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Woops sorry. Anyway it doesn't really matter now, my drawing program does not have a good implementation of NURBS.

I will just keep searching wherever I come for a new modeling solution... Up next: T-splines.

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Guns don't kill people, -I- do! - Dwarven Rifleman, Warcraft III

I'm no longer making any progress, I quite simply can't finish the A-10's hull and gearpods. I've tried everything and quite frankly, I'm out of options. Even cladding the hull with a few dozen help surfaces to construct polygon material on didn't cut it. There are ALWAYS wrinkles, pits, dents, or 'frog eyes' in de nose cone of the hull and gearpod. The battle is lost, the war not over. It'll be a while before I'm back.

For those interested, I can make a disaster collage of images *lol*

27-05-2007:

Falling back to a previous geometry solution set. Do you see any disruptions near the nose?

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/56273541/

If not, I will use this set.

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Guns don't kill people, -I- do! - Dwarven Rifleman, Warcraft III

Looks fine to me.

Alright, I made short work of the front landing gear bay doors and the openings in the fuselage, only to find out I had no image of the inside of the bay. Is it simply a box shaped space?

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/56437824/

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Guns don't kill people, -I- do! - Dwarven Rifleman, Warcraft III

Are you sure you want to detail the inside of the gear pods? It is FULL of hydraulic lines, wire harnesses, fuel lines, springs, clamps, hoses, valves, electrical boxes, ... a GIANT can of worms. I would venture to say it is near impossible to draw all the things inside it.

But basically, yeah, its is pretty much a box.
There are a few pictures in the webpage with the walk-around pics I posted before. Here are some:

Sorry about my appearant inactivity over the past month, but I needed a monsterous amount of time to master NURBS. I have them under control now.

WIP 21-1

Note the rounded edges. The primary advantage of NURBS is the ability to cut without distorting, and than rounding the resulting edges. The process is very tricky though.

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/56877933/



WIP 21-2

I've completely redone what I think are the fuselage weapon points, in NURBS. That was the hardest part so far.

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/56878012/



So, no progress for as far as you can see. But take my word for it, the math used to describe the surface is fundamentally different now. NURBS are the industrial standard for CAD/CAM applications.The reward will be that I can now perfectly merge the GAU8 into the fuselage, and have my A-10 milled out of a metal block using CAM

To actually do the latter I need to go one step further though. I must get an application that will let me import my A-10 and kick it out again as an IGES model. Then I also need $1000 - $2000. But since I'm eventually going to have spent ~500 hours on the computer model I am seriously concidering it.

It's 6:22am now, I'm going to pass out now.

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Guns don't kill people, -I- do! - Dwarven Rifleman, Warcraft III

Again, all way over my head. Just let me know when you need pictures or have a question or something.

Did you ever, after failing to do something insanely complex for many times, got it wrong when you thought it was all fixed?

Well check this:

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/57278829/

During a modification of my model, I applied an irreversible command in a way I absolutely do not comprehend. When I saw this thought: \"You... have... GOT to be shitting me!\"

Remains of A-10 model => Trash can => Gasoline => Toss in a match

I'm going to start over. The old model was flawed anyway. It contained twisted surfaces because I probably didn't follow the actual surface of the aircraft between my references but drew curves between them that I thought looked beautiful. Next time, I will simply make the curves such that there is no tiwst even when they look a bit ugly.
==

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Guns don't kill people, -I- do! - Dwarven Rifleman, Warcraft III

Woah.

Alright, I have gathered the will to restart the A-10 project. Let's get started on the fuselage, I have a few questions about it.

I may have mistankingly oversimplified the fuselage.

On the pictures:

Blue lines: The surface flow lines as I understood them
Red lines: What these new pictures suggest

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/57432778/

My question would be:

(middle pictrues) What happens with the surface near the front of the cockpit?

