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Modelling best practice

ojdee

ojdee

Messages
17
Country
england
Having done a fair amount of non-FS related modelling in the past, I always thought it cheating to have two models simply intersecting rather than modelling them together into one mesh.

I have seen a few gmax models where for example wings just stick into the side of the fuselage or antenna straight into a wing. I can appreciate that this is easier and probably results in lower poly counts without the detailed areas where the two shapes meet, but is there any drawback to this technique when the model is in the game?

Cheers
Oli
 
Little bits like antennae or pitots aren't a worry, but doing the wing/fuselage join like that can give horrible results when you get the model mapped and into the sim. Any halfway-decent work I've seen doesn't do it.
 
In my planes I usually start by making the nose and then extrude all the way to the end and adjusting the part at every extrusion, also make a number of segments that will be needed to make other parts, like wings. To make the wings, I model the root of the wing in the fuselage (shape formed by the intersection of the wing with the fuselage) and then extrude them out...

Here's a pretty nice example of that tecnique:
This is one of mine:
SX1A_render.jpg
sx1alayout.jpg
Video, for better viewing..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFvyxi2_zu0
 
Last edited:
Hey Oli,

Normally its just easier to make the wings seperate. Some now build elaborate fillets that meld into the fuselage (as well as tail sections) but its a bit of work. I now do all my planes like this after seeing how easy a certain person made it look. I wish I could remember his name. He did it so well, with not so many polygons used as you would think, and it looked utterly smooth with little 'shadowing' going on.

But with small parts, why cut up your smooth fuselage surface and possibly cause ugly shadow effects from long Poly triangles? Its just a preference. Now that we do not have to worry about Polygon max numbers, we can do things like that. Just have to decide, do I want to do the extra work for that blend point?



Also, with wings and elevators being one piece with the fuselage, alot of people break them from the assembly after making them, then make separate textures for wings from the fuselage, (2 diff textures, plus). If you had them as a single part, then you would have a mult-material texture, which is bad in FSX, but no big deal in FS9.

I did the Boeing 797 as one piece which had 4 different textures in the hull's mult-material. Another reason why FSX didnt like it too much. :D



Bill
 
I think the texturing overheads probably swings it for me. If there's no performance issues with using intersecting models I can make a judgement purely based on how it looks with having to worry about another trade-off.

Thanks
Oli
 
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