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Aztek

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Posts posted by Aztek

  1. That pic is a screengrab form a clip during one of the first 5 or so episodes of macross. It's a split screen of cockpit action and chest "thrusters" that ends up showing the throttle rise up and the ducts spit out blue thrust. It's about a 2 second clip that I played over a few times to see what was going on.

    You can just see the aircraft right side chestplate intake in the lower left/center of the pic. That would be the right armpit with covers open.

    Twenty or so pages ago I rendered some armsocket detail. My side covers have a pretty complex folding system but they eventually slide up under the chest plate intake, which they are hinged on.

    If you look at the lineart for the valk xform sequence you can see that the arm sockets slide forward and aft under the backplate during xforms. In battroid and fighter they are all the way fwd. It seems like they slide aft a hair in gerwalk so that they clear the verniers, on the engine intakes. Re-render your gerwalk pose with the entire socket assy slid back far enough that the joint doesn't clip the verniers. Swing around it and check it out.

    This is definately cannon or the tracks wouldn't have been so clearly drawn.

    First pic is slid fwd and stowed.

    post-5-1114340663.jpg

  2. Dude, I really like your armpits.

    :huh:

    It looks more "macrossy" than mine. I may have to rethink the direction I'm going in. Do they stow away during the xform sequence?

    Here's a pic that I used when I modeled mine. I've been trying to get them to fold open to reveal the ducted thrust, but it's an engineering nightmare.

    post-5-1114332532.jpg

  3. Dat,

    K, here's where I'll back peddle a lil. White and light grey is notoriously almost always a gloss or semi gloss paint in the fighter world (and heavy for that matter). Usually reserved for special purpose aircraft, i.e., AWACS, Demo teams (Thunderbirds), and Airborne Command Aircraft, etc. This paint makes it highly reflective and hence more visible from land and air targeting. That's why the majority of the fleet is flat and subdued.

    Then there is the valks. While I'd put my last dollar on the fact that a cannon fodder aircraft is most definately non-gloss, the lead aircraft and maybe even the entire skull squadron may have gloss tendencies. Since they are the best of the best of the fleet, maybe they go for the flair instead of the work horse plainness.

    So, I'd say, in relative terms if glass is 100 percent gloss, and your paint is 70, it "should" be kicked down to about 40-50.

    Some reflection and gloss but not always immediately apparent.

    Dude, go to www.af.mil and dig through their photo section. It is broken down by aircraft type so it's easy to search through the library. Some pics are like 2000x3000 pixels so the details are sweet.

    Dig around and try and find your balance. Look at any Thunderbird photos, and if you are going for a white gloss paint, those will be your best reference.

  4. That looks frikin pimp Dat. Your valk has come so damn far since your earlier versions. You're definately leading the pack around here lately.

    Have you thought of softening up your glossiness on the wing skin? It seems really reflective for something that goes on flat. I've only seen gloss paint used on fighters in the intakes. Maybe I'm overthinking the valk, but since I'm always around aircraft it just screams at me to NOT make it glossy.

    When a fighter gets a new paint, it looks really flat. Nice and grey, but flat. Over time weathering, foot/hand traffic, washes, scrubbing and such it "polishes" up. The intrinsic flatness (roughness) of the paint smooths out and gives the appearance of a semi gloss paint in certain lighting. But since I'm not around valks day to day, I can only guess. Maybe they are glossy and I'm a meathead. It's just a personal pref of mine.

    Right now your valk would totally kick my valks ass, so please don't take this personal! :D

  5. Hey Dat, I noticed your feet are kind of rigid. Why don't you slide thim out a hair, like on the 1/48, then you'd be able to pivot them on the ankle joint to make them parallel with the surface? I had to shorten my footwell (?) so that when extended my feet don't "look" like they are extended.

  6. Rod,

    Thanks.

    Japan has been sucking the life out of me. I went from a training base with A-10s and -130's to a combat F-16 unit, so the tempo is worlds apart. I spent about 40 hours this week working a broke -16 and was one step away from getting some support from Lockheed for a fix before we nailed the malfunction. Fixing planes has been getting more attention than drawing them lately. I squeezed out those renders while burning some midnight oil. I'll try and get more active once things slow up a lil (like that will happen!)

    Also, your valk is sweet. You know that. But were you going for the plastic toy look? or are you trying to go photo realistic? I just noticed your texs are pretty bright and solid. I am SOOOOO not knocking your work man, I'm just trying to figure out the direction you're going in.

  7. Rod here's some captures and a render of my set of hands. I have the hands linked together and skinned at the joints (mostly the black areas). I have a 3 joints in the wrist to give it all the motion our forearms and wrist usualy provide. Hope these help. Scans from Macross Design Works were invaluable for this. It has some ortho hand views you can use.

    post-5-1112271696_thumb.jpg

  8. I got 5 kids so I keep them out of their reach about 2 feet from the ceiling on a shelf. I've never had any incidents, but since I've moved to Japan (earthquake central, worse than california) I've had to keep most in fighter mode. The only drawback is every 2 months or so I have to knock off the dut that accumulates.

  9. Rod,

    Your lowvis valk's scheme looks spot on. I think your renderer accents the panel lines a lil too much, but I'm sure the production renderer would take care of that with the raytracing and such. As far as the textures go, search the www.af.mil site, specifically aerial refueling pics. They have awesome shots, well lit, a variety of paint jobs and super high res (at least as far as aviation websites go). It gives a good sample of the diff levels of cleanliness aircraft have.

    Lemme know if your not finding the shots I'm describing here. I'll link you some if you can't.

