swambast

OK, I started to shape it more like this, here is the latest rendition. Total balancing act though, trying to keep the poly count down while getting smooth corners/edges. Here's where I'm at so far; but to be honest I'm not totally happy with it for some odd reason. But maybe it's decent enough - just let me know what changes need to be done to it? Also, is the bend too sharp/angled - see render 2? P.S. just noticed the "notch" width in the horizontal stabilizer needs to be increased (made wider). Yeah, I'm kind of thinking the lower poly count is some of what's bothering me, for example here is a higher poly version.

OK, thank you all with special thanks to VonS for the info and diagrams, extremely helpful. I'm going to take each section at a time and once perfected move onto the next section. Let us start with the tail only for now. Please see revision. Is this better? What adjustments need to be made?

OK, thank you for the info. Side note, there are literally several photos with varying degrees of discrepancy on the shape of the vertical stablizer/rudder - I am not sure which to follow! For example, Geezer's differs from what I see in some of the source photos, and some of the source photos differ from others...Here is another revision on the "new rudder" but I need guidance on which "version" to use and any adjustments you might like, please. Don't worry about any of the textures/UV Mapping for now, that will all be fine tuned later. Edit: Also side note, I noticed the horizontal stabilizer in many photographs had a "notched section" to accommodate the rudder. I made that adjustment as well in the model, please advise of any needed changes regarding that.

OK VonS, should be easy enough to sculpt into what you are looking for. I'll start with the rudder changes and post updates as things progress. Also, can you send me as a starting point the 45hp variant of the MS Type G you have in your FM package please.

Of course, would be happy to upload the new textures - should be able to finalize them this weekend! Stephen, I didn't know if it would be better to just send them directly to you so another updated version could be created? The reason why I mention that, is the cockpit.ini would need to be updated to coincide with the new texture gauges (rotation and values).

Hey all, thanks for your comments. You can see my ignorance, had no idea Geezer was already working on one. Now that I track back and do some more reading, all I can say is "DARN! GEEZER'S MODEL WAS LOOKING AWESOME AS ALWAYS!". Would be so much faster to leverage what he started and finish it off. Is there any hope of that? Or do we really need to start from scratch?

All, With gratitude for some previous FE modder help, especially @Stephen1918 I found a timely opportunity to attempt to repay some favors. Real life has left little time for modding, but thought one way I could help was to crash over a few days and take a shot at enhancing the new Sopwith cockpit within my limits. A few comments: all I’m trying to do is improve the user experience. I recognize that others especially Geezer are true artists (and I wish him well hoping someday he will return). In the meantime, I wanted to at least make a contribution that I hope others might enjoy. I don’t know this genre, so this representation was based on research and photographs (and admittedly some creative licensing), but wherever practical I meticulously cropped, hand edited and applied photoreal and hopefully fairly authentic textures including the gauges. Keep in mind this is purely a texture overhaul as I don't have access to anything else; but sure grateful Stephen included unwrap templates. The model cockpit textures leverage 1024x1024; undoubtedly chosen to to sustain good FPS and it definitely should! I mention that, because the size and some conservative UV unwraps means still some grainy/blurry areas and I think could be optimized further (not sure if there is willingness to do that and/or share the source .max file). I’m not an .ini guy, but for sure leveraging these new gauges requires.ini updates. I fully expect some things to be wrong or could be improved, and I’m happy to take suggestions. Well, enjoy some of the “before and after” shots. I thank Stephen for creating the model and for his previous support, hope this is helpful and that’s about it for now…

@GKABS Thoughts and prayers with you and your family, here's wishing you a speedy and healthy recovery.

I think I already offered to him to send me source file and I can take a look and either fix or make new ones.

Russ, congrats m8 - 110s looking amazing - keep up the great work!

Hey Ant, I find some of this info confusing and there are obviously varying opinions. I started writing a long explanation but decided to stay on the "bump map" topic and add another opinion to the mix: For a majority of bump maps, in my opinion I would recommend .bmp esp. if you are trying to preserve "pixel accuracy" of the original texture. Any other lossy format can result in smear/blur artifacts as pixels get sampled during compression and by far the greatest impact would be to areas that have contrasting brightness/luminescence - say like brighter rivets contrasted against a "shadow". So there you have another viewpoint.

Volker, I thought material mappings have to remain consistent between each .LOD. I'm guessing perhaps this is not the case with what you have now. I might suggest double-checking the hierarchy of course, but also ensure that you are applying the exact same 3ds max material settings to BOTH .LODS. I think this should solve your issue, good luck. For example on your LOD1: ( 5) 03 - Default: Specular=0.25, Glossiness=0.12, Color:<229,229,229> ALQ-184_3Band_02.jpg And on your Lod2: ( 5) 07 - Default: Specular=0.80, Glossiness=0.40, Color:<229,229,229> ALQ-184_3Band.jpg

Nice. Check scale of jeep guys, looks off to me (guys too big) but might just be screenshot.

Got it - if you're looking for something in particular that you could leverage just PM me. Decent chance I might have something already permissible that I could share.

Great stuff Yakarov. Just curious, are these 100% from scratch builds or "borrowed" models? Wondering because there's a ton of "cold war model packs" already existing (perhaps you already leveraged) and could easily be converted.

Gkabs, interesting! I'm getting the exact same thing with my Yahoo account and continuously flagging it as "not spam" as well. I even set up a custom filter and it's still getting trapped into the Spam folder, frustrating indeed!

Russ, keep at it man - you're acquiring a ton of knowledge and experience and doing great work! In my opinion, one genius that can write the book on cockpit building by far is @logan4

Not quite. High-poly cockpits, using complex hierarchies, excessive individual mesh pieces and esp. those using multiple high res texture maps (meaning more GPU draw calls) absolutely impact performance - period. Mirrors on/off has been known as one of the worst FPS impacts for a long time now. A decent rule of thumb in my opinion for performance testing is never just test by taking the plane up on it's own and flying it around "empty space". You need to test during the heat of battle with SAM launches, AAA flying around, etc. (assuming that's a standard scenario the aircraft would be used for) and another good test is approaching a fairly populated airbase and testing frame rates on approach and landing.

Huh? Doesn't make any sense and seems wrong to me - but what am I misunderstanding?

Soulfreak - looking nice, love your skinning work, keep it up!

Russ, really cool choice on this chopper - nice work m8!

Thanks everyone, appreciate the comments. I've had a few requests to make different versions of the Type 2 so I'll work on those shortly and post some more progress pics then.

All, again with the excitement growing around Gepard's Operation Seelöwe project, I noticed an opportunity to make another contribution. This time, it's around supporting the outstanding UK airfields phase he is currently working on. So, I made a UK Type 2 WWII Hangar, which was a type of temporary military aircraft hangar introduced in early 1940. It was steel welded and bolted construction typically clad in galvanized corrugated iron sheets. The T2 became the standard temporary hangar and one of the most mass produced hangars for the RAF throughout WW2. Here is one version I came up, all mesh and textures built from scratch, based on this particular reference photo mainly. Spent a lot of time especially trying to get the textures compelling and making it extremely frame rate friendly - under 2000 polys with just a few textures and lower detail version just 200 polys. You should be able to place a lot of these to amp up the eye candy with minimal frame rate hit is the idea of course. Anyway, still have some texture tweaks and other mesh updates to do, but getting closer to finalizing so hope you like it for now.

Russ, send me a texture file you're using if you'd like - I might have an idea I could try.