 3D onto 2D used U, V from U, V, W, X, Y, Z.  Poor old W got skipped.  Could it have been reserved for mapping 4D into 3D?  Was there some reason for it or was the “inventor’s” wife’s names Eunice Victoria?  J  J

NEXT COMES THE SPINNER

Since the fuselage is looking reasonable it was time to add a spinner. 

I have one nagging problem.  Just at the shoulder level to the pilot a polygon of the fuselage is all alone joined to the rest of the fuselage on only two edges.  That causes C4D to throw a "hissy fit" and generate an n-gon.  Now, everything renders and looks fine.  But the UV map of the surface is all "goobered up" because the adjoining polygon has five points.  I have not discovered how to solve that problem and it "nags" on me.  I have tried all manner of things but any action makes things worse and not better.  Suggestions?

NOISY GRUNGE

I added a squarish grungy noise to a desaturated khaki green color to get the effect in the image.  The color might feel at home on a FW-190 or ME262.  Cinema 4D certainly is rich in features and I will be busy for at least a decade.  I think I will have to put my copy of C4D in my will.

NOW IT IS BULLET PROOF GLASS TIME

I added a tie between the frame for the bullet proof glass and the rear frame for the windscreen Perspex.  I also added a rudimentary antenna, insulator, rear view mirror and post.  More and more detail.  Mostly place-keepers for further refinement but things look better and better.  The bullet proof flat windscreen has thickness and it is obvious in the rendering.  I am learning but it is slow.  The rear part of the canopy will "slide" properly although it still squeaks and I haven't found out how to add grease in Cinema 4D.  :-)  :-)

 

CANOPY FRAME

The procedure is to duplicate Perspex canopy object.  Make “cuts” through it to create points at the right places and enough of them so that the polygons that make up the surface can be deleted leaving only the surfaces where the canopy frame would be.  The “color” of the frame would then still be Perspex.  So I had to create a new color/texture just for that section.  The problem is: I am not adept at avoiding so-called n-gons (polygons with more than 4 sides) which are “badness”.  I eliminated a couple of them but there are still more.  I have to research that.  I then made the canopy frame a “subdivision surface” so it renders nice and smooth instead of with the jagged point-to-point of the bigger polygon surfaces that are not “smoothed” in the process.  The result is shown.  Yes, it needs a lot of editing but it is a breakthrough for me.  Now I get to stumble around and read a bunch of irrelevant tutorials but eventually I will find “answers”  

CINEMA 4D

THE CINEMA 4D SPITFIRE PROJECT

I will just mess around and try this on for a blog of working with Cinema 4d and my attempt to build a model of a MK1 Spitifire.

Cinema 4d is a fairly friendly program although complicated and full of "hidden" ways to get to what you want to do.  But that is not unusual at all.  Microsoft has while divisions devoted to obtuse menus and feature access.  :-)  :-)

So here are some pictures showing where I am at the moment:

3 VIEWS DOWNLOADED AND FORMERS CREATED

At this point "blueprint' drawings have been downloaded from a web source and put into a 3d working "stage".  A multi sided cylinder has been added and the former "cards" placed.  If anyone is interested I will explain all of this from my poor understanding of how it is done leaning from web sources and Cinema 4d tutorials.

THE CYLINDER BY ITSELF SHOWING "CUTS"

Here the lines describing the cylinder have been "cut" using the "knife" tool.  Points are created that are then pulled inward to match up with the shapes on the former cards.

THE ROUGHED OUT FUSELAGE

At this point a rough fuselage has been created and some details added.  Sounds easy.  Well, at this point I am into Cinema 4D to the tune of a couple of hundred hours.  The learning curve is not real steep but it is pretty complex.

CANOPY CLOSE UP

I have created a frame for the bullet proof front glass.  Next step will be to create the bubble section frame.  Looking at web sources, this approach can eventually lead to a flying scene with rather startling realism.  In another file I have created a wing (which I will re-do) and the landing gear and gear well, wheels, rudder/elevator, ailerons, spinner, exhaust, and other details.  It is all for practice because virtually everything gets re-don several times to refine technique and detail.