[WIP] McDonnall XP-67 Moonbat

[doflite 100]

On 19/10/2020 at 19:40, PickleJarOfDeath said:

All nice aside from the fact that I now have to redo all the animations in 3DS Max because the import no longer works properly. I also have to do the UV mapping so... That part won't be fun. I wouldn't mind on any other model but the XP-67 is tough to UV map.

is it the curved skin?

[PickleJarOfDeath 1,496]

On 22/10/2020 at 11:38, doflite said:

is it the curved skin?

It's partially that but also it is an issue of trying to keep a lot of the UV shells intact. The majority of the aircraft appears to be very topologically smooth and connected with regards to corners and hard edges or a lack thereof. I am unsure if I should really be cutting the nacelles from the body or the wing panels from the nacelles for example. I need to give @bobpie1 a good enough amount of surface area for all my shells within the (U, V) coordinate square ranging from (0, 0) to (1, 1). At the same time as giving enough surface area, I need to give a good enough level of continuity between regions of the aircraft. I can show you some screenshots of various configurations to explain later.

[GrumpyStranger 723]

You still need to place the seams *somewhere*, and to be fair, it's easier to mask seams in weird places than to deal with awkward deformations and sub-optimal uv space usage...

[PickleJarOfDeath 1,496]

23 hours ago, GrumpyStranger said:

You still need to place the seams *somewhere*, and to be fair, it's easier to mask seams in weird places than to deal with awkward deformations and sub-optimal uv space usage...

I can come back with some sketches for the UV layout. I'm curious as to what you think of the different arrangements because you sound like you know what your talking about.

[GrumpyStranger 723]

32 minutes ago, PickleJarOfDeath said:

sound like you know what your talking about.

 

That's one of the few talents that I have. I *sound* like I know things 

 

But sure, I'll be happy to help.

[Crome 78]

I love turbo props.

Especially counter rotating turboprops like the A2D-1 or the british Wyvern S4.

So I love to imagine the XP-67Moonbat with this engines.

[Aero_Aero_Bonito 2]

Beautiful work, this plane has fascinated me ever since I was young.  I look forward to seeing your progress!

[PickleJarOfDeath 1,496]

On 12/12/2020 at 20:14, Aero_Aero_Bonito said:

Beautiful work, this plane has fascinated me ever since I was young.  I look forward to seeing your progress!

A lot of my work as of late has been a number of very subtle tweaks to the tail. I can definitely post some of them but most of the renders I did that show the tail previously don’t show it in detail up close. I’m not sure how much of a difference anyone will be able to discern. Additionally I have started the process for detailing the main gear doors so I can definitely post some of that soonish. I don’t know about the central gear doors. The photos that show the central gear doors don’t show them in as good detail as the photos of the main gear. I will definitely have to work on the central gear doors regardless. I also need to sort out the flaps. I have 1 photo that shows them from a quarter left front angle of the aircraft. It’s not much to go off of. Luckily I have some sense for how they are supposed to be modeled based on the drawings that I have. Unfortunately I have no photos to use to detail the flaps so I’m using the F2H as my reference for the inside of the flaps as well as the surfaces of the fuselage under the flaps. I’m using the F2H because it is another early McDonnell Aircraft design which was likely designed based upon similar design principles regarding control surfaces and structural components. Hopefully I’ll be able to get a lot of that work done over my winter break.

[Solarmod 1,199]

1 hour ago, PickleJarOfDeath said:

A lot of my work as of late has been a number of very subtle tweaks to the tail. I can definitely post some of them but most of the renders I did that show the tail previously don’t show it in detail up close. I’m not sure how much of a difference anyone will be able to discern. Additionally I have started the process for detailing the main gear doors so I can definitely post some of that soonish. I don’t know about the central gear doors. The photos that show the central gear doors don’t show them in as good detail as the photos of the main gear. I will definitely have to work on the central gear doors regardless. I also need to sort out the flaps. I have 1 photo that shows them from a quarter left front angle of the aircraft. It’s not much to go off of. Luckily I have some sense for how they are supposed to be modeled based on the drawings that I have. Unfortunately I have no photos to use to detail the flaps so I’m using the F2H as my reference for the inside of the flaps as well as the surfaces of the fuselage under the flaps. I’m using the F2H because it is another early McDonnell Aircraft design which was likely designed based upon similar design principles regarding control surfaces and structural components. Hopefully I’ll be able to get a lot of that work done over my winter break.

