Witold Jaworski writes:
For many years I have recreated historical aircraft - as accurately as possible. (And believe me, such a software like Blender gives you tremendous possibilities on this field). Never mind that it takes time – this is not an obstacle for a zealot like me! In 2015 I started reporting the progress of my current project — the SBD Dauntless dive bomber — on a blog titled ‘Airplanes in 3D’.
I post there weekly, every Saturday/Sunday. The typical article contains about 800 words and 7-10 illustrations. If you remember my ‘Virtual Airplane’ guide, then you will recognise similar presentation style. This blog is not as detailed as the guide, but you can use it as an additional resource. It illustrates the methods that I originally presented in the book, this time used for another aircraft.
I also present some new issues here, for example:
- How to create complete reference drawings from scratch. (I compared the existing scale plans of the SBD with the photos, and discovered that the differences are so huge that these drawings are unusable. Thus I had to create my own scale plans). You can learn how I did it in my posts from May, June and July 2015;
- How to use high-resolution photos as a precise references (even better than the scale plans!). I described it in my post from December 5th, 2015;
So, if you want to learn how to recreate a historical aircraft in details (or just how to do "hard surface modeling"), follow the 'Airplanes in 3D'! Building these old designs is a great fun, as well as a practical exercise. Later you can adapt these models for various flight simulators. Every post about modeling is accompanied by the source *.blend file, so you can always check everything by your own.
