Modeling, Texturing And Rigging A Republic P47 - Part 3: Modeling

Over the next few weeks, guest columnist Anders Lejczak [bazze] shares his Cinema 4D expertise with the Renderosity community. Anders combines his passion for airplanes and his talent as a CG Modeler to bring you this outstanding tutorial series: Modeling, Texturing and Rigging a Republic P47. This week, Part 3: Modeling!

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).

Above is a textured version.

Next week: UV-Mapping and texturing
First Week: Part 1: Creating A Reference Setup
Second Week: Part 2: Modeling

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We would like to thank guest columnist Anders Lejczak [bazze] for this outstanding tutorial series. Anders has been a member of Renderosity for over 6 years. As a Cinema 4D artist his Renderosity Art Gallery combines his passion for airplanes and his talent as a CG Modeler. February 6, 2006

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