LVG C.IV wip

Patrick · 13 April 2009, 08:50 PM

I've been planning to use the Ilges-Brandt flight to London as the subject of my first complete render, and it requires an LVG C.IV. One big advantage in modeling the C.IV is that it won't require an engine -- the reduction gear housing of the Mecedes D.IV drops the engine centerline low enough in the airframe that the whole engine is cowled over. That, and the basic simplicity of the System Schneider airframe should make this a fairly quick project. So putting aside the sparkplugs and primer petcocks I've been laboring over, here's the first round of modeling an LVG C.IV -- all comments and crits are welcome.

It always starts the same way, mapped 3-view plans from the Windsock DF onto Amapi's drawing planes.

I'm going to start with the area behind the cockpit first since I want to play around a bit with the fabric in preparation for doing the wings. My approach is different than the method used in Tim West's tutorial; since the LVG is slab-sided it makes sense to build it up from straight-sided quads. First, to get a section going that contains all of the formers --

I move this off the drawing plane and get it lined up on the centerline axis of the modeling space. The area in red has just received some addtional polys so I could get it bent to shape and give it a nice smooth surface. This tailpiece is a molded plywood box, the area shaded green is fabric-covered frame --

Next I just mirror the port side to starboard. Symmetry is your friend! --

Starting to look like part of the LVG; I added the top and bottom quads, growing the top off the port side and the bottom off of starboard. That's the basic shape and actually I could probably stop right there and move on to something else. All of the pictures I've seen of the LVG C.IV show that the fabric was very well-fitted, no wrinkles show at all. I could dummy up fabric stretch with textures and it would look good until you got right on top of it. But I want to try some fabric sag so those quads are going to have to be tessellated. The yellow outlines are the cut lines that I drew to chop out the middle of each quad. I extracted the edges of each poly as a line and scaled them a few mm smaller on each side.

A couple of tedious hours later, I've got the cutting and dividing finished. The shape is multicolored because cutting and tessellating it created a number of new surfaces. But everything lines up perfectly and it all welded back together again without a crack.

The last construction step was to select the vertices in the center of each fabric panel and offset them a bit along their normals using the stretch tool. Took a few trys to get the right amount of offset, but I think I've modeled the fabric effect pretty well and I can easily tune it if needed. I've attached a couple of test renders from Carrara in the next post, let me know what you think.

Patrick · 13 April 2009, 08:52 PM

A couple of quick test renders --

Sreiko · 13 April 2009, 11:35 PM

Patric- this is very nice suprise, I did not know that you are work on 3D graphic!!! Keep on running, it look like this will be nice peace of art!

Ahnab · 14 April 2009, 04:07 AM

Very nice Patrick, looks pretty good so far! I shall be following your progress with keen interest!

Tim West · 19 April 2009, 05:43 PM

Lol, your program looks strange and confusing to me

Looks to be a great start Patrick...more please

'14-'18aviationcollector · 19 April 2009, 06:10 PM

Hi Patrick, I love the work!

I have a question for you, and if I have asked this in the past, I apologise. I am very interested in doing some experimental work with a 3D modelling program, and hopefully some reverse engineering work, combining data from photographs and the 3D modelling program. It seems from the images you have posted that it is possible to rotate the 3D model in any direction. Can you also alter the perspective, to simulate the varying distances from the object to the camera, as well as the various lenses which would have been used?

Thanks and great work!

David.

'14-'18aviationcollector · 19 April 2009, 06:11 PM

oops, sorry, this posted itself three times. I don't think I pressed the button more than once.

David.

'14-'18aviationcollector · 19 April 2009, 06:18 PM

Hi Patrick, I love the work!

I have a question for you, and if I have asked this in the past, I apologise. I am very interested in doing some experimental work with a 3D modelling program, and hopefully some reverse engineering work, combining data from photographs and the 3D modelling program. It seems from the images you have posted that it is possible to rotate the 3D model in any direction. Can you also alter the perspective, to simulate the varying distances from the object to the camera, as well as the various lenses which would have been used?

Thanks and great work!

David.

Tim West · 19 April 2009, 07:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by '14-'18aviationcollector

Hi Patrick, I love the work!

I have a question for you, and if I have asked this in the past, I apologise. I am very interested in doing some experimental work with a 3D modelling program, and hopefully some reverse engineering work, combining data from photographs and the 3D modelling program. It seems from the images you have posted that it is possible to rotate the 3D model in any direction. Can you also alter the perspective, to simulate the varying distances from the object to the camera, as well as the various lenses which would have been used?

Thanks and great work!

David.

I dont know about the programs that Patrick is using but in Maya, Max and Lightwave, you have the same camera options as you would with a real camera be it for stills or motion. In essence they are real cameras and can be tweaked as such. I'd assume Amapi and Carrara have similar options.

'14-'18aviationcollector · 19 April 2009, 07:42 PM

Thanks Tim! It sounds as though those programs are worth having a look at. Cheers.