WIP: Static Aircraft Models

[ProfessorKhaos]

Hi all...

Been working on static aircraft objects to take a break from island building for a short bit. Here's my own semi-low poly Pilatus Porter next to the FSD's Pilatus Porter. The FSD Porter bears my own paint job and the static porter is just using a template bitmap so far. My version built and UV mapped in trueSpace and exported to GMax only for final .mdl export.

http://img527.imageshack.us/img527/8393/12042005021kg.jpg
http://img235.imageshack.us/img235/623/12042005019wq.jpg
http://img235.imageshack.us/img235/3514/12042005031gw.jpg
The props on this one are deliberately bent. I plan to use it in an upcoming SAR mission where it is the target of the search.

When done, the static porter will be available as a rwy12 object.

Here's the paint kit in case anyone wants to help me put together a few liveries.
http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/9850/template9xq.jpg

Prof K.

[ProfessorKhaos]

Textured to match my other plane.

http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/3161/12042005063vw.jpg

[arno]

Looks nice, how many triangles does your static version has?

[ProfessorKhaos]

Well, the wheels and spinner turned out to be pretty inefficient so the overall model uses about 10K polygons. The body itself is a fraction of that... I'd guess about 3K. Still, my graphics card seems to have little to no problems with it.

I figure it will be used as the centerpiece of a search and rescue scene. As such I intend to lose one of the tires which should cut a good amount of polygons away.

All in all it's not too hard on my framerates though I'd probably not want a huge fleet of them in one area.

I could always go back to trueSpace and revamp the poly-heavy parts. Didn't really have the energy to do that right now but maybe prior to release as a rwy12 object.

This model was actually built several years ago before I ever intended to use it for FS2004. Was cleaning out my hard drive and I ran across it and figured with a little rework I could get a pretty good static aircraft out of it with relatively little investment of time.

It needed some major UV rework and I learned a few more things about the conversion process (mostly what not to do) along the way.