Excited to see it!

[PickleJarOfDeath 1,496]

45 minutes ago, Solarmod said:

Excited to see it!

While not always, it can sometimes be a slogfest trying to work on it and sometimes I just don’t work on it at all for long periods in a measure of weeks. Sometimes it’s things like this that wake me up and motivate me to get back to work. My main concern as of right now is that I’m simply motivated to work on 3D modeling and animation in general as opposed to just the XP-67 so I have to balance my time between my animation project and the XP-67. The issue is that I want to try to finish the XP-67 to hand it off to bobpie1 to texture by the end of my winter break but I don’t know if I’ll have the time.

[PickleJarOfDeath 1,496]

Here is the current progress on the model. It may not look like much has changed aside from the inside of the gear doors, but a lot more than that has changed. There have been a lot of minor tweaks to contours as well as manifold and edge flow adjustments in numerous locations such as the outboard air intakes and all over the tail section. The joints of the tail control surfaces have been redone entirely and the profiles of the regions where the control surfaces meet the tail have been adjusted. I didn't really capture this well in the render but the profile of the region where the canopy meets the cockpit and fuselage has been adjusted and detailed more appropriately though still in progress.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[banano2002 22]

I love this plane and hope to see it in game soon^tm

[Solarmod 1,199]

Bump?

[PickleJarOfDeath 1,496]

On 30/05/2021 at 09:36, banano2002 said:

I love this plane and hope to see it in game soon^tm

I’ll be getting back to work on it soon. It’s a long story but second semester of the school year, I was at my university and got COVID early in February. I lost all my motivation to do anything whatsoever because I was stuck in an isolation unit for 2 weeks, got behind in all my classes, had to drop a class, was behind all semester, and had to request extensions on two classes lasting almost a month after finals were over. It was a s*** semester and I’m pretty sure the virus has had some pretty undesirable cognitive effects that will last a long while.

 

Regardless, I will be getting back to work on the XP-67 once I finish the F-86 model I’m doing for Bobpie which is for his VR project. That and the MiG-15 we’ve been working on will also be submitted to the game to replace the current and severely outdated models for each series. Once we finish the models enough for his project I’ll return to the XP-67. After the XP-67, we will finish up the MiG and Sabre for War Thunder.

[SasquatchFox360 1,006]

16 minutes ago, PickleJarOfDeath said:

I’ll be getting back to work on it soon. It’s a long story but second semester of the school year, I was at my university and got COVID early in February. I lost all my motivation to do anything whatsoever because I was stuck in an isolation unit for 2 weeks, got behind in all my classes, had to drop a class, was behind all semester, and had to request extensions on two classes lasting almost a month after finals were over. It was a s*** semester and I’m pretty sure the virus has had some pretty undesirable cognitive effects that will last a long while.

 

Regardless, I will be getting back to work on the XP-67 once I finish the F-86 model I’m doing for Bobpie which is for his VR project. That and the MiG-15 we’ve been working on will also be submitted to the game to replace the current and severely outdated models for each series. Once we finish the models enough for his project I’ll return to the XP-67. After the XP-67, we will finish up the MiG and Sabre for War Thunder.

Glad to hear you got through it in one piece this covid has taken a toll on everyone's livelihoods you seem like someone that can reach your goals keep at it man 

[PickleJarOfDeath 1,496]

I restarted the gear legs because I looked at some photos of the gear wells and realized EVERYTHING in my gear wells from the mounting brackets for the gear legs to the gear legs themselves and wheels were all wrong. The important takeaway, however, is that I have motivation again and I'm working on the XP-67 again while holding myself to a higher standard of accuracy.

