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X-47B

Discussion, tutorials,hints and tips relating to designing military ai aircraft.
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juniboy
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X-47B

Post by juniboy »

I've been working on the X-47B just for fun, and I have some questions.

1. How do I make the gear bay and all the animations related to that?

2. How do I make the wings fold when it is at a complete stop? :smt017

I am using FSDS. Here are some pictures:
Image

Image

As you can see, it is nowhere near done. I am still working on the landing gear animations and stuff.
I have not decided whether it be an AI model or a user aircraft, it is leaning towards to be an AI model. That is why I posted it here :D
-Beldon
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Joecoastie
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Re: X-47B

Post by Joecoastie »

Lookin' good. Keep up the work. I'm not a modeler wish I could help.
We need more "different" aircraft instead of endless variations of the
same ones. :wink: :smt006
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MIKE JG
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Re: X-47B

Post by MIKE JG »

I've been playing around with this aircraft as well. I haven't been able to get the shape just right yet. It's a bit tricky.

Looking good on your end. You might even be able to join the wings to the body so they blend better, then cut them into separate parts after that so they will be folding wings.

To cut out the gear bays is a bit of a process, not hard, just takes time like everything else. Basically involves using a box structure that you insert into the bottom of the fuse, then join the fuse and your box structure together as one part. You then have to go back and rebuild those polygons around your gear bays to bled them into the fuselage structure yet still leave your wheel wells intact. I can show you a little example when I have more time if you want.

As far as the gear and wing fold animations, those are controlled with standard part names through MakeMdl. If you have the Gmax SDK and MakeMdl SDK, you will find that information in there. Basically you just name those parts correctly and then define their starting and ending positions. MakeMdl will do the rest for you.
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timbob1
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Re: X-47B

Post by timbob1 »

Looking good so far
Tim
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Re: X-47B

Post by jaguar1 »

Lots of new UAV models in the limelight recently. It's great to see modelers having a go and I for 1 am looking forward to see them flying around in the sim. X-47B model looking good and also Mike's Predators A&B. Maybe (if not already started) we will see this :roll:


http://tvrphoto.photoshelter.com/galler ... _fcnPxFMg0
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MIKE JG
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Re: X-47B

Post by MIKE JG »

This is all the further I've gotten with it. The shape is simple but also complex to get looking right.
Attachments
MGAI_X47B.jpg
-Mike G.

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juniboy
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Re: X-47B

Post by juniboy »

Thanks for all the feedback. It's my first actual model using fsds.

@Mike- thank you. I haven't had time to try what you've recommended, but I'll let you know how it goes. Yours looks very nice!!
-Beldon
juniboy
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Re: X-47B

Post by juniboy »

Still working on it. I'm working on the engine exhaust and intake because I just got some real good close-up pictures of the X-47's exhaust :shock:

I will get some pictures up as soon as i'm finished with the exhaust and intake.

@Mike-
I have a few questions.

1. How should I animate the 2 bomb bays on the bottom of the X-47?

2. How should I make the gear bay doors? how thick should it be?
-Beldon
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MIKE JG
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Re: X-47B

Post by MIKE JG »

You can do the bomb bay animation with an XML based animation scripts. We can certainly help you with that when you get to that point.

To make the gear doors and for that matter the bomb bay doors, you can use the same method. Again inserting a dummy part in the shape of your bomb bays and gear doors into your fuselage section, join the dummy part to the fuse, delete polygons, then rebuild them.

I'll try to make you a little example tomorrow if I have a chance.

The beauty of doing it this way is that everything fits very well together with little or no gaps.
-Mike G.

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juniboy
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Re: X-47B

Post by juniboy »

@Mike- It would help a lot if you made an example :smt005 . Thank you very much.

Here are some more pics:
Image

Image
-Beldon
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MIKE JG
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Re: X-47B

Post by MIKE JG »

Here goes.....

To start with, decide what basic shape you want your gear bays to have. Generally they'll be some sort of inside out box/rectangle structure.

In the example below, the large red rectangle represents a fuselage and the small green box represents the gear bay.

One really good tip passed along to me by Jake Burrus (A-7, T-38, C-47, T-6, P-51, etc) was to try to model in halves. That way you only have to get one half of the shape correct as long as each side of the fuse is symmetrical. Especially when you are working with complex parts like the fuselage for this model, you have half the points/verticies to adjust and move around. Once you are happy with the half shape, you simply copy/paste and flip the newly copied fuselage part and then eventually join the two halves together and select snap to scale so that FSDS shades the whole part correctly.

So in this example we will pretend that we are working with one half of the fuselage section, left or right, doesn't really matter for this example.

So once you have your fuselage part, insert you dummy gear bay part into your fuselage in the location that you want it to be.

Image

Notice these are still two separate parts at this point. Also I'm not concerned with the fact that the gear bay part sticks down below the bottom of my fuselage part, we'll fix that in a moment.

