Something new from me for a change 
A client asked me to model him a Spitfire Mk.II cockpit which I started a while ago. This as you can see is the current progress.
Please note the cockpit frame, mirror, windscreen are not mine, they are from the plane model it will be fitted in.
Cobra 6
Thanks mate! That’s what you get with a massive library of pictures and construction drawings 
Cobra 6
I think modelling wise the actual cockpit itself, the instruments and parts, are pretty much complete. As far as my reference goes everything that’s in the Spitfire Mk.II cockpit should be there.
The only part I could not find reference on was something called the “Flare Release Control” and it’s a little device on the left under the trimming controls.
It’s time to start working on the canopy (frame) now I think.
Cobra 6
Time for a status update as it’s been quite a while since I last posted something.
The reason for that being the canopy frame being a royal pain in the bum as I lack good drawings for the Spitfire Mk.II frame. Trying to figure it out exactly drove me to take a week long break completely at some point but now after much staring at photos and salvaging anything I could from the interwebs I’ve started modelling the thing.
Obviously once you have a start things get progressively easier along the line 
Also it turns out my render settings in the last image were botched making the reflections disappear and everything looking very dark, this has also been fixed.
Some intersections in the glass and frame which will be fixed as well.
Cobra 6
A new update, been away on holiday but last week was able to get some more time in.
Adding details to the windscreen and modelling the sliding hood.
Cobra 6
Well, the model is finished and I’ve started UV’ing the parts that I didn’t do yet while modelling.
Enjoy the final result
And two wireframes, smoothing set at 2 iterations
Cobra 6
Just a small update, chugging my way through the process of UV’ing everything. Started with all the unique parts and working my way to the instanced and easier ones so the task gets less tedious the further I get along
Cobra 6
Very nice indeed Joep! I like the clean modeling! Nice to see another Dutchmen here:-)
Jonathan
Enjoying UV work as well these days? Good to see progress on this one. Also interesting to see that people still use the colored checkerboard texture for checking UVs. What do you think, when are you going to be able to start painting textures? Curious about which look and weathering you’re going for.
Cheers
Andre
Well it’s not so much the coloured checker I wanted as much as the letters so I can double check that my UV’s are laid out the right way around
Yeah it’s actually quite good to be UV’ing for a change after modelling for so long. I expect the UV’s to be done by the end of this week hopefully.
As for the look, I’ll have to agree with the client on that in so far as the project goes but I might add further detail for myself after than. Don’t know yet.
Cobra 6
Finished unwrapping all parts and equalised their sizes. Now I’m going to lay them out in their UDIM’s.
At this point I expect the whole cockpit to be laid out on 4 UDIM’s using 4096px maps. So in effect the same as one big 8192px texture but much more efficient.
Cobra 6
Well, it’s been a while since there was an update on this model and there’s a couple of reasons for that
Firstly I had to lay out the UV’s in various UDIMs and do some texture tests to figure out the resolution I was going for. Initially I thought that 4096 would hold up with 6 UDIMs but it did not do so at all. So in the end we decided to go with 6x8192 tiles which holds up nicely from the pilots perspective. Should there be any close-up’s needed it’s easier to make textures specifically for that shot.
Secondly and most importantly I’ve switched renderers to V-ray and ditched Mental Ray for a number of reasons. Most importantly are render times since when Autodesk took over Mental Ray and made it standard in 3Dsmax they’ve stopped optimising it pretty much over the years. This means that Mental Ray as an “out of the box” renderer in 3Dsmax, while it gives nice results, is pretty slow.
Now granted that I’m still figuring out V-ray (last time I used it was around 2008 I think) and I’m still optimising the settings, I’ve already greatly decreased render times.
Another reason for switching is that Mental-Ray, because it uses Max’s standard interface, has a very convoluted way of setting up shaders that use Multi-UDIM textures. You basically have to make a comp material and set the offset for each UDIM seperately, which is a huge pain in the b*t. Couple that with the fact that using multiple large maps really seems to upset it in both render times and memory usage.
V-ray uses the simple <UDIM> way of setting up things, you just link your texture and instead of COL_1001.tif you just use COL_<UDIM>.tif, disable tiling and voila, it works instantly.
Lastly, more and more studios (and thus more and more potential employers) are starting to use V-ray or are already using it. So from a personal development point of view it’s good for me to also learn new things 
I’ve also started texturing obviously and so far I’m putting in the basic COL map (clean version) with all the dials etc. in. Have got a basic SPECR and also OPAC for the glass.
Nothing fancy yet but it’s starting to look ok
Keep in mind it’s basic textures and I’m still figuring out the quirks in shading etc.
Cobra 6
Great work indeed :applause:
Makes my coming work on my Apache cockpit even more challenging
Nice progress Cobra, I’d especially found post #15 quite informative, detailing workflow applying materials and rendering options, so indeed thanks for sharing
Glad you like it mate, it’s always nice to learn new stuff and figure things out
Update on both the textures and the shaders. Nearly completed the basic clean colour map now and started working on the BUMP and DISP maps.
Also after loads of fidgeting I got my metal shading to work, it works quite different from Mental Ray in that respect, the IOR heavily influences the look and I could not get it to work like I wanted for a long time.
I do like the Vray multi-material thingy where you can use masks to separate different shaders, works fast and intuitive.
Cobra 6
