www.colacola.se - by Anders Lejczak, 3D Models for download / freebies

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On this page I have tried to explain my work process while modeling the P47. I have probably made a lot of mistakes along the way and I'm not working "by the book" - I'm just a happy hobbyist! You are more than welcome to mail comments and suggestions and I will add them to this page.

I'm writing this primarily with C4D users in mind but users of other 3D apps should be able to follow the work process. If you are a Wings3D user then you can simulate the hypernurbs with a mesh subdivision trick (select the polygon edges and set them to "soft", then subdivide).

You can download the reference setup file (.cd4 & fixed drawings) from [HERE] if you wish to tag along!

Created a reference setup using drawings from www.airwar.ru. This is an important step that involves some 2D work. It's very importat that everything is aligned and in the same scale. I've painted the red lines to make sure that that all planes and cross sections are placed in the correct places.

Now we need to start with a suitable shape. 10-sided cylinder fits this purpose. I'ts always easy to add polygons if we need more - removing them is much harder.

Question from visitor:
Is the length of the 10 sided cylinder the same as the fuselage length? It's hard to tell from the screen grab.

Answer:
Yes roughly - no need to make it exactly the same length because we will adjust the point in both ends along the way.

I've sliced the cylinder vertically couple of times and extruded the polys where the cockpit should be. Then I have moved polys by hand to create the shape you see in this picture. I'm constantly switching between top view, side view and free view to make sure that my mesh has the same shape as the drawings. The cross sections are really helpful in this step.

Question from visitor:
I was curious why you chose not to use Loft Nurbs and create the frame splines for it...

Answer
Wings3D, where I come from, doesn't have nurbs so I'm used to work with boxes. This is probably not the most efficient way but creating splines along the cross sections & profiles take me much longer time than shaping the mesh from a box or simple cylinder (in this case anyway). I tried lofting but found out that I have less control over the polys in that way. This probably has to do with my limited skills in that area.

I've made the reference setup file downloadable from the top of this page. So if anybody would like to show alternate solutions and approaches I would be more than happy!

Question from visitor:
I was wondering at this early stage why you have the whole fuselage instead of a mirrored half?

Answer
I didn't mirror it since I get these "holes" (caused by the hypernurbs object) as you can see in this picture. The shape is still simple and still easy to work with without mirroring it. I however select point on both sides when I'm shaping the mesh to make sure that it is symmetrical.

Is there a way to get rid of the "holes"?

Solution
Select all polys -> Optimize. Thanks to "theglenster" for the tip!

In this step I have made a new cut just in front of the tail and extruded the tail fin. I've also put the cage into hypernurbs.

As you can see in this picture I have already begun thinking of where I will cut out moving parts later on. I have therefore aligned the polys around the cockpit and also made a vertical cut by the rudder.

Question from visitor:
The point view screen grab appears to have 15 vertical knife cuts. Is this correct?

Answer:
I haven't counted. You can make as many/few cuts as you please. The important thing is that you have enough cuts to create the intended shape and that your lines/polygons "follow" the shape of the airplanes body.

Here I have intruded the part around the engine and propeller. I will come back to this later to adjust this part of the airplane. The holes shape and depth aren't correct and the edges will probalby need some adjustements too.

Now let's start with the wings... I started with a box (3 Y-segments) that I flattened, sliced and roughly shaped as the wing.

IMPORTANT
If you are new to modeling then I suggest you model your wings as described in this tutorial (as separate parts). A better (but potentially harder way) is to extrude the wings from the fuselage. If you extrude then you fisrt need to shape the polygons on the side of the fuselage according to the wing profile. Take a look on my P40 Warhawk and P38 Lightning WIP pages to see how the mesh looks like when the wings are extruded.

Examples where wings are extruded from the fuselage instead of modeled as separate objects:

Question from visitor:
Are the wings extruded from the body or created from unattached boxes as the tutorial seems to indicate?