Now join these two parts to combine them into one single part. Once you've joined them together, go into polygon mode (F7) and delete any polygons that touch your gear bay part.

Image

Since the red fuselage part is a simple box in this example, I only need to delete the bottom facing polygon which is what I've done in the picture above.

Now I can go into my single part and using point mode (F8) I can align the bottom set of points from my gear bay dummy part with the bottom of the fuselage part which is what I've done in this picture by simply using the move mode to move these bottom points up a little bit.

Image

Now I can go back into poly mode (F7) and select the individual polygons that make up my gear bay, when I select each one, I press the "F" key to flip its orientation so that it forms an inside out box which is essentially what a gear bay is. So go to each of the polygons and flip them one by one until you get the insides of your gear bay. Don't worry about them making the x pattern like you see in this picture, we can fix that later.

Image


Now we will start rebuilding the polygons that we deleted earlier. The difference is now we have our points/verticies for our gear bay in place so that we can build polys around that area and leave the gear bay there.

To rebuild the polys, we start selecting individual points/verticies by either scrolling to them or using the crosshairs (no mode selected) to click on each individual point and then pressing the space bar to highlight each one as we select it. Normally we need to select 3 points that are on the same plane so make sure you are selecting the bottom points/verticies since this part has points that overlap each other when viewed from above and from each side. Sometimes you can select more than 3 points and still get it to build you a polygon but that may or may not work.

So in my example I have started to build polygons, one at a time, around my gear bay, carefully selecting three points, highlighting each one as I select it, and then once I have 3 selected, pressing "Ctrl+P" to create a new polygon.

Image

I continue this process until I completely rebuild the bottom of my fuselage part around my gear bay:

Image

Image

Now let's fix our gear bay polygons that are misbehaving. I can do that by using this same process of deleting the bad polys and then rebuilding them one by one. Before I do that, I need to now separate my parts so that I'm back to having separate fuselage and gear bay. Easiest way to accomplish that is to copy the main part, then go into point mode and delete the points associated with the gear bay. Once you've deleted the gear bay portion, select paste to paste the whole part again. Now using point mode, delete the points associated with the fuselage section. This will now leave you with just the gear bay portion as a separate part. Make sure to center the axis of the gear bay part.

The end result is this picture where we have a completed bottom fuselage and a completed gear bay that are now separate parts that can be textured separately when the time comes. Note I still need to normalize the polygons of the gear bay.

Image

Which I've now done in this image:

Image


Now here's where modeling in halves really pays off. I can simply select my fuse half, copy it, paste it, select "Transform" and "Flip X". Then go into the parts properties menu and delete the negative sign in front of this part's X position. Doing so gives me the exact same part, mirrored and placed exactly on the other side of the Z axis as you see in this picture:

Image

I need to repeat this copy/paste/flip/reposition technique with my gear bay part, which results in this:

Image


I now have 4 separate parts, two fuselage halves and two gear bay parts. The beauty of this is that I know that each gear bay is identical to the other one, both are symmetrical which is normal for most models. I also know that I don't have any gaps in my 3D model.

Try this simple example first, then adapt these techniques to your fuselage part.

If you can't split your fuselage part into equal halves, you can still use this method but you just have to be a bit more careful and it takes a bit more work.

Hope this helps.
-Mike G.

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Check out my real life RV-8 build here: RV-8 Builder Log
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MIKE JG
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Re: X-47B

Post by MIKE JG »

Better hurry up, these things are apparently "flying" off the shelves these days........ (Pun intended)

Boeing Phantom Ray flies
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juniboy
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Re: X-47B

Post by juniboy »

Yep, kinda busy, but still working on it.

about the phantom ray......

Anyone want the fsds files to the phantom ray i made? I started with the phantom ray, but I didn't get enough pictures to actually make a good model of it, so i started with the X-47B as you can see. I spend probably several hours on it, only the fuselage is half complete. Anyone want it? :smt006 :smt006
-Beldon
juniboy
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Re: X-47B

Post by juniboy »

For guys who want to fly the MOCK-UP version of the X-47B, i found a flyable X-47B:
http://www.simnetwork.com/SIMNETWORK/do ... wstart=450

This model IS NOT the aircraft that actually flew and is in testing at Edwards AFB. The main problem i am facing right now is finding pictures of the X-47B that is test flying. I keep finding pictures of the concept plane that Northrop Grumman released, and also close up pictures of the mock up that was shown at air shows. I have been working on the gear bays and bomb bays, but the inability to find actual pictures of the bomb bay and gear bay is hampering me.....
-Beldon
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MIKE JG
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Re: X-47B

Post by MIKE JG »

Use your best guess, you'd be surprised how many modelers end up having to model some part using their best guess.

BTW, Aviation Week and Space Technology's website has some decent pics of it.
-Mike G.

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fishlips

Re: X-47B

Post by fishlips »

That's a great tutorial Mike, you should add it to the tutorial section below.

Mark
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