Focke-Wulf VTOL - Part 3

For this session, I decided to work on the "hole" that will house the spinners.

Making the "hole" template

Okay first, I made a simple cylinder approximately the size of the hole depicted in the 3-view drawing.  I made sure to have enough vertical segments on the cylinder to make the boolean operations easier later on.

Cutting the hole on the fuselage

So initially, I thought of doing a subtraction operation (Fuselage - Cylinder).
To make the illustrations easier to follow, I deactivated the object mirroring function for the fuselage.  This will prevent Metaseq from "drawing" the other half of the fuselage object.

Unfortunately, I don't think it worked out pretty well.  Sure, I can clean that up.  But I remembered that the Boolean plugin has some weird bugs that sometimes causes hidden faces/surfaces that would give me a lot of headaches later on when I start unrolling in Pepakura.

Nope... I'll have to ditch the subtraction operation.

Instead, I'll use the intersect operation (Fuselage # Cylinder).

The image above shows the result of the intersect operation between the Fuselage and the Cylinder.  Still messy, but more manageable.

After a few vertex joins, I was able to simplify the intersection (shown above in red).

With the use of the wire tool, I added the missing faces/surfaces.

Finally, here's what the fuselage looks like when the object mirroring is re-enabled.

Focke-Wulf VTOL - Part 2

Now it's time to work on the fuselage.

Creating the wireframe

Freezing the object will produce the wireframe that I can then directly work on.
Unfortunately, the wireframe produced is "nice", it is not suitable for producing card models from.

Simplifying the wireframe

In order to produce a card model friendly wireframe, the current one has to be simplified.
It's time to whip out the Knife Tool!

Cleaning up the lengthwise segments

First, I got rid of a couple of lengthwise segments using the Knife Tool's "Erase Chained Lines" function.

Cleaning up the crosswise segments

For the crosswise segments, chose to keep those that lined up with the "joints" depicted in the 3-view diagrams.  By doing this, I'll have an easier time in making the UV-Maps later on.

Cleaning up the flaps and elevons

As with the previous step, I'd like to line up another segment along the "joint" between the main fuselage and the control surfaces.  For this, I had to create a new segment by using the knife tool's, "Cut with a knife" function.

After that, it's only a matter of brute force / manual clean up.

Finally...

Nothing much here except another round of brute force / manual cleanup through vertex joins and deletions....

Next steps

At this point, I can now start punching a hole on the top of the fuselage for the rotors.
But then again, I can also start working on the cockpit....

Focke-Wulf VTOL - Part 1

For my new project, I'm going to tackle the Focke-Wulf VTOL project.
As with other Luft'46 projects, this one never left the drawing boards.  Had it flown, I reckon it might have been the closest thing to a Harrier jumpjet. :)

If you want more information regarding this plane, do head on to www.luft46.com.

Laying down the foundations

As with most, if not all models that are based on 3-view diagrams, the first step would be to setup the 3-view to be used for the 3d modelling software.  I start by getting the 3-view image from www.luft46.com. 

Then, using a graphics app, I broke apart the 3-view into 4 separate bitmaps, which I'll be labeling as "top", "bottom", "side" and "front". 

I then save the "top", "bottom", "side" and "front" into separate bitmaps.

Then, on Metaseq, create three plane/rectangle objects.  On one of the faces, I apply the "top" and "bottom" bitmap on the front and rear faces.  I apply the "front" and "side" bitmap on the other two rectangles.  This produces the "template" on where I'll be building the 3d model on.

Creating the main components

For the main components which will comprise the overall appearance of the model, I will be using spline patches.  Patches are best for modeling curved surfaces.

I first start with the main body or fuselage. 

Then proceed to make the cockpit.

And lastly, the rudder.

When put together, here's how it looks.

At this point, it looks really rough...almost like it was created from putty. 
You'll notice that the trailing edges of the wing's flaps, ailerons and rudder are kinda rounded.  That's not an issue, as I'll show as the model progresses.

The purpose of using spline patches is to capture the almost organic curves that make up for 90% of the model's body.  And for that it has succeeded.

The next step would be to "freeze" the spline patches to create the actual wireframes.  From there I'll start to do boolean operations to punch a hole through the fuselage to make room for the propellers.

Henschel HS-132 - Diagrams Available!

Should you wish to build my model, you can download the diagrams from www.papermodelers.com.
Enjoy!

- Eric

Henschel HS-132 - ALL DONE!

Some finishing touches...the BOMB.

 

Lots of fiddly pieces...  The the bars on the fins were a bit of a pain to assemble.

 

Bomb done! 
Now it's time to put all the parts together.

All done!

Now I'll need to write some assembly instructions.  Once done, I'll release this model, then start on my new one!

