Part 4
Engine and Cockpit interior:
The big hole in the front of the engine hood must also be filled with something.
Therefore we build a nice radial engine.
As reference I took some photos of the original P&W R-2800 “Double Wasp”
I think I don’t have to explain many about this engine. It consists of two rings with 7 cylinders each, which I have built out of cylinders. The crank housing is a sphere with 16x17 rows of polygons that I have stretched from the middle.
It is not finished yet. It is still missing the magnetic coil on the front of the crank housing. We must build them, because they give the engine its characteristic appearance.
The “naked” engine looks like this:
The valve lifter just ends stump outside, because the ends can not be seen with the engine hood attached. We don’t need to spend some effort there.
When we add the texture later we also get the impression of many cooling fins. Good textures can save a lot of polygons :)
The engine hood then looks like this:
We have made another big step.
Now we come to the cockpit interior.
We start with pulling the side-faces of the struts with “Pull” downwards to get the thickness of the struts.
We do the same with the complete rest of the cockpit-window edge. You should take care about giving all struts the same thickness (a lot of hand-work).
The new side faces are then moved into a new object.
The insides of the struts are made quickly, in case you have built nice side faces before.
The rest of the cockpit interior is a little more difficult, because we must form the instrument panel and the side walls manually. We build each face by ourselves and then move it to the right place.
This is plenty of work, especially if you like to have small details.
But like many times, a lot of work is rewarded by a great result!
This is a little difficult to explain. I have made a picture where I view from the other side but have switched the mirrored surface partly transparent. This gives us a nice view to the inside of the cockpit.
Most of the times you can not find any reference pictures here. Therefore you need a lot of fantasy, patience and spatial sense.
If you have managed this you have made another big step toward the final.
I like to say that the cockpit interior is the most extensive part of the whole model.
If you have taken care about some APF specific things (how to open the canopy) and have separated the frame of the canopy you can “support” the pilot with some fresh air :)
My pilot I have built already some months before for another model (in FMS).
That was an absolute low-polygon model.
The textures are also made “quick and dirty”, because at that time I hadn’t any delight in spending too much effort for such things.
The arms and legs are movable (you can select them with “Selected joined faces”) and can be set to each position.
The face is my own “grimace” :)
