Witold Jaworski

The last texture for my model contains various elements that in the plastic kits are delivered as the decals: national insignia, radio-call numbers and various service labels. I prepared it as another vector drawing in Inkscape: I exported this picture to a raster file named color-decals.png. It has transparent background, because I will combined this image with the other components of the color texture, prepared in previous posts. The U.S. national insignia passed various transformations during the WWII. Between December 1941 and May 1942 the roundels on the Dauntless win

It seems that Douglas used a high-quality paint for their SBDs, because I cannot find any trace of chips/flakes, even on such a worn-out aircraft as this from VSMB-241 (see figure below). However, you can see some scratches on the center wing, trodden by the crew: In the photo above, the minor scratches are yellow, because Douglas used a yellow layer of Zinc Chromate primer below the camouflage paint. (The interiors were painted with another layer of the Zinc Chromate, mixed with Lamp Black to obtain a darker, greenish hue). However, the larger area along the leading edge wa

Joel, thank you for following this thread! Indeed, I started this project in April 2015. However, there were some breaks, giving (in total) about six months of the "absence". What's more, I spent the first three months of this time making my own scale plans. They are detailed, but making such a computer model as mine is a though test for such references: I already identified many minor errors in these drawings. I think that in the next month I will show here my drafts of the updated SBD scale plans. They are automatically generated from my 3D model, thus free of all the classic

In this post I will work on the weathering effects of the color texture, while in the next one I will add scratches and some other remaining details. The weathering effects that you can observe on the aircraft from WWII era are quite “dramatic”. The paints used in mid-20th century were not as chemically “stable” as the contemporary coats, thus they could change their hues in few months of intense service. The archival color photos below show an extreme case of this effect: These photos were taken by Frank Sherschel on 14th November 1942, for the “Life” magazine. The SBD-3s depicted on

The color (also known as “diffuse”) map is the most obvious texture, which you can find on every game model. In my models it is composed of three separate images: the camouflage, the dirt (stains, soot, etc.), and the markings (national insignia, tactical numbers, warning labels, and all other similar stuff). In this post I will compose the basic camouflage texture. Some time ago I unwrapped the left side of this model (see this post, Figure 62-3). Now I had to complete this work, creating remaining elements of the right side, and unwrapping them on the UVMap layout. The final result looks

I already finished the bump map (in the second-last post), so it’s time to introduce another texture: the reflection (ref) map. It alters the basic reflectivity (gloss) assigned to the material. In addition, it also alters the material “roughness”. (In the typical CG materials the roughness and reflectivity are coupled in an inverse proportion). These two parameters are important, when you have to paint an oil streak or a soot streak. Both are black – the difference between them lies in their reflectivity. The effects of the ref map are most visible inside these areas of the model that actu

This post is a small digression about a modeling technique that may be useful for those, who would like to build their own 3D models. There is a detail on the bottom surfaces of the SBD center wing: an opening, made partially in the cover of the fuselage belly: The difficult part of this detail is its flange, stamped in the fuselage cover. I just have two photos of this element, both of average resolution. On both of them you can see a typical circular recession, made around the opening in the belly cover. In fact, such a feature is quite common in the sheet metal design (you can see p

Continuation of the previous post Following the experiences with the UV mapping of the center wing, I stripped two full-span bands of the UV faces from the left wing and the right aileron: Frankly speaking, drawing details of these additional strips in a way that they seamlessly fit the rest of the wing was quite difficult. As you can see, I also made small adjustment on the leading edge seam, on both wings. (It removed the deformation described some time ago in this post, Figure 64-9). The UV layout depicted above contains three inner corners, all located on the leading ed

Although the technical details of aircraft skin are symmetric in general, there are always exceptions. For example, look at the bottom surfaces of the SBD (Figure below shows them on my model): As you can see, there are several details that are not symmetric. (In addition, let’s do not forget about the asymmetric opening under bottom covers of the fuselage, visible on this picture – see Figure 70‑9 in my previous post). So far I mapped only the symmetric half of the wing on the UVTech texture layout. It occupies a significant portion of the space. Such a size allowed me to draw all the

Originally I was going to describe the finished bump map in this post. However, when I started writing it, I discovered that I have enough materials for at least two subsequent posts. Thus I decided to split this text into this and the next article. There are many small openings in the aircraft skin. For example – perforation of the SBD Dauntless wing flaps, or small slots for control surfaces actuators. It would require a lot work to model each of such details “in the mesh”. What’s more – it would make the model meshes much more complex, which would hinder the UV mapping, and so on. F

In this and the next post I will describe my work on the first of the textures required for the SBD Dauntless model. It is called bump (height) map. I use it for recreating all of the minor details that are visible on the aircraft skin. However, before I begin this work, I had to put my model into more “natural” surroundings. I imported the environment (World) and the material settings from my previous model (the P-40). You can see the initial results below: Of course, the propeller of this aircraft is static, and there is nothing in the cockpit and under the engine cowling. Do no

In every creative process, after each “big step forward” you have to stop and carefully examine the results. Usually you have to make various corrections (sometimes minor, sometimes major), before taking the next step. This post describes such minor corrections that I had to make after mapping the key texture of the panel lines. In my first post published in October, I drew the panel lines on the model, then compared them with the photos. Sometimes a minor difference between their layouts can lead to a discovery of an error in the fuselage shape. I in that post already found and fixed an is

This post is a small digression from the main thread – I will write here about a new method for recreating geometry of historical airplanes. In one of my previous posts I complained that it is hard to find any reliable drawings of the historical propeller blades from the middle of 20th century. In particular, the geometry of various popular Hamilton Standard propellers from WWII era is unavailable. I have found in a discussion on one of the aviation forums that Hamilton Standard Company still keeps this data as their “business secret” – even their design from 1936! So far