Answer:
The wing (it's only one but I have put it into a symmetry object) is created from an unattacehd box in this case. I have however extruded the wings when I created some of my previous (the Spitfire, the Dornier and the J29 jet) and newer (the P38 and the P40) models. Extruding is better but requires more skill. This tutorial is not for pros so I have described the easier solution.

I rotated the wing (along the red axis) so that I has the correct angle towards the fuselage and then I started moving points to create the shape you see in this picture.

I've also sliced in once along the blue axis. Remember that the wing is thickest nearest to the fuselage and gets thinner and thinner towards the wing tip. It's also very thin along the edge on the back side.

Now throw to wing into hypernurbs and then into a symmetry object. It's starting to look like something but it still needs some tweaking to get the shape right. "Freeze" your hypernurbs (make editable mesh) when you're satisfied with the fuselages shape.

Question from visitor:
When you "freeze" the HN to get the polygon geometry, what's your Render sub-division value?

Answer:
the sub division value is set to 2. If I notice that the poly count is too low somewhere then I fix it by adding a cut before I freeze the mesh.

Question from visitor:
I was wondering why you "freeze" your mesh? I would think this would make it tough to edit later on. Is it a performance issue

Answer:
No I don't freeze the mesh because of performance but because I try to keep the poly count down and the mesh clean.

I only freeze it once I'm happy with the basic shape and before I start cutting out and/or intruding/extruding details. If you start cutting out details and extruding details while still in hypernurbs then your poly count will explode. It is always easier to add polygons than remove them.

I used exactly the same approach when creating the tail wings. As you can see I have also finished the cockpit - it's pretty simple actually. I will explain how in the next step....

Select and copy these polys_ twice_. The 1st copy will be the glass and the 2nd copy will be the cockpit cage. Slice them along the diagonal line in this pic and delete the polys to the right.

Apply a glass material and to the glass object and scale it down a tad.

Use the knife tool again to slice the cockpit cage object so that you can delete the polys where the "windows" should be.

Question from visitor:
I'm having difficulty in copying the canopy polygons. I select the polygons, go to the structure manager and insure that I'm in the polygon mode. Then I hit the edit tab & select "copy". I hit the edit tab again but click on "paste" this time. Now I have twice the original number of polygons but the copy is still attached to the fuselage. Any idea what I'm doing wrong? I tried copying and pasting in the point mode and am able to move the group points around freely. Can't do it with polygons though. How did you do it?

Answer:
I have done it in this way:

Selected the canopy polygons
Copied the enitire object (new we have 2 objects)
Deleted the canopy polys from the _original_ object
Inverted the ploy selection on the _new object_ (now everything except the conopy is selected on the new object)
Deleted the selected polys on the new object and renamed the new object to "canopy"
Changed to point select mode and ran "optimize" on both objects (this deletes all unused points)

Here you see the glass object and the cockpit cage object. I used the "Make thicker" plugin to make the cockpit cage a bit thicker. Now you can delete the corresponding polygons from the airplanes body. Don't forget to optimize (function -> optimize) your meshes or you will end up with thousands of unused points.

If you wish you can add thickness to the glass parts too.

Tips from Becco_UK:
"Adding thickness to the glass will provide a realistic refraction and also reflections - probably more relevant for large or close up up renders. Glass never comes as infinite thinness! However, if this is destined for Poser it's worth keeping in mind that Poser 4 is very poor when it comes to seeing through transparency objects with thickness. Poser 5 and 6 do very good jobs with glass."

My next step is the separate the rudder and the part that covers the engine (the cowling) from the rest of the body.

Define the rudder area by moving polys/points - you'll probably need to make a cut or two but try to use already existing polys as far as possible. This will help you to keep the poly count down and your mesh clean.

Copy the selected polys and create a new object (the rudder). You now can delete the corresponding polys from the body object. Don't forget to optimize your meshes to get rid of all unused points (resulting from deleting polys).

As you can see I have separated the "engine cover" from the main body.

