[Becco_UK]

A simple polygon structure, for use with Cinema4Ds' cloth engine, forms the basis of the pilots coat. The front and rear polygons are subdivided and the edge polygons will be defined as the seam in the Cinemas' cloth tag. Collision tags are applied to all objects the cloth is to interact with.

[Becco_UK]

The 'Dress-O-Matic' part of the cloth tag was used to pull the cloth onto the pilot. The seam value was set low so that I can use for defining some seams later in the process. Looks like a rubber swimsuit with this basic material!

[Maximus3D]

That looks great Becco, the cloth wrapping around the character made all the difference. Nice work man!

Interesting approach you used, i learn something new everyday from this.

/ Max

[Becco_UK]

Maximus3D: Thank you. The pilot took longer than expected but has turned out close to how I first thought it would.

Here, a Cinema cone was welded to the main coat and some buttons added. Unwanted polygons have been deleted and only the pilots face and neck remain from the original MakeHuman mesh.

The pilot is just about ready for some proper texturing now.I hope to use different clothing leathers to give a little more visual interest.

[Becco_UK]

Texturing of the pilot gets underway. Decided to have seperate maps for the skin and clothing. Starting with the face, this was UV mapped (roughly) and a basic skin sort of colour used.

[Becco_UK]

A modest amount of detail is added using photo refererence material and a few splodges of other stuff here and there.

Simple hemisphere objects have replaced the original Make Human eyes.

No need to go too detailed with this figure because it isn't going to be rendered close up.

[Mihai]

Give him a pirate eye patch!

Nice detail so far....

[Tea_Bag]

Great Work very interesting keep it rolling!!

[Becco_UK]

Mihai & Tea_Bag: Thank you. I will keep the eye patch in mind for a future model.

In the short time I had Maxwell 1.6 installed (before reverting back to Maxwell 1.5) I rendered the Fokker pilot with texture maps created in BodyPaint.

Maxwell leather materials are based on ones available from the mxm gallery ( http://mxmgallery.maxwellrender.com/ ) - still some material tweaking to do but the pilot is now ready for a basic bone structure to be added.

[Becco_UK]

As the Fokker Dr1 gets closer to some texturing I've had a mess with Painter and started to develop a tequnique to replicate the typical paint streaking of this aircraft.

Olive green or olive brown is often a good source of discusion as to what the streaked colour should actually be - I'm keeing my options open a while longer by using painter to make monochrome streaks and then use this as a mask in other paint software.

With the test render I noticed that the green colour looks more brown depending on what's being reflected and viewing angle in relation to the object surface. This is one of Maxwells' + ponts for me - the ability to easily and accurately render colour and materials as close as possible to the real thing.

[Becco_UK]

More details added and the flight surface areas (including the axle fairing) are just about finished at the modelling stage.

A number of texture maps will be created for this Fokker - Flight surfaces, fuselage and interior, engine and the airscrew.

Weathering, mainly from the oil leaking engine will be done last - I have a few thoughts about using RealFlow with that stage but need to do some testing with those ideas.

[Bubbaloo]

Great work so far!
Keep it up.

[Becco_UK]

Bubbaloo: Thank you.

The painting starts. The first 4096*4096 texture map will be for the flight surfaces and a few other parts. To help make the UV mapping easier. each part was allocated one or more polygon selection tags. All the parts to be painted were connected together to form a new object.

[Becco_UK]

Using BodyPaint, the UV's were arranged using mainly interactive mapping. Although rapid, this method of mapping can cause some texture distortion at the edges of curved surfaces which is easily fixed using BodyPaints' relax function.

[Becco_UK]

The base colours applied using a number of layers. The wood texture was created with Wood Workshop free from http://www.spiralgraphics.biz/ .