| | | Brandon Coomes | | Final Scene | | | Marauder | |
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| | Inspiration
Mainly my inspiration came from wanting to build some kind of plane. I have always had an interest in flying and thus a plane was the logical choice for my final scene. I decided to build the A-10 Thunderbolt II because it is my favorite military fighter, going way back to the first time I saw it as a kid at the Point Mugu Air Show. I think the real beauty of the A-10 is the way it admirably adheres to the form following function principle. The A-10 is specifically designed around close air support, and that lead to its unique design.
I knew that if was going to make it, I wanted to try to do it as accurately as possible, both regarding the proportions and modeling. I think I succeeded fairly well in the proportions, but I didn’t get to finish all the modeling I wanted to due to time constraints. | |
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| | | Objects | All objects | Brandon | | | | | | Textures | A-10 camo | http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ground/bdu.htm | | | | | | Images | Ground 1 | http://photos.nondot.org/2001-11-20-Thanksgiving-Trip-Home/2001-11-24%20-%20Plane%20Ride/index3.html | | | Ground 2 | http://www.dakotaadventistacademy.org/aerialview.htm | | | Sky | http://www.mayang.com/textures/Nature/html/Clouds/ |
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| | Problems and Solutions
When I first started, I looked into spline modeling to make the A-10. I looked over a few
tutorials, and found them to be lacking in precise description and explanation. So…I did it the hard way, making my objects using the box, ball, and other simple tools, then painstakingly etching out the desired shapes. Consequently, the element of time was not on my side from the very start. Another problem I soon encountered was the immense difficulty in trying to align objects and make them balanced and correctly proportioned. The process of dragging individual points on one end, then going to the opposite side and dragging the same points in the same exact way quickly got very tedious. I realized that the Mirror tool was made for exactly my problem, and from then on out it made my job a whole lot easier. However, using the Mirror tool led to another problem - connecting my two separate halves. The best solution I found was the weld tool, and it worked out very nicely for nearly all my objects. After getting to layout, I ran into a problem with having a narrow line running down my cockpit. I tried to go back into modeler and re-weld the points to try to fix it, but that didn’t work and nothing else I tried seemed to get rid of it. It’s definitely puzzling to me.
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