Select the edge points on the body, contract them a bit and move them down a bit (this is what you see in the pic). Then select the edge points on the cowling and extract them a bit.

Here you can see that I have selected the polys two by two, made an "intrude inner" and then an extrude (make sure that you have the "keep groups" option enabled).

Now lets fix the inside of the engine cover. Select the polys of the back side (the flat area) and maybe 2-3 polygon rows outwards (the picture to the right is a bit misleading because it shows the back side selected and 5-6 polygon rows instead of just 2-3 rows).

Now scale up your selected polys as much as you can (as long as it doesn't stick through the hull) and you will end up with a shape like the one in the next picture.

The "ring" that you see in this picture is created by copying the outer poly rows of the cowling, scaling them down a bit and rotating the new object 180 degrees. I'm not absolutely sure it should look like this because this part of the engine differs quite a lot when looking on reference photos of different P47 versions. On the drawing used in this case there is however a ring like this one.

Thanks to Phenom01 for this info: "The upper portion is the huge Pratt and Whitney Double Wasp radial engine. The portion below is an air duct which feeds a turbo supercharger which is located in the tail section of the aircraft."

Now lets work on parts that should be movable (flaps, pitch, ailerons etc). Make sure that you are satisfied with the wings shape before you convert the hyper nurbs object into a mesh (make editable).

Proceed exactly in the same way as when creating the rudder. Go to top view and align your polys/points so that you won't have to make unnecessary additional knife cuts. Select and copy the polys you need for the ailerons, flaps etc and create new unattached objects. Delete the corresponding polys from the wings when done. I have colored the separate objects blue just to illustrate.

You may have noticed that I have begun adding details to the fuselage (stuff that sticks out). This is simply done by selecting polys (or groups of polys) and making inner intrudes and extrudes. I would suggest that you make a google search for P47 reference photos and decide on a detail level that will meet your specific needs.

The propellers blades can be a bit tricky but I have approached it basically in the same way as when I created the wings. First I did a rough shape based on a sliced box that I put into a hyper nurbs object (subdivision = 1). I then put the hyper nurbs object into a twist deformer and twisted it about 45 degrees.

There is a faint circle on the frontal reference drawing that defines the radius of the propeller. Use it to scale your propeller correctly. The other parts you see in this image are basically made out of primitives. Make sure to reduce the amount of segments in each primitive - there is no need for high poly objects here.

I also noticed that the propeller blades shape isn't correct. It should be much wider where it meets the propeller hub. This has been corrected in the next picture (below) by selecting the polys nearest to the hub and extruding them. I also noticed that two of the blades are twisted in the wrong way.

Coming up next is the undercarriage. I have basically made it out of a couple of sliced boxes and cylinders. The wheels are tori that I have flattened a bit in the middle. Google for "P47 wheel" or "p47 landing gear" and you will find photos that will help you get this part right.

I wasn't sure about the shape of the compartment that holds the undercarriage so I had to go back to ww.airwar.ru and located a P47 drawing showing the aircraft from the underside. I made a new reference drawing out of it and made a new reference plane showing the aircraft from below - I now had a shape I could follow.

I shaped the undercarriage compartment (blue area) by moving points - no need for new knife cuts. Then I selected the shaped polys and intruded + extruded them. Extrude more than I have in this picture because the compartment looks too shallow.

You can add more details if you wish but I will do it when texturing.

This picture shows how the cockpits interior looks like. It's pretty simple but add a few details and it will do once it is textured.

Now� before we move on to the next chapter and UV-map our little model take some time and inspect your mesh. Fixing stuff in the mesh can be tricky later on. Do you have all the details you need? I will for example take a second look at the propeller (blades and hub), the engine, the cockpit interior and the undercarriage.

I've corrected some small details in the mesh and I have also now already UV-mapped it. The next step will be to texture it (now this is the fun part).

Here's a textured version.

NEXT CHAPTER: UV-mapping & texturing