[Becco_UK]

Started this aircraft sometime ago and add a few bits when time allows.

The bulk of the main modeling is finished but needs a more accurate undercarriage. All the usual bits work and I've used a Cinema4D expresso set up to control all the cowl cooling flaps at the same time.

Thanks for your interest.

[yadikrisnadi]

Very nice modelling.

[Becco_UK]

The P-47M model is now at the painting stage which is being done with Maxon's Bodypaint for the bulk of the work. Some finishing to be done with Corels' Painter.

Seen here with some parts grouped together for the two main texture maps - fuselage and wings.

[Tyrone Marshall]

Very nice clean render. Please share your bodypaint texturing to this model, I would love to see your process.

[Becco_UK]

Tyrone Marshall: Thank you. Although the BodyPaint sharing is a good idea I don't suppose it's of much relevance to those that don't use it but nevertheless a few details might be useful.

Preperation Of Parts

This full model has around 350 seperate parts. That number will reduce greatly nearer the finish. To start the texturing process I decided that I would be using two main texture maps - Wings and Fuselage respectively.

I find Maxons' BodyPaint works easiest by using polygon selection tags . Time spent at this stage is rewarded later on in the process.

So, taking the main fuselage as an example I selected the port (left) side polygons and created a selection tag. Another selection tag was made for the starboard (right) side and one for the rear polygons. Each tag was renamed as I went along to make identification of the polygons easier, particularly as I often leave this model for some time - what I remember today is easily forgotten in week or so.

This renaming of selection tags will also be useful once the texturing is finished because I can split parts from the mesh that need to be seperate ie: cowl cooling flaps, intercooler doors etc.

The front firewall polygons had previously been split from the mesh to be grouped in with other inner cowling and engine parts.

The making of selection tags was repeated for other parts that would be sharing the fuselage texture map.

With al the polygon selection tags created (about 50) I then connected all the parts into one object. I ended up with one object that contained all the selection tags which I had made.



Image is a screen grab of the connected parts showing the selection tags of the fuselage and wings.

[Becco_UK]

Setting Up The BodyPaint Materials

The new fuselage and wings each have their own material. In Paint Shop Pro I made two white 4096*4096 colour and two neutral grey bump images (.psd format) and loaded them into the colour and bump channels of the materials.

BodyPaint will load any images that have been allocated to a material. The size of those images is not critical because they can easily be adjusted within Bodypaint. It's just my personal preference to use 4096*4096 on this occasion.

[Becco_UK]

Interactive Time!

Back in BodyPaint I chose the UV edit layout - it provides a nice working layout for messing with UV's.

I'm assuming many people start out with BodPaint by using the wizard function to create UV maps (I did). Big mistake! For anything but simple objects you end up with a a mass of disconnected, sometimes overlapping, UV's that take forever to get useable.

For this model then, I have chosen to use BodyPaints' Interactive mode to sort out the UV's.

With the fuselage selected we see that the UV's look unrecognisable. This is where all those previously made selection tags come into play.

Each selection tag can select the group of polygons it's allocated to. I started with the port side of the fuselage. With the polygons highlighted (red) I switched to Start Interactive Mapping. In the perspective viewport a texture axis tool appears which can be rotated moved and scaled to position the UV's onto the UV map. Changes in the perspective viewport update the UV map view in real time. Turn off interactive mapping and the UV's are fixed into place. Repeated this step for the remaining selection tags.



This screen grab is of the UV's being repositioned using BodyPaints' interactive mapping. Some fuselage parts have been positioned with the lower surfaces (highlighted red) of the tailplane being moved into position.

It may seem a long process but is actually quite quick to do.

With all the UV's repositioned I used a BodyPaint brush to check for paint distortion which occurs around the edges of the UV' selections using the mapping method I chose.

So, to make this less noticable I used BodyPaints' Relax UV function which either works on all the UV's or selected ones. One click of the relax function was OK for this mesh.

[Becco_UK]

Correcting UV Map Scale Differences

The UV's of the Wing map were repositioned using the same method as used for the fuselage map. To check for noticabe scale differences between the maps I simply painted, in 3D, using a hard edged brush, across adjoining parts.

A slight mismatch was corrected by selecting all the wing UV's and rescaling them appropriately.

The wing UV's were not occupying the UV map so the map was resized without affecting the UV's, by using the Fit Canvas To UV function.

Back to the fuselage all the UV's were selected and the Outline Selected Polygons function was used.



The completed texture template was then saved with a different name. Making the template is optional but is something I usually do for models that may be a commercial product.

[Maximus3D]

Good work so far Becco the documentation itself is a very welcome addition to the process, i like that. Can't wait to see the final renderings of this.

/ Max

[Becco_UK]

Maximus3D: Thank you. I don't think final renders will be for a while though! This model is just something I mess with when time allows. The time spent making this probably justifies doing more than one final render and I have a sequence of images in mind. 'Soon'

[rusteberg]

excellent process documentation Becco. looking foward to seeing how it turns out.

[Becco_UK]

Back to it! With the UV maps made it was time to move on to getting some basic colour added.

Reference Material
I always intended this aircraft be brightly coloured and after gathering lots of reference material I opted for the "Devastatin' Deb" paint scheme. The serial number of this particular aircraft is 421160 and purely by coincidence it turned out to be the same P-47M that I have a model kit of but with a different serial number allocated. The numbers are different but the camoflage pattern is the same.

Colour
In BodyPaint the first part of the colouring was to paint the relevant surface dark blue and the front of the engine cowl red. To keep the map looking tidy I selected the polygons to be painted and used BodyPaints Create Mask From Selection. To minimise the risk of seams I usually then use the Grow Selection option set at around 10 pixels. The actual base painting doesn't require expalining.

Using a Scan
Some might say this is cheating - I call it saving time! To get the lighter blue camoglage and transfers in the correct position I scanned the model kits paint diagram, cut out relevant parts and used them in a seperate paint layer over the UV's.

Adding The Decals
The decals shown in the preview image are simple vectors made and applied within Paint Shop Pro. A test render was done to check for distortion and any adjustments made.

The Metal Parts
The underside of the aircfaft and the leading edges of the wings and tail are bare metal. For this a simple weight map was also painted. Not finished yet but shows potential!

The Maxwell material will be described towards the end of the project because it isn't finalised yet.

[jespi]

Nice WIP!!

[ivox3]

Excellent UV work Becco ......

and for the record, .....scanners are not cheating!, ...they're our friends.

[Becco_UK]

Jespi & Ivox3: Thank you.

Panel Lines

With most of the base colour applied I've started to add some panel lines. In BodyPaint a new layer was added to the colour and bump channels. Brush size for the panel lines was 2,3 or 4 pixels. Dark grey colour for the colour channel and black for the bump. I'm using a colour layer to compliment the bump layer to define the panels and the lines give me a good reference to add some weathering later on.

I'm using Bodypaints' Line tool to for this part. As with the BodyPaints' brush, the line tool applies chosen colours to all active channels.

Other bits added in this preview are a few more decals and some base paint adjustment. The large metalic fuselage lettering was made by placing the letters in the Maxwell layer weight map.