Military AI Works

OK guys, I've finally gotten the nerve to share what I've been working on.

Its been a lot of fun so far but for me its slow going. Any and all suggestions appreciated. Got a lot to learn.

Looks very impressive to me...

I'd wager that this could also be a starting point for "variants"/derivatives like the F-5A, F-5E and/or a F-20. If I ever win the lottery, I'm going to try to buy an F-5/T-38 (http://www.thorntonaircraft.com/body/bo ... e_name=mil) I can't count the number of dreams I've had about this aircraft. She's just plain sexy!

[[[ I'd kill to see someone do an F-20 Tigershark. For that, I'd give not only the first born male child but also the first and second born females (heck, I'll throw in their mother for free if you want!) ]]]

Oops.. sorry for the almost hijack... Seriously, are you using GMAX or FSDS (something else?)? It's far better than the things I started and then tossed/canned because I don't have "the eye" for design necessary. I'm lookin gforward to see it progress. Keep us informed, please! If you need a beta tester... please keep me in mind!

Yes!!!! I was hoping someone was working on a T-38, thank you for the hard work, it's looking good so far.

Thanks for the kind words guys! I'm using FSDS3 and I guess its a pretty good program for a beginner. It does a lot of stuff for you but I think it also has some limitations. And btw this about the third iteration on this aircraft. Its got some real tricky curves and I tried several ways to get them close. What you see is about ten parts flying in close formation so theres still some blending, moving points around and all that to get the shape right and lose some more polygons. Now how do you make a bubble canopy?, landing gear?, control surfaces?, textures? Anybody want to help?

Try this link for what appear to be a reasonable set of FSDS tutorials that might be of assistance.
http://daviator.com/tutorials.htm

The links here may or may no be/include some or all of the above tutorials:
http://www.simviation.com/fsdesign_tute1.htm

Here's another set of tutorials that might help.
http://www.freeflightdesign.com/tutorials.html

One more collection/page full....
http://www.ii.uib.no/~joakim/flightsim/ ... orial.html

I'm guessing that some sort of help might be found amongst those tutorials.

Good luck.

Thanks Dream for the links . Most of these I've already seen but now I need to look at them more closely. I've found that the first part is easy (and fun) because you can see a plane taking shape pretty quickly even if it is not perfect. This next part is what separates the real modelers from guys like me. Thanks for your support, I'm gonna dive in. I'll keep you posted but don't expect results anywhere near as fast as Wee or those guys. Besides being slow, I have limited time. (If anyone else is working on the same a/c, you won't hurt my feelings if yours is better or you're faster; we need this plane ).

Welcome to the Club, Jake
I wish you'll walk the line till release

The Product looks promising ...
We've put some interesting info in modellers and XML
folders here at MAIW forums, so there is some base XML and FSDS3 info there ...

Whew thats another one off the list.

Mike had mentioned it to me a while ago and during a lul I had had a tinker with the T-38.
Yup there are some real subtle curves on it, remember you can use smoothing groups to enhance some of the curves.

If you get stuck on anything let me know.

I'll Put this on the back shelf.
Good drawings for it at -

http://www.airwar.ru/other/draw_on.html#7

Looking real good, both of them.

I haven't been able to do any work on my A-7 in weeks, because of limited time. No where near that far, and my eye keeps screwing up the curves.


Looking real good.

Thanks Wee for the link. Those drawings are miles ahead of what I've been working with. Can you tell me more about "smoothing groups" ? I've missed that tool somehow. Thanks for the offer to help...some of my questions will probably seem very basic.

A very old friend of mine once told me that many things look easy to the uninitiated or the ignroant (unknowledgeable/uneducated, not stupid).

And then there are those of us like myself who can appreciate the artistry or others yet can't fold a square corner on a bed sheet with a T-square and protractor.

My hats off to those of you who CAN and DO model.

aerogator wrote:Thanks Wee for the link. Those drawings are miles ahead of what I've been working with. Can you tell me more about "smoothing groups" ? I've missed that tool somehow. Thanks for the offer to help...some of my questions will probably seem very basic.

Smoothing groups -

When you apply smoothing to a part it is applied overall as you know default is smootihng group 1.

If you select a group of polys, right click and select properties it brings up the polys options box.

One of the options is smoothing group.

If you put any other number apart from 1 into there and check the box when you return to the main view you will see those group of polys are smoothed differently and look 'seperate' from the main.

Try on a few polys, if you make a mistake all you have to do is goto the MAIN parts properties and recheck the smooth option again.

Great for -
Upper lower wings, use two different groups.
Undercarriage.
Fins, use different for left and right faces.

Explained a lot better here -
http://daviator.com/tutorials.htm

Under
FSDS "mini" PDF Tutorials - first one listed.

Thanks again, Wee for the explanation and the link. I'll look at it more closely later today.

[/quote]And then there are those of us like myself who can appreciate the artistry or others yet can't fold a square corner on a bed sheet with a T-square and protractor.
Drmweaver, I consider myself a frustrated artst...I can't paint because I'm colorblind and my sketches never come up to my expectations, and its taken me 50 some-odd years to learn that that really doesn't matter if I get enjoyment out of it. I definitly don't have the "eye" that Fernando, Henry, Rip, Wee, and David R. have but I love airplanes and I'm having fun. A lot of rambling to say don't give up on it, just enjoy yourself ! And, if by some miracle something others can use comes out of this, that'll be great!

Here's an update on the Talon. I reworked the fuselage and intakes and somehow lost adout 400 polys. Its at somewhere around 1600 now. Lots of work to do.

Here's the latest update on the talon. We're at somewhere around 2200 polys as it stands now. I'm just experimenting with the canopy and the landing gear. Anybody have any hints about transparent texturing? I can't seem to get it to look right. Also much work to do on the bows and frame. If anyone has suggestions on any of this, I'd appreciate it.

aerogator wrote:..Anybody have any hints about transparent texturing? I can't seem to get it to look right. ...

Why Aero, a canopy windows look right?
If you just tinker with the color ...

Remember, that if you want to have transparent parts AND reflective in one model, then you should have two main textures, btw.

Thanks, Rip. Yeah thats what I figured about tinkering with the color. As for having two main textures, I don't know what you mean. I'll study on it, but in the meantime, I've got plenty of other parts to work on.
Thanks,

Aerogator,

first, nice model coming up, keep it up

From my experience on the T-37 (to be very soon released now), you cannot use the alpha channel on your texture to be both reflective and transparent.

The solution is to use a transparent material for the canopy (I think this is what you did) and save the alpha for reflection only - don't forget to tick the "hasreflectmap" in the mkmdl options.

Psuls wrote:...
The solution is to use a transparent material for the canopy (I think this is what you did) and save the alpha for reflection only - don't forget to tick the "hasreflectmap" in the mkmdl options.

We have a one drawback here - if a part is not textured at all it pop up as completely black (or vanish?) in FSX ...

OK but the canopy in the Tweet is nevertheless textured, so FSX compatible