Continuation of the previous post: I had another kind of troubles with the lower part of the fuselage, behind the wing trailing edge. The UV layout of this mesh fragment has a significant distortion. A straight line on the model maps to a curve in this area. What’s more, I had to split this area (using seams) into two separate parts, which also creates some continuity issues: It was quite difficult to find a proper curve on the UV plane that transforms into a straight line on the model. This process required several iterations. After I managed to keep shapes of these lines with

Continuation of the previous post: Then I verified these new panel lines on the reference photo. I discovered that while the aileron and elevator ribs on the photo match my scale plans, the rudder ribs have different locations: I also noticed another difference in the upper part of the tailplane fairing. Its outer edge runs along one of the fuselage longerons. In my model it is placed somewhat higher than in the photo: When the other fuselage lines match their counterparts on the reference photo, this difference means an error in the shape of my model. I analyzed this area,

In this post I continue mapping the panel lines of SBD-5 Dauntless skin onto my model. After tracing the outer wing sections, described in the previous post, I traced the center wing section: As you can see in the picture, I also traced the contours of the wheel bay on the wing surfaces. (These openings disappear, when you enter mesh edit mode, because they are dynamically created by Boolean modifiers. Thus such contours will be useful during further work, because in this way you can see these edges while editing the mesh). I also outlined contours of the bomb bay panels, which are mode

I always start drawing the image of the aircraft skin by tracing the lines of the main panel seams. They will form a kind of reference “grid”, which later I will fill with other details: rivet seams, inspection doors, etc. I will draw all these technical details in Inkscape, because it is much easier to modify such shapes in this vector-based program than in GIMP, which is mainly intended for the raster images. What’s more, I can export this scalable vector graphic from Inkscape to a raster image of any resolution. Initially I prepared in Inkscape an empty drawing, set up

Thank you, Cubs2jets! There will be some posts about digital "painting" - I hope that you will enjoy the final results :). ___________________________ The original texture map (UV map) finished in the previous post (as in figure below) is appropriate for the color textures (camouflage, national insignia and other markings). In this mapping various parts of the airplane overlap each other, so the pattern of the test image remains continuous: While such an arrangement makes the camouflage painting easier, it would be impossible to use such a map with overlapping elemen

In summer 2016 I had to make a break from this project for a while. Then, in previous autumn, there was an issue with this forum. I visited today and discovered that everything is fixed now. Great! In the meanwhile I made a significant progress. To "catch-up" with the latest post, I will publish two posts per week in this thread, to the end of November. Below first of these posts (it was published elsewhere in October 2016): ______________________________________________________________________ Well, after a long break in August and September (I had to finish a demanding

This week I finished mapping all the parts of my model onto a two-dimensional image. Figure below shows the test image, mapped on the model surface. (Its pattern helps me in keeping the same mapping “scale” for each object): I did not “unwrap” the small details, like the parts of the propeller mechanism, because I will “paint” all the small parts using procedural textures. Figure "a", below, shows how these meshes are distributed on the 2D UV map (you can see the reference image beneath). At this moment I mapped just a single (left) wing, the symmetric halves of the rudder and the fi

I have just begun the third stage of this project: “painting” the model. At this moment I am unwrapping its meshes in the UV space. I will deliver you a full post about this process next Sunday. Today I will just signalize how it looks like. So I started by creating a new reference picture. It had to have a rectangular shape. Inside I placed my drawings of the fuselage, wings, and the tailplane: The most important thing: all elements of this drawing have exactly the same scale. As you can see, I used flipped left side silhouette in place of the right side view. In fact, I should prep

In the previous post I promised that I will start the UV-unwrapping. However, last week I found a new edition of Bert Kinzey’s “SBD Dauntless” book. After ten years break, Bert started to continue his “Detail & Scale” series, this time in a different form: digital editions. This e-book is the “updated and revised” version of an earlier publication (from 1995). For me, the most important part of Kinzey’s books are the “walk around” photos. They differ from all other “walk arounds” by careful selection of the pictures and comprehensive comments that explain many technical details depicted on

While working on the cowling details, I discovered that the SBD-5 from the Commemorative Air Force (“white 5”) uses a non-original Hamilton Standard propeller. It has larger hub and a pair of bolts in the middle of the hub barrel edges. (As I wrote in this post, the original Hamilton Standard hubs used in the SBDs were smaller, thus they had a single bolt in the middle of each barrel edge). What’s more, I also noticed that the centerline of my model does not precisely pass through the tip of the propeller dome visible in this photo. When I corrected this mistake, I also noticed that the edges

The last details that I create in this project stage are the gun doors behind the gunner’s cockpit. In the SBD-1 they covered a single Browning gun. Fortunately, they were wide enough for stowing the double guns, which were mounted in the SBD-2 and SBD-3 by the Navy workshops: Note that stowing the ammunition belts of this double gun required additional cutouts in the cockpit rear border. They were covered by slide plates on both sides of the gun doors (see figure above). In this post I will recreate these details. Before I do it, I have to fix a certain error that I have recently fou

I continue updating the Dauntless versions that I am building in parallel to the basic SBD-3. In the previous post I updated the one important element of the SBD-5 model: its propeller (SBD-3 used an older version of the Hamilton Standard propeller). In this post I will continue this update. While I already recreated the SBD-5 NACA cowling (see Figure 46-8 in this post), now it is time to adapt the panels behind it. I started by copying the corresponding cowling from the SBD-3. When it appeared in the place, I discovered a 1” gap between this cowling and the SBD-5 inner cowling panel (see fi