F-4K Phantom II

HolBol

After my last scene, I've moved on to a new one. This time I'm going for a scene involving the F-4K Phantom II aboard the HMS Ark Royal (R09). Here's a shot of the airraft so far. No textures yet, just plain materials.




I still need to model the tailhook, spoilers, landing gear, cockpit and inner engine, The rest of the detail, like panels and bolts I'll do with normal maps. I may give the aircraft's albedo two UV channels, one for base paint and another for decals that can be swapped in and out so I can create more variants. I'll also create the weapon and fuel loads for under the wings. Once I've done with these, I'll quickly model the carrier's surface, and play with creating an ocean underneath too.

aclund3

Love the scattering of the engine light on the underside of the tail. There's a certain clean style to that last render that I really appreciate  

HolBol

I've made a few updates. Landing gear now has moveable bay doors for both the nose and under the wing. I've added spoilers and the tailhook. Turns out I had missed a whole section of the tail which is now how it should be. Canopy now has movable pieces, but I haven't done the cockpit yet. Going to texture the exterior before I move on to the cockpit and landing gear. Time for some UV fun.



Here's the paint job I'm going for:

HolBol

I've begun painting the albedo map. I'll paint some dirt based on the panel lines I've currently got, then remove them from the albedo and use them in the normal map.

HolBol

More work, some normal map and metal/roughness map stuff. Only the fuselage so far.


I'm considering moving text and the ejection warning markers and things to a separate texture on a different UV channel and then mix it in the node editor so I can have high detail on both sides of the mesh without reversal.

HolBol

Hey! Thanks for the feedback. Dirtying it up some is something I've been working on as I've gone along. I've added the tail insignia, and have started on the intake ramps. I haven't quite done the metalness for those two areas yet so they don't look correct. They also both need normal mapping still, which I'll do today. The intake ramps also need their fine detail on the panel closest to the intake itself, because they're got all sorts of little details on them.

I'm also going to unwrap the tailplanes and wings, and that little intake near the nose. That'll be nearly all of the exterior mapped, so I can focus on texturing.

Also tweaked the lighting because just the HDR sky by itself wasn't doing enough. So I've added a sunset-coloured hemi lamp and lined it up with the sky. I think it helps the metal details pop.

HolBol

Little bit of progress. Unwrapped and textured wings and tailplanes and more. The panels that are the wrong colour on the underside are the as-yet untextured landing gear covers. Need to go over these new areas to get some chipped paint.

Shrike

looks better, try more differences in roughness, and more roughness overall

HolBol

More roughness? There's me thinking it should be more shiny! Is this better?



EDIT: Tweaked the lighting because I didn't think the blue-grey of the paint was obvious enough. Also made it even more rough. Also realised I forgot to turn off my albedo panel lines layer so now they're only normal-map stuff, makes for a much more subtle effect.

HolBol

High poly is actually just the basic structures, modelled as accurately as I could with my skills. Any significant part has its own mesh. Then I UV'd the surfaces of the high poly as if it was any other mesh, and painted the PBR textures by hand in Photoshop, following plenty of reference pictures and blueprints and diagrams. All the wear is painted on top with its relevant metal, rough and normal maps generated from it, and that's mainly down to artistic license. I've actually never used substance painter!

HolBol

Making some slow progress. Created a couple of rough edjection seats for the cockpit, not detailing them too much because they won't be seen up close. No textures either.

Playing with lighting too, still unsure quite how I'm going to frame it. Just stuck some quick colour grading on here too. I may end up ditching the carrier as this has dragged on a while. Any ideas?

EDIT:

I'm toying with this kind of colouring instead to kinda make it look like an old photograph. Good idea?

rustim

Great job so far!  I would say ditching the carrier isn't a bad idea, just focus on getting a good finish on this model.  You can always come back another time when you've recharged!  Personally I preferred the glossiness of some of your earlier renders, help things like the nose pop.

HolBol

You're right, upping some of the glossyness does make the nose pop out better.

CybranM

Looks great, starting to get more and more difficult to see that it isnt a real picture

HolBol

@CybranM Thanks! It's still got a way to go but glad it appears to be getting there!

Added 4 as yet untextured Skyflash (British AIM-7s, basically) missiles, and a pair of very poorly UV'd fuel pods. I may also add a center fuel pod and inner wing pylons.



So, assuming I'm getting rid of the carrier, I now have a checklist!

To model-

• Pilot Cockpit Instruments (these won't be super detailed, may even go for a flat texture instead of modelling most of it as it's just for show.
• RIO Cockpit Instruments, same as above.
• Engine inner afterburner and nozzle (currently the intakes to the engines are just sealed off, I'm going to add both the intake fans that can be seen from the front and the back of the hjet engine at the back)
• maybe still add landing gear for the sake of completeness.
• add the inner wing pylons with AIM-9s on
• Pilots!
• Possibly add in the leading-edge flaps to the wings, at the minute I've just pretended they don't exist.
  

To Texture-

• The canopy, including frame
• Engine exhaust and inner engine
• Tailhook
• cockpit panels and ejection seats
  
• Missiles and fuel pods
• Change the front fuselage markings to match that of the starboard side of the aircraft, and not the port side. The port side ones look good, but if I'm trying to be accurate it has to go!
• More details and chips on the wings and underside.
  

Extras-

• Rig the whole thing with an armature to make it poseable.

Zi0

Nice work! How did you make the panelling, did you model it?

HolBol

Hey! It's all just a heightmap painted by hand in Photoshop. I paint each bolt myself though I'm sure I could have automated it somehow. I also use the metalness ma to indent the paint chips that are exposing the metal beneath. After I've added that and a few dents, and the lines between panels, I run it through XNormal's height2normals filter to generate a normal map. It's far easier than modelling each panel and trying to maintain good topology and she flow of all you need is the preexisting UVs. Of course, for an object that was smaller I'd bake from high poly but on this kind of scale I find that workflow pointless when I could paint it and get cleaner results.

HolBol

Alright, I've got missiles and fuel pods with their pylons done. Textured the canopy frame, the engine nozzle, the tailhook, fuel pods, missiles and more. I changed the front fuselage texturing to make it accurate to the correct side that is shown. Managed to find a much better font that matches the Navy's one a little better.



Cockpit and pilots still to go. Main issue is that I have no experience character sculpting, so I may just whip up a low poly simple character and use that instead of going into detail.