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! Thatās 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 thatās in the Spitfire Mk.II cockpit should be there.
The only part I could not find reference on was something called the āFlare Release Controlā and itās a little device on the left under the trimming controls.
Itās time to start working on the canopy (frame) now I think.
Cobra 6
Time for a status update as itās 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 Iāve 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 Iāve started UVāing the parts that I didnāt 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 UVāing 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 youāre going for.
Cheers
Andre
Well itās not so much the coloured checker I wanted as much as the letters so I can double check that my UVās are laid out the right way around
Yeah itās actually quite good to be UVāing for a change after modelling for so long. I expect the UVās to be done by the end of this week hopefully.
As for the look, Iāll 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. Donāt know yet.
Cobra 6
Finished unwrapping all parts and equalised their sizes. Now Iām going to lay them out in their UDIMās.
At this point I expect the whole cockpit to be laid out on 4 UDIMās using 4096px maps. So in effect the same as one big 8192px texture but much more efficient.
Cobra 6
Well, itās been a while since there was an update on this model and thereās a couple of reasons for that
Firstly I had to lay out the UVās 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-upās needed itās easier to make textures specifically for that shot.
Secondly and most importantly Iāve 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 theyāve stopped optimising it pretty much over the years. This means that Mental Ray as an āout of the boxā renderer in 3Dsmax, while it gives nice results, is pretty slow.
Now granted that Iām still figuring out V-ray (last time I used it was around 2008 I think) and Iām still optimising the settings, Iāve already greatly decreased render times.
Another reason for switching is that Mental-Ray, because it uses Maxās 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 itās good for me to also learn new things 
Iāve also started texturing obviously and so far Iām 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 itās starting to look ok
Keep in mind itās basic textures and Iām 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, Iād especially found post #15 quite informative, detailing workflow applying materials and rendering options, so indeed thanks for sharing
Glad you like it mate, itās 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
