WIP - Apache AH-64D

#12

Thanks for all of your kind words, makes me more motivated to continue :slight_smile:
The top rotor are now pretty close to finish, at least in terms of “now”, but I will for sure go back and check everything over and over again.
I have a bunch of bolts and wires left to model, then I need to make the 4 rotor blades as well.

For wires, I had some rather big issue/problems. I tried to model wires from a single cylinder, but it’s hard to make a cylinder travel from one point to another in a realistic way. Then I tried to use a simple spline, that worked much better but not as good as I wanted. But I found out that 3ds max have a build in Hose plugin, very good and that made my wires creation far more easy, great addon to max for this type of modeling :slight_smile:

Now, back to work, I post some updates soon :slight_smile:

#13

Another update on 2 rather hard pieces to model…

#14

The top rotor is close to finish now, just some small tweaks here and there are missing and a few more details needed to be modeled and added.

I made a basic clay material and tried out a few renderings. Maybe not the best material, but it’s my first clay material I made so feel free to help me out on how to make a decent clay material using VRay 3.2.

#15

My current work with the radar unit, still a few things left to do like wires, wire connectors and a few other parts, but close to done I would say.

#16

very good stuff, I wonder how would you deal with texturing it in photoshop, I had quite hard time when I had to texture in PS instead of Mari, especially those complex hard surface shapes

#17

Thanks!
Regarding texturing, I have no idea just yet. All I did before regarding texturing have been inside of Photoshop, but nothing complex stuff. Photoshop is what I have in hands on subscription. Mari seems to be a great software, but really expensive for a private person. I also looked at Substance Painter, also seems great.
So, right now, I don’t know, I fokus on modeling first that I can handle :slight_smile:

#18

Looks very nice dude! only point of critic is the size of the bolts/rivets of the longbow radar. In real life they are smaller. That way the scale of the radar will look more believable :slight_smile:

#19

If you are meaning the blind rivets that goes over the radars surface then I agree to you and I will make them smaller :slight_smile:

#20

yeah those are what i mean :slight_smile:

#21

Another update! I made a few changes to the radar unit now, made the blind rivets a bit smaller and added a few wires, wire connectors and a few other small details. I think the radar is finished now, at least close to, but there are always things that can be improved…

I also made a rendering with the complete top rotor, axel and radar unit below. All those parts where so far the most challenging to model, don’t know how many hours I spent just on those, but I think about a week in total. Fortunately many of the part are just copies so you only need to model them once then copy them arround.

I don’t know what’s next, much left to do. Think I will continue on the bigger parts on the main hull, like the wings, skirts on the sides and so on, then maybe move on to the tail rotor…

#22

Started on the sidewings now :slight_smile:

#23

The rotorhead looks very nice man! curious to the rest of up coming models :slight_smile:

#24

Thanks jonathankrijgsman :slight_smile:
Yes, i’m pretty happy with the result so far, as I said, all of the rotor parts was pretty much work with even with good reference pictures, but it turned out well I think even if there might be someting that’s missing from the original parts of course.
The wings is soon done and ready to be mounted on the main body, wings was easy made :slight_smile:

#25

The wing/wings is done so I started on the bigger side panels. Got tired of that and started on the weapons instead, so the Hydra missile and the AGM-114 Hellfire missile are also done now. I will continue with that side panel now…

#26

Did some more work on the Apache now, the M261 (rocket launcher) is done and I also started to make some texturing work on the Hydra rockets, M261 and the AGM-114 Hellfire missiles.
What does everybody think so far?

#27

Doesn’t seem that so many are interested in giving critics or say something, but I upload a few more in progress pictures…
This time it’s the mount that carry the Hellfire missiles.

#28

Solid modeling, great wireframes. I think the lack of critique is because nobody has seen an Apache AH-64D up close (at least most of us) and we are too lazy to make a google search. :slight_smile: To receive more comments it would help posting a couple of your reference images for each part you are modeling. If that’s possible of course. Maybe later, seeing it as a whole it will be easier to criticize it.

Edit: What’s your approach for uv mapping of complex shapes as this? Taking some days and make something understandable, by hand or just an automated map to use the uv space the best way and just paint it in 3d/ don’t care about the seams.

#29

Thanks for the feedback MGitop. Yes, you might be right that the lack of critique is due most people doesn’t know how a real Apache looks like in real life (neither do I) but when I started this project I collected a lot of reference pictures, manuals, blueprints, videos and so on so I have a rather good idea how it looks. I even bought 2 manuals for it, one for the chopper itself and one for the cockpit so I have a lot of information.

Of cource I can post reference images, no problems at all, it’s mostly google images anyway. And yes, I will post more complete and up close images later on, right now I only focus on modeling piece by piece until it’s done.

Regarding UV mapping - For now, I only did the missiles (Hellfire and Hydra rockets) and the M261 rocket launcher. I did those inside of max due they where easy to unwrap and texture inside of Photoshop. I also think that there will be other parts that are rather easy to unwrap inside of max but a few of them might be harder so I didn’t really thought of that just yet. I want to try out Mari, but it’s way to expencive for me, and I don’t like The Foundry as a company either so. We´ll see what I come up with :slight_smile:

#30

Did you used photoshop 3d mode to paint over the seams? The last time I tried it, it was cumbersome to say the least and the workflow was strange. Maybe it’s better with 2016, didn’t have the chance to test it yet.

#31

No, I didn’t use 3D mode in PS, just ordinary 2D.
I just downloaded Substance Painter trial and will try that one for texturing as well. Seems to be a good application but it might have some issues, one for example, you can’t paint/make glass materials as far as I understand.