Hello, I would like to show you my project - it’s a helicopter, Bell UH-1, most known as “Huey”. Few long years ago I read a great book, Robert Mason’s “Chickenhawk” about his experiences as a “Huey” pilot during Vietnam War. I believe it’s a bible for all helicopters’ pilots!!! Since then I’ve had a need to model this amazing helicopter. My idea is to create some nice renders, maybe some short animation. Of course it must be connected with Vietnam War. The best ambience of my feelings gives THIS MUSIC:)
This model is not a perfect copy of real one “Huey” - I’m using few different version of Uh-1 as a references, because it is hard to get good references of all parts of concret version As you can see there is still a lot of work to do, and I’m a little tired so I decided to start some w.i.p. to get more motivations
All C&C are more than welcome!!!
To be honest I’ve no idea how to add an image with original resolution so HERE you can see bigger version.
Hello again! Finally I had some time to work on Huey. Still a lot of work to do, but I almost finished tail rotor and added alot of small detailes:)
Thanks for comments. Andre, I’m in love with your Mi-24… back to it, please!
PLEASE, click right mouse button on image and select “show image” to see bigger resolution!
Thanks guys for kind words. I have no chance to find real Huey and make some good photos. I would probably have to visit US to find some heli from Vietnam, so I will try to make my own textures be hand. To be honest, I’m quite new in textures, shaders and lightning so this will be huge, but nice fight:)
And you have to back to Mi-24! Remember, your chopper is not for you… it is for us!
I’m back again. I think I just finished. This level of details will be enough in my opinion. Now I will spend some time on making imperfections, since it is important to get real look. And I need to start looking for some references of interior!!!
As always please click on the image and select “show image” to see bigger resolution!
Here you can see some wires. This is basic version without turbosmooth. Some of elements have iterations level set to 1, some to 2 and some comes only with “smooth result” option marked. Few elements needed to be converted to editable poly with iterations set to 1, so it helped me a lot with some detailes like holes. All in all, as you can see those wires aren’t to impressive:)
This is one render of whole model with VrayEdgesTex material (as always please click on the image and select “show image” to see bigger resolution):
Heh… hello again!! Long time since last update! I was veeeeery lazy, but finally I started to work on interior. I’m doing something like middle level of details, since I believe that most of it will be barely seen in the final images/animation. So I’m trying to make a lot of elements inside the chopper, but some of them are quite simple.
As always please click on the image and select “show image” to see bigger resolution. I made 6k render to test details of model and I’m thinking that it is enough:)
wow, great detail, congradulations! can you tell us how you went about creating that nice panel look, that the chopper is made out of several parts which are then nitted together with the rivets? and when you’re at it, what was your workflow in creating all those rivets? is that displacement/bump or actual geometry? if it’s geo, did you place those by hand or came up with some faster solution? a lot of questions, I know…would be great if you could shine some light on that…keep it up
Not a problem…as soon as someone is interested in my work, it is a pleasure to answer all questions…
Well, I followed the reality. In real life, almost all flying objects are made from single panels, so I created all of them. It was quite simple, maybe a little time-consuming, but it is personal, home project so I have time:) At the beginning I created basic shape of the chopper, when I decided that it looks good with meshsmooth x2 I started to cut it and made final panels from it. The main idea was to make copy of main body object, set meshsmooth to x1 and convert the object to editable poly, so I got much detailed wire. Then I was able to delete all polygons except “panel” polygons. Thanks to this operation this new, seperate panel was placed in exact position and its corner was connected to the shape of the body of chopper. At the and I just needed to add some thickness to new panel. Of course it is main, basic idea and sometime this operation needed much work, but all in all it works very fine:) It is quite hard to explain, so maybe THIS SIMPLE IMAGE helps to understand it…
Well, rivets are seperate objects and were placed by hand, usually by Object Paint (it is basic 3ds max options). This is quite good idea, coz all objects created by object paint are instance copy, so can be modified by editing first rivet. It saved me a lot of time when I noticed that my rivets are too small…of course I noticed this after few hours of work:) Of course you can find few different rivet and screws on the model.
But to be honest, I’m not sure what is better, placing rivets by hand or make them using displacement or bump… Since this is my first flying object ever, I’m learing so I will know in the future if I chose good options.
As you can see there is still a lot of work to do, and I’m a little tired so I decided to start some w.i.p. to get more motivations 
