Meanwhile I have started with the textures.
There are numerous tricks that I can’t explain here.
But a few basics are revealed quickly:
You might have noticed that I have built the wheel only roughly, although they have a lot of details.
The difference to other details is that such “laminar” details like the rims can be made quickly with textures.
In this case I had a deep look into my “texture warehouse”. These shreds are from photos or other textures. With good photos you must clip the interesting part and adapt them for use as textures.
After I have collected everything for the wheels, I had even textures for the in- and out-side of the rims and the tires. I also found a great picture of a propeller blade
This is the trick:
In AFP an object can only have one texture. Therefore I put all I need into a *.bmp file.
Then I have selected the tires and put a cylindrical texture mapping around the tyre tread. The in- and outsides were normal planar mappings.
Because the different textures are defined in the same material (they are from one Bitmap) we can use them in AFP. The only thing that distinguishes them is the kind of projection. This is not a problem for AFP.
In the *.bmp there is space for a few other texture shreds, let’ see.
I always extend the textures bit by bit, because at first you never know what you will need.
In the meantime I have made an “AFP-compatibility test” with the F4U.
I have quickly exported it to AFP to see what it says to 8700 polygons.
AFP does have a really quickly graphics-engine.
On my Athlon XP 1600 with a Radeon9500 the F4U made (incl. smoke and scenery “Countywinter” 80-100fps in a nearby flight and 110-130fps in normal flight.
We don’t need to worry about our high amount of polygons.
The propeller I have made exactly according to my true to scale 3-view.
It is really that big!!
Here the current situation:
The 3D-model of the F4U is finished. I have also textured the cockpit.
Here a little bigger picture:
Like you can see at the number and the colouring it is “Capt. Pappy Boyingtons Lulubelle”. He got it for a propaganda movie but didn’t enjoy flying it, because he always insists to fly the oldest machine in the squadron.
Ok, now we come to the AFP-stuff. I hope it runs fine, then the F4U might be finished in about 2 weeks.
