Ha, I'd done an hdri render, just to show how that can make something look almost photorealistic. I scruffed up the image to see what it looked like as all old and grainy. Of course I only went and saved it over the the hdri image!! What an idiot So that one can wait, as renders with hdri can take a while to do. What they are, is an image put together from multiple f stopped images. They have detail in the darks and in the lights. A model picks up very subtle tones in its reflections and can look bloody wonderful.
That looks spiffing, old bean... Two things from recent searches... Walkthrough Sunderland Flying Boat - YouTube ... and an FS software package from Abacus... Short Sunderland Flying Boat - Download [s880] - $19.00 : Abacus Software Inc., We Fly the World! A MkIII with some screen-captures on the link look quite good and can be viewed as near full-screen images...
That little walk around movie was quite good in terms of getting an idea of those bomb bay doors. That sort of lozenge shape drops down but there are a lot of pictures, where a smaller oblong shape at the bottom seems to pull out. There's probably a good loading reason why that design is in place but I can't see it. I do like the idea that they had a toilet and a vice! Spoilt rotten those RAF blokes. Though I would have refused to go up in the thing, unless it had a smoking lounge and a device to warm copies of the Guardian crossword. A new render but i still have to do the outboard engines and the wings. Then a general overall scruffing up and it should look like the dog's doh dahs.
The tal fins to do and a general toning down of the colours, and tightening up of the bump maps, and I think it will look half way decent. i even like some of my lousy paint work as it makes it look all scruffy and beat up.
Oh yeah the depth charge doors don't open that way, I know. I just wanted to show that they do open, It's a bit of a faff to get them to open at a point other than the half way mark, so I'll leave that until last thing.
A couple of things, I've decided to do the actual squadies with their sleeves rolled up, now I know somewhere here there's a comment that says. Sleeves down for jungle combat but I took that to mean current thinking. My other question is about the gauge of the railway lines that the chindits were attacking. If I can find the gauge I should be able to find the sort of trains to blow up and derail. I've found a number of new 3 view drawing of planes used by the 1st air commando, including a helicopter, Wow! Got to build that one!
The worlds first rescue by helicopter was in Burma... a Sikorsky R4 or YR4 - I've found both "types" referenced - apparently 6 were shipped in but 2 were lost in training in India - under-powered and did not like the heat - references to 23 combat missions and 18 personnel rescued in one USAAF based work I have... "Jungle Saga: Rescue in Burma!" - YouTube
Hell that thing sounds like it had a lawn mower engine! I found another useful little terrain generator program. It's called World Machine and a google search will take you to it. it can take height map data from 3dem, and add stuff like erosional details. When you download it, go to the community button and look at the macro library, there's one for a coastal overlay, which can output colour maps; you just lower the sea level if you don't want one.
It looks like it works rather well with the last one, that's 3dem. The local news where I live had a piece yesterday on an old Burma railway man who had just died. he died only a few days before the release of movie about his trip to Burma and forgiveness of the Japanese. The movie and his book are called the railway man I believe. It reminded me of a bloke I met years ago, who had worked on the Burma railway, then he was taken to Japan and his ship was hit by an American sub, he, and others were rescued from the sinking. What port did he arrive in? Well, he said the Japanese simply ignored them, so they were left to just lounge about, sunbathing, with a view of Nagasaki. Wow! This guy didn't hate the japs either, his view was that hatred just destroys you, and even at the time he concentrated more on trying to understand a totally alien mind set. i seem to recal that some local historian had written up the guy's story but I never saw it, it might be a little booklet in a library somewhere. The plane in the water, with a light on it the colour scheme looks pretty washed out, greyscale it's close to the photos I've seen. I think I might have the wrong font for the plane's number but it looks okay. Was the number repeated on the underside of the wing, in between the two engines? Oh and is there a way of dumping most of my older images, without dumping the entire message?
Oh and is there a way of dumping most of my older images, without dumping the entire message? You should eb able to edit your posts, manage attachments , then remove image.
Thanks owen, I thought there might be a limitation on uploads, and people must be sick of pictures of Sunderlands.
Bob Can you do one in black and white, i think that you would not be able to tell the difference from the real thing.
Hi Eddie, here's the simple greyscale of that image, and the other one is a scruffed up sepia type job, you might find in the old tin box in the loft. This plane is 88 ft long so I think a lot depends on the depth of field that the camera had. Proper war photographers would have had filters and good quality cameras but most pictures of sea planes would have looked dreadful, because of light bouncing off water, black and white film, a poor lens and the plane's paint job almost disappearing with black and white stock.
Looking good, Bob... looking good... re the Railway Man - there is a thread running on him here... http://www.ww2talk.com/forum/ww2-news-articles/48598-rip-eric-lomax-burma-pow.html There is an excellent book called The Forgotten Highlander by Gordon Urquhart that sounds similar to what you mentioned - the kind of story that causes eye precipitation in the hardest of us...
That's interesting, I looked up the wiki article on Gordon Urquhart and these two blokes seemed to have had almost the same war. The bloke I met worked at C. A. Parsons in Newcastle, and I heard his story, from him, when I was a youngun. This would have been about 1970. Now one thing I do recall about the events described, was that he said something about Japanese ships. He mentioned that when hit by a torpedo they sank bloody fast. That was because they had little in the way of freeboard, they sit very low in the water. So it sounds as though he was on a Japanese prisoner ship bound for japan and not a captured ship. He did say though that the American sub sank a few ships from a convoy. On the day the bomb went off, he said that he and about five other prisoners were sunbathing on a concrete block affair which looked down on the city.
Bob B&W one for me, think it looks fantastic, great modelling work I must say. Keep up the good work......I'm still trying to find time to put some time into mine but my work load currently is stoppping me from putting some hours into the task!
Thanks Eddie, I think it should look good moving in a game. I'm really tempted to do some more aeoroplanes, as they're all so stunning in their Burma colours. Then there's a little bulldozer and scraper, that could fit in a glider. If on landing it came adrift, pulleys would pull the pilots compartment out of the way! That must have been bloody scary. I did find raf fonts but one of them looks just like the font I used. My font has a rounder number eight in the plane's tail number. Some it's squarer, anybody that fussed on this point? I can change it no bother, just a faff. I found the fonts on a site called military meshes, I should have looked sooner but these guys are pretty scary. I once put up a normal map image of three links in a chain. I was building the Bismark, and thought to hell with making chains for the railings. Some people there went ape! "No, no, you have to make proper chains." There are images on that site where you could zoom in on the handrails of a Bismark model and see the proper links of a german style chain!!! I think that's barking myself. But no, forget planes and ships, I have to do the gurkha next, I need a game figure to help me get people on board for the game. I've even found a model mule for him but it's hopeless to repair for a game. I'll have to use it as a background image and rebuild a new one. Nine tenths of the work on a figure is sculpting detail onto a low poly mesh, then turning that into a normal map, to give the lumps and bumps, then painting the figure so that he looks like he's been in the wars. I'm looking forward to that stage, as chindits could look like fabulously beat up game figures. Another question though. on an actual mission what did they have with them? I take it they weren't carrying a full pack but they could be ambushed in full pack, was the first thing to do, get down and squirm out of your pack, or cover your bren gun people while they did that?
