Julhelm

Looks good but it could benefit from some shading around the pods and wing/fin/stabilizer joints.

Try and set it to high rather than unlimited and see if that works.

Those are real cool. Sort of CS'ish.

This article from the tells a different story:

Well generally if I'm dealing with a BWB fuselage such as an Su-27 or F-16, I'd probably map it top/bottom splitting it along the leading edge of the wing. The thing is, the less seams you have the better, since the engine has to deal with all these UV points in the same manner as vertices which means that if you have lots and lots of seams on a model, it will run worse compared to one that is stretched a bit but has only one or two seams. Again, it really helps if you plan out your texture layout before you even start to model, since you can then make things considerably easier for yourself by strategically placing edges along where important panel lines go on the plane.

How about a navy F-102 for kicks? According to Tony Buttler's Secret Projects volume on American fighters, such a design was indeed considered for carrier use!

I think you will find that almost impossible because the wings intersect the fuselage rather than join it, so there will always be a mismatch of the highlight since the game engine treats it as separate surfaces. However: If you were to overlay a subtle layer of nonsaturated grunge to simulate the sort of random matteness that occurs on NMF surfaces (look at old B/W photos for this and you'll see what I mean) it could probably mask the problematic areas so that they're no longer as noticeable.

Whatever. They're F-102's.

Right. http://www.airliners.net/photo/USA---Air/C...elta/0949493/L/ http://www.airliners.net/photo/USA---Air/C...elta/0231889/L/ http://www.airliners.net/photo/USA---Air/C...elta/0619209/L/ http://www.airliners.net/photo/USA---Air/C...elta/0231887/L/ http://www.airliners.net/photo/USA---Air/C...elta/0228475/L/ One would have to be blind not to spot the weathering on these Deuces.

That looks interesting. Are you gunning for next-gen visuals? I sure wouldn't mind a 2009-level EF-2000 sim.

Sure, by all means do it your way and ignore how it's done in the CG industry.

And if anyone still believes adding depth to panellines is unrealistic, look at this pic of a real F-22 as seen from below: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm..._weapon_bay.jpg Please note the very prominent highlight on the lower edge of the panel seam. Does that look like a gap with the light coming from above to you or not? Oh, and: Here's an active duty Deuce: I rest my case.

That again depends on how much contrast you are using and you need to exaggerate somewhat in order to compensate for scale. On engines with bump/normalmapping this is obviously a non-issue but since that sort of thing is too expensive for TK to add we have to make use of traditional old-school techniques. If you don't add some kind of depth to the panellines it will make the texture come across as flat and dull-looking, not to mention the seams will not look like seams. Take a look at a really well-built plastic model and you'll see exactly what I'm talking about. Professional modelers would NEVER go to the troubles of multiple layers of preshading, washes and weathering if it didn't benefit the estaethics of the finished work in some way. We're dealing with models in a model world here, and not real aircraft.

The scheme is nice but I do not agree with the panel lines. I think they look painted on and not like they are part of the structure. You can fix this by offsetting a negative about a pixel or so in a diagonal direction (I usually use light coming from up and to the left).

Of course there will leak some hydraulic fluid here and there.

You could just use the mighty mouse gun for the rocket tray, set it up as an internal gun.

I used to do this to simulate nukes before I came up with the FAE trick.

Have you checked so that the axis is correctly aligned in max?

Well wouldn't anything leaking while flying become streaky due to the wind, though?

Can you do the dirty panellines a bit more streaky?

Will this feature a custom pit as well?

The entire first world is toothless these days because everybody's so afraid of being called a racist.

Well primitive backwards fundies. Nuke 'em high, nuke 'em low, nuke 'em 'til they glow I say.

And finally: HUGE pic Look how there's lots of little imperfections and dirty spots on these planes. Especially telling IMO is that last raptor pic where you can clearly see how dirty the entire underside gets with all the small vents and exhaust ports, and also around the gear doors. One issue I have with Raptor pics in general is that pretty much all of them seem to be from desert-type climates where there's lots of dust but not much in the way of humidity, so we have no real idea how a Raptor weathers in a temperate climate.

Well they do.