Trump requested an aircraft to sit in the factory of his new map. He pointed out the existing model in the Empires repository, so I rebuilt it in Blender and went to work. As most projects, feature creep might turn these things in to more than a static model. Meanwhile I thought I throw out the work I have so far and see how much of a beating I get.
Thank you for making this for me. I will use this a couple times/a lot. When will a download be available? Or is it going to be in base game?
I just realized the nf heavy looks like it has a desert camo that's been worn off in spots, huh. Looks neat so far.
As much as I love Megel's designs... this one is confusing because a dual rotor aircraft does not need a stabilizing rotor. Should be a tri-copter or quad copter or something. OH WELL, looks good doooood
That looks awesome! I guess it's more of a fighter than a hover as doesn't it have jet inlets? Or is it some weird hybrid helicopter thing? Whatever it is, it looks great
is that just a box projected material? theres some pretty ugly texture stretching going on (wing fe.) but nice that this model finally gets a texture
Thanks for the feedback everyone. It's still a work in progress. @VS It does have inlets, but I also thought the glowing power cells could file in for the imaginary power requirements Here's what it looks like in low light. Would be cool to see these over a dark map like King, but I don't know that the effect it going to port well to source engine. @flache Yeah, there's some weird uvmap stuff going that shouldn't be happening. I'm working on fixing that. It's using a single 4k texture I created (4 days of misery with gimp) to use on this and maybe future NF stuff. I did my best to match the original from the available uvmaps, but it will never be 100%. Too bad the original NF texture has gone missing. I'm thinking NF work has been stalled for a long time over the missing original texture.
@complete_ Thanks for noticing. Single hardest part was color matching. Had to eyeball the whole thing. gimp and substance painter picker tools couldn't cope. Getting the look of the "spots" right was next toughest. Props to the original texture maker, it is a great texture. Hopefully the new high-rez version will do a good job. What about the NF Jeep needs redo? One thought would be to reskin all the existing models with the new texture so they all match. Though mine is very very close, I'm not sure old and new would play well side by side in game.
The stabilizing rotor allows the copter to rotate while staying level, which means the gunner can keep his aim better.
Right, but you could just have both the rotors rotate in the same direction to achieve the same effect. Maybe the Jekotian rebels are building these things with hydraulic controls and can't achieve that.
I think you have very uneven polygon density. The engines are very high-res, while the cockpit is not. Engines will be spinning, I presume, hence not that important to have them so detailed. The cockpit could look more detailed, now it is very sketchy, and looks more like lego than an airplane. Look at reference images for planes/helicopters and see if you can pull some inspiration from those.
All your points are valid, but I didn't build the original model. The goal was to give the existing one from the archive a texture it never had. The original didn't have turbo fans either, so I did build those and why they are a bit higher poly than the rest of the jet. Maybe someday there will be time to do a higher rez version as I've been working on for the light tank.
Is it just me - or does it look like the main lift fans pivot on the wrong axis? The fact it has wing-like structures suggests it would fly a bit like an Osprey tilt-rotor.... upwards for lift, then forward for thrust. However, the fans on the model look like they tilt inwards or outwards - supporting only sideways flight (or ripping the wings apart / crushing the occupants)
It's not obvious from the previous photos, but the original modeler did account for an engine pivot point.