Month: March 2019

So it turns out there are a lot of parts in the wing now. More than 200. So it’s taken me a few weeks to get all the mapping done. Now that’s finished I can finally mirror it and look vaguely symmetrical in flight!

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It was only once it was in P3D I realised I hadn’t set the animations for the starboard gear and flaps but that’s only a few minutes work.

The propeller and exhausts still need to be modelled plus some detailing on the fuselage but other than that the basic exterior is done. The more observant may have realised I’ve basically now got a Spitfire Vc, not a Seafire. That’s intentional, the next step for the exterior after it’s all mapped will be adding the parts for a Seafire II, but I’ll probably release the Vc as well as it’s no additional work as long as I save a copy of the model file before I cut the hole for the arrestor hook!

Before I mirror the port wing etc. I want to make sure it’s all texture mapped so I don’t have to do it all twice! The gear is probably the most complicated bit to map and I’ve finally got the leg and the panel on the inside of the door done.

These shots were done in Quixel which lets you assign different materials to different parts and then produces the correct textures. Once I install the P3D v4.4 SDK it should allow me to produce PBR textures fairly easily.

It doesn’t look quite as good in 3D Studio but at least it’s mapped now! There’s probably a similar amount of work to do on the gear bay and then the wing should be fairly straightforward… I’ll probably try and get the PBR textures working in P3D 4.4 before then so I can see how they look. By which I mean I’m hoping by next weekend!

The locking pin (red cylinder in the image) for the Spitfire family undercarriage rotated 180 degrees depending on whether it was acting as an uplock or a downlock. The sloped face allowed the gear strut to push the pin out of the way once it was rotated. The rotation was achieved via a chain and cog controlled via cables connected to the undercarriage controls. Originally I hadn’t planned on modelling these that accurately, because it’s in the gear bay and it seemed a lot of detail for something that’s mostly obscured. But as the alternative was trying to give the impression of a chain with textures I ended up doing it anyway. The picture below shows where it goes, the cables having been disconnected for removal.

I’ve done a short video that shows a) how impressive the animation is and b) how hard it is to actually see in P3D because of the undercarriage and wing being in the way!