AH-1W Super Cobra Helicopter

Updated pics at foot of page

Click the thumbnails for bigger pics.

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Still to do:

[*][*:nq6cblhd]Optimise
[*:nq6cblhd]Sort out smoothing (keep getting horrible smoothing results even though I've got very few triangles and the rest quads, any hints?)
[*:nq6cblhd]Not really happy with the wings or the fuel tank (hence why one side is kinda done and the other is bare). I think I'll just remove the fuel tank and put rocket pods (whatever the hell the technical term is for them ) on both sides for nice looking symmetry, plus it looks meaner.
[*:nq6cblhd]Interior
[*:nq6cblhd]Touch up the tail & tail rotor a bit, it has lots of wasted polys right now[/list]I started this ages ago, but I've not had time to work on it for various reasons. It's taken far too long to get this far because I've been pretty anal about the details due to the large amount of good photo refs I have. This is just a bit of fun and a salute to my favourite BF2 chopper, so I made it a bit more high poly than needed for a bit of a challenge on modelling the more complicated bits (like I modelled most of the intricate detail on the rotor.. the rotor is usually spinning so...). The nose cone detail is probably overkill; again, I just felt like it.

Each half of the body is ~1250 polys but I will be ably to reduce that by quite a bit. The total is about ~6000 polys. If I got rid of most of the detail that nobody cares about, it'd probably be about ~4000 which is still kinda high considering there's no interior yet.

Anyone got any good hints on achieving nice smoothing with a minimum of lighting artefacts while also simultaneously removing as many edge loops as possible? I often create new edge loops to retain an all quad mesh (or as much as possible as quads) but if I'm getting shitty smoothing it's wasted effort & polys. Any other c & c appreciated, cheers.

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Yep, to me the cockpit doesn't fit with the real Super-Cobra ! Have a look to the blueprint !

Anything in particular that stands out? I've had to use a mix of AH-1W and AH-1Z blueprints and even those were really shitty quality, so it's kinda hard to see anything beyond coarse detail on those. I do have a lot of good AH-1W reference photos, though.

Re: Smoothing. By smoothing, I mean smoothing groups

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BTW. every edge need to be connected with other edges...

I've read varying advice on this. Some espouse the importance of an all quad mesh (by any means) whereas others say that maintaining loops (4 edges meeting joined at every vertex) is more important. Others say that having 'poles' is fine yet others don't. Some people say not to worry about triangles at all. I don't really have an opinion on it -- I'm just interested in finding the best way to get results

Thanks. Regarding the rotor: I just modelled it because I saw it in a photo and thought it looked quite intricate and challenging to get the shape & proportions to an accurate-ish level. I spent about 400 polys on it so it'd definitely be the first thing I chopped if I were to use this for a game.

~~Updated. Btw thanks a lot for those blueprints, Seldoon182. I didn't even notice them when I first read your post. Thanks to the much better blueprints, I was able to correct a lot of the proportions and cleaned up the mesh a bit. The nose could still do with being pinched in a little and the cockpit isn't 100%, but I think it's good enough as is now. I'll do the cockpit interior at some stage but I don't have time right now.

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ta

3ds max 8