    For everyone else, af.mil has a lot of good ref material especially from the maintenance perspective (ground shots) and in flight perspective (AR shots)

  10. Radd,

    Damn I AM glad I'm over here. I could barely sweet talk my lady outta the 120 bucks. The other cool thing is they have Macross on clearance from time to time, so you get even better deals. I can't remember the price, but the Max and Milia 1/72s were on special a while back and it seemed like a steal at the time I just didn't have the desire to get them. Oh well, I don't see the Konig getting marked down any time soon.

  11. I usually don't post in the toy forums, but this is just too sweet. I went and picked mine up from the local TRU Japan (I'm lucky to be stationed here) and just unpacked it and did the initial xform to gerwalk. I can't believe how many joints this thing has! Yamato out did themselves on this one. I can't even imagine what the IHP version was like. The exchange rate right now kinda blows, but I got mine for 120 ish. It was definately money well spent.

    Ok, I have some quirks to figure out with the xform sequence, so I'm out. I just hadta share the joy!

    :D

  12. Dat,

    I like the views you used to show off the hasegawa refs. I noticed you had to fatten up the nose (like me), but did you fatten (widen, from top down view) the chest/backplate assy? I did a little, I can't remember how moch, but I think it was like 7 percent on the x axis. This made the chest look more anime in battroid mode, and also set my legs whaen in fighter mode farther apart. This gave me the flexibility to fatten the legs and arms, hopefully to avoid valkanorexia.

  13. I just looked at your recent render Dat,

    Forgive the primitivity of the attachment, I tweaked it in MSPaint at work.

    The wingtip from an ortho front view should be more like the inset. The mesh may be easier to model if you model it as a seperate object and then weld it to your main wing. You are limited to the vertices that attach it to the main wing, so some wing redesign may need to happen. Also, from this angle, the wing looks kinda thin, toyish almost. I'd apply a scale modifier to the z-axis (or whatever axis you have set to the direction of the arrow) and scale it wider until it barely clears the notch in the backplate w/o clipping it. This should also round the leading edge some more, and give you room for more flap track and spolier detail, if you are shooting for this.

    I wanted my wings to look fat and functional I think I may have even widened my notch in the backplate to accomodate the wing design I stuck with.

    You've come along way since your first few models that resembled the 1/72 Yammies. I'm only picking this apart since you've seemed to shift gears toward realism.

    post-5-1099354437.jpg

  14. Dat,

    From wing root to outboard edge, the wing usually runs the same airfoil. The airfoil is the shape if the wing if you sliced it in half and looked at it from the side. Believe it or not, the airfoil has the same basic makeup on highspeed aircraft as on heavies (cargo). Rounded front and trailing to a tip at the trailing edge. I took an airfoil I was happy with and splined it out in 2d. I extruded that spline all the way out to the wingtip assembly, the housing that has the formation and index lights. Scale it down to pattern the narrowing of the wing as it goes more outbd. The pain in the ass is cutting out and modeling flaps, spoilers, and wingtip assembly. Getting the roundeness, almost like half a teardrop from scracth, at least from me, was a bear.

    Hopefully Woz's pimp ass wing will help you out some more.

  15. The riveting isn't normally visible in the CG renders we've seen dealing with the valk. The "dots" you textured are screws and their size is relatively close to real world after you figure in the wear around the paint surrounding the screw. Rivets are usually so small, flush and numerous, that the factory paint usually conceals them. As individual rivets loosen over time due to stress and failure, they protrude through the paint and begin to emit fuel,lube or hydro stains and streaks. This usually happens in onezies and twozies, not completely along a panel or wing spar. If it did, there would be a major failure along a spar or rib, usually the result of cracking, and repair would be necessary.

    What you've got is good. I have the same style texture on mine. What I wanted to do in the future is lighten and blend about 40-50 percent of the visible screws into the base paint scheme of the valk. During panel removal not ALL of the screws are messed up so bad that they give off the signs of weathering that we have on our textures. Alot go back in so well that they blend back in to the structure, and when doing a preflight or post flight inspection, would not even be visible as a fastener unless you were specifically looking for it.

    Sorry I went on a tangent with this rivet detail, but I can appreciate the work you are putting in to your valk, so I wanted you to have this to use if you though it would enhance the realism.

    Also, When removing/replacing panels and the panel is a bitch coming off, we usually replace the screws rather than putting half rounded out screws back in. The panel is not repainted, nor are the screws. This ends up with zinc plated screws only being visible around the panel. It would be a cool effect to add to the valk on certain high maintenance panels. Maybe on one of the leg panels for engine maintenance. And some wing panels near the flaps, where the flap actuators would be. The zinc plated hardware is an aviation standard. It's a very light gold/yellow color.

    Again, just an idea I have and no time on my part to implement yet.

  16. David, I thought the Wolf Pack was at the Kun, (Kunsan?) Also, I'm finally in Japan and workin with the Wild Weasels of the 35th. We got the CGs and about half the fleet online with the CCIP modification. I'm finishing up an Egress (ACES II ejection seat) training course so the -16 world for me right now is pretty tight. I never thought too much about -16s till I got here and started working them. Now I fly them all the time in FS2004 and Jane's USAF. I can't wait till this game comes out so I can hot dog with my kids when I come home pissed off from working on lawn darts all day.

    Also another Pacific Air Forces folk lore unit is the Fightin' Chickens (Cocks?) down at Kadena. They are the ones with the tail code of ZZ who supposedly flaked out during an incident in Vietnam where an airstrip was overrun and the maintainers were hung from the rafters with safety wire (lock wire). Supposedly the ZZ unit was to provide close air support and didn't come through. They were then (by the story) barred from returning stateside till they proved themselves in combat.

    This has been the way the story usually unfolds. One Chief Master Sergeant I talked to who was stationed at Kadena said this was UNTRUE since Kadena served honorably in Desert Storm. I dunno. There's alot of history in the units around the world. I'm glad to see it trickle into games and the media the way it does sometimes.

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