Henschel HS-132 - Part 23

Here's my update for this weekend:

The landing gears!  Lots of fiddly parts.  I had to go really slow on these.

After the glue dried, I finally got to attach them to the main body of the plane.

And finally, the HS-132 can now stand on its own three legs. :)
Good thing I haven't attached the engines yet.  I've already put in three medium sized computer screws in the nose.  But it's still turning out to be a tail sitter.  With the fuselage cavity still open, I can still attach more weight.

Henschel HS-132 - Part 22

Tails done!

 

I was a bit worried about the rudder because there was no other way to design it other than to to have the open edges facing forward.    Thankfully, they turned out pretty well. 



 

Here's a shot with the wings, elevators and rudders finally assembled.

Bottom shot showing the wheel wells.

Finally, a shot with the engine fitted.  The only things remaing are the landing gears and the SC500 bomb. 

Henschel HS-132 - Part 21

Time to put some wings on this plane!

 

I'm VERY happy with how the wings turned out.  In my previous designs, I always relied on using separate parts for making the wingtips.  This time, I carefully worked with the quirks of Metaseq to produce a 1 piece wing.  (Or rather... treat the whole wing as the wingtip..hehe)

 

I also made use of a stubby set of wing formers.





 The wings fit the fuselage really well!   

Here's a shot with the Engine and Wings dry fitted to the fuselage.  I'll resist the temptation of gluing them on until I've finished the tail part.
But that will have to wait till next weekend. :(

Henschel HS-132 - Part 20

I finally got to finish assembling the parts for the BMW003 jet engine.
Lots of small fiddly parts made this component kinda hard to make.
But with some patience, it worked out quite well.

The shot above shows the engine dry fitted to the fuselage.  Fits quite nicely!
But I won't glue it yet.    I may need to use the hole on the fuselage later on to make sure the wings are aligned. 

Henschel HS-132 - Part 19

The smokestacks from the Eric Flugzeugwerk factory begins billowing out black smokes.
Construction of the HS-132 has begun!

I start with the fuselage.

First the problems.  In the picture above, you'll see an open part in the fuselage.  I had a lot of problems when I wrapped the fuselage segment around the former before attaching it to the main fuselage.  I had to reprint the ruined parts.
I had better success by first attaching the fuselage segments to the main fuselage, and then inserting the fuselage formers after.

The front wheel well spans across one fuselage former.  It was a bit difficult to assemble that one as well.
Surprisingly, the gun ports were easy to make.

 Fuselage done!  No texture alignment problems. :)

 Next up, the BMW003 engines.

Henschel HS-132 - Part 18

Oh my...where do I begin?

If you go back to my first blog post entry for the HS132, I mentioned that this is my 2nd attempt at the model.  My first attempt was lost after an HDD crash.
Well guess what?  My stupid motherboard committed seppuku last Aug 12, 2012!
Yep.  I guess lightning does strike twice!
GOOD thing it was only my motherboard that got fried.  My HDDs were intact and I was able to recover all my files.  Unfortunately, that motherboard was an LGA775 based board.  I couldn't find any LGA775 boards anymore.  No choice but to get a new LGA1155 based board along with a new procie and set of RAM.  Oh well.
It took a lot of time to reinstall W7 as well.

Anyway, with everything back in place, I got back to finishing the texture job on the model.

Here's the final unfold:

I'm still working on the joining strips.  Once I get those done, I'll start with the test build!

For the joining strips, I got rid of the textures on a copy of the main PDO file.  I then added the pepakura glue tabs, with the edges set to 90degrees.
I'll be exporting this as PDF, which I'll then import to Inkscape for editing.
Here's the progress on the joining strips:

Henschel HS-132 - Part 17

I'm almost....almost done with the texturing.

Just a few more adjustments, then I'll be good to go for the test build!

Here are some screenshots of the textures:

Henschel HS-132 - Part 16

A little progress....

Henschel HS-132 - Part 15

It's been a while since my last update.  Lots of distractions --- work, Shogun 2: Total War, M:TG 2013, etc.  Well, mostly work.

Anyway, I'm done with the UV Mapping and have started working on the actual textures.

For the camo scheme, I decided to adopt one from a very famous JU87 based in North Africa -- the Snake Camo Stuka!

Here's what I have so far:

I hope you like it! :)

Henschel HS-132 - Part 14

It took a while, but I finally got to clean up the Metaseq model.
No more @!#$D(*$@! deleted vertices and faces message from Pepakura!

Here's how the initial unfold of "half" the model looks like:

Now it's time to freeze all the mirrored objects to produce the final wire frame.   Once done, I'll do that full unfold.

And finally, the picture above shows the model fully unfolded.
What follows next would be to start working on the fuselage and wing fillets/formers.
Then UV-mapping.

Oh yeah... this is turning out to be yet another model with a bazillion pieces! :)