 

[Metrallaroja 1,307]

33 minutes ago, PickleJarOfDeath said:

I restarted the gear legs because I looked at some photos of the gear wells and realized EVERYTHING in my gear wells from the mounting brackets for the gear legs to the gear legs themselves and wheels were all wrong. The important takeaway, however, is that I have motivation again and I'm working on the XP-67 again while holding myself to a higher standard of accuracy.

 

Great work! 
I dont know if this is useful but in the National Archives at College Park they seem to have a lot of documents about the XP-67

You would need to visit it tho, or the can also copy the documents and send them to you via mail

https://catalog.archives.gov/search?q=*:*&f.oldScope=(descriptions or online)&f.allTitles=xp-67&SearchType=advanced#.YijffdqPJkU.link

Edited March 9, 2022 by Metrallaroja

[Metrallaroja 1,307]

Well I have just read that you already visited the National Archives ups hahaha

If you ever go back to them hit me up, there are a lot of interesting documents there that I would want 

[PickleJarOfDeath 1,496]

19 minutes ago, Metrallaroja said:

Well I have just read that you already visited the National Archives ups hahaha

If you ever go back to them hit me up, there are a lot of interesting documents there that I would want 

What would you be looking for?

[Metrallaroja 1,307]

8 minutes ago, PickleJarOfDeath said:

What would you be looking for?

Welp mainly some F2G, F4U-5, F4U-7, AU-1 and XP-72 documents. For example: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/7532356 https://catalog.archives.gov/id/7532445 https://catalog.archives.gov/id/40554356

I already made a contact and Im just waiting how all goes and if he is able to get them.

But the collection is almost infinite and I feel like there will always be something interesting on it 

Edited March 9, 2022 by Metrallaroja

[PickleJarOfDeath 1,496]

Just a little update…

 

I have restarted the model for the sake of fixing the topology of the mesh. The old model had too much wrong with it to keep. The overall form of the old model was perfectly fine but the topology was terrible in some places. Don’t worry though. I’m keeping the 3rd landing gear iteration and current cockpit elements so it’s not a major setback.

Edited June 6, 2022 by PickleJarOfDeath

[PickleJarOfDeath 1,496]

 

The new model is so much more satisfying to look at even at this stage because the entire form is more accurate to the drawings and photos than the original model. I should update the materials because there is no contrast in these renders...

[PickleJarOfDeath 1,496]

Here are some renders with the control surfaces closer to finished and with a new material applied to allow for the detail and curvature of the rest of the model to show through better.

[PickleJarOfDeath 1,496]

Here is the latest update. I fell behind schedule by a little over a week because the final form of the intakes, radiator vents, and turbo vents are relatively poorly photographed. The initial design was photographed rather well before they modified the intakes and fore section of the nacelles of the prototype. Ideally, this entire thing is done by the end of August so the project doesn't have to contend with my academics.

 

Spoiler

And that's because I want the Fuji T-1A, XP-77, F-86, or MiG-15 to be contending with my academics instead.

 

I was supposed to get either a job or an internship during this summer break and opted out of both in order to finish this project. Long story short, I had made a deal with The Destroyer of Worlds (my mom) in order to get this done. The agreement was that if I were to opt out of a job/internship, I had to create a planned schedule for the entire project, and had to continue volunteering 2 days per week at the local aviation museum where I started working when I got back home from university.

 

So, here are the renders of the current progress. This will eventually be the most detailed model and the most accurate model of the XP-67 you will probably see for years. The reason being is that I have a great collection of drawings gathered from the National Archives and photos from the McDonnell Douglas archive thanks to Boeing's licensing department. However, this alone did not do it. I was starting from scratch for this model, rather than modifying an old model while making lazy compromises. My attitude made the difference.

 

Next goal: creation of gear wells and transfer of iteration 3 of the landing gear

Edited July 12, 2022 by PickleJarOfDeath

[PickleJarOfDeath 1,496]

Propellers and the old internal cockpit details have been added. I will probably redo the cockpit though because the old cockpit detail feels a little sussy if you catch my drift. The topology of some of the old cockpit details is also kind of messy. The canopy frame is fine for the progress I have made on it so far, however.