(lower pictures) Is there some kind of slight bulge sticking outward near the middle of the cockpit? The red line in this case indicates up to where the surface is vertical.

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Guns don't kill people, -I- do! - Dwarven Rifleman, Warcraft III

It doesn't bulge out, the blue lines seem more correct to me. I'll get some pics on Thursday for you.

Seems I got fooled a bit. The cockpit canopy/fuselage seam is a curve that looks completely straight when viewed from the side, and is bulging outward when looking from the top. That's because the fuselage is bulging upward but has been cut into along a flat surface. While this can explain almost everything, There is still something weird near the front of the canopy.

http://www.af.mil/shared/media/photodb/ ... 9J-027.jpg

Check the bottom right of this picture. You see a reflection line that I'd expect to run paralel to the fuselage's length when it terminates. If you'd like to make a picture for me, I'd like to have some of all the surface within a radius of 1ft from the front left or right corner of the canopy. The more reflection lines/shadows the better.

If the visible reflection line means what I think it does, it will explain why my cockpit canopy ends too high according to my references. It all depends on whether that line (showing a fold line) is going upward or inward. If it goes inward, then the top of the fuselage has less width at the height of the cockpit than I though. This will cause the cockpit which maintains its width, to end a bit lower, and the window frame to end correctly.

In my earlier pictures, the curve in the central pictures is caused by the fact that the surface also bulges inward and the sunlight is coming from behind a bit. The lower pictures do hold meaning, they correspond with the one I showed in this post.

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Guns don't kill people, -I- do! - Dwarven Rifleman, Warcraft III

You want pics of the front corner of the canopy or of the windscreen? (the windscreens are the front 3 windows, the canopy is the big moving one)

Coincidentally it doesn't matter - the interesting foldline is just as far away from the corner of the windscreen as it is from the corner of the canopy. Let's take the corner of the canpoy as our reference point. As long as I can see everything within about 1ft from that corner I got all I need. Try to find angles from which you can see reflection lines running just by the cockpit side-windscreen. If you can't find anything just try a few different random angles.

The most drastic option would be to put any kind of visible cord/string/tape along cross sections of the fuselage at regular intervals. But I wouldn't want to be responsible for catastrophic failure of the airframe when it has to be peeled off again :/ (Hmm I must be confusing the A-10 for the F-22 here). This is just an idea, only to be carried out if you're especially bored. If you are seriously bored you could ofcourse put tape across all cross sections of every visible bit of aircraft.. ehm... about 2 miles.. I'll shut up now.

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Guns don't kill people, -I- do! - Dwarven Rifleman, Warcraft III

Well, I've finally found the lower limit for my error margin. It's by coincidence that I know the actual magnitude. I have multiple sideshots of the A-10, and no matter how I overlap or resize them I always have 'ghost fringes' of up to one barrel diamater of the gattling gun - which happens to be 30mm.

I need to find a way to draw an average between the ghost fringes.

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Guns don't kill people, -I- do! - Dwarven Rifleman, Warcraft III

I've got a very small but very important question. The strange bit of pipe in the red circle, is it always in exactly the same place on every A-10? This bit is the only reference I found in order to determine the pitch angle in a top view.

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/57793412/

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Guns don't kill people, -I- do! - Dwarven Rifleman, Warcraft III

It is...
BUT
Thats the fuel vent mast, its a hollow metal tube. It is in the same place, but it dents easily and the way it is installed, or repaired, it is possible for some to be at a sliiiightly different angle than another.

No prize for me then. To be useful, the positional uncertainty must be within 5 mm (1/5 in).

Either way, I choose to ignore it now because unless you carry out some crazy stunts I won't know the wing's sweep angles anyway. The project is getting older and so am I. I'm going to change my approach, I'll plan the entire drawing in advance. I'm going to draw construction lines for everything that I plan to draw save for easilly added details. I'll be forced to craft fully consistent references then and make my compromises clear before I make complex 3D surfaces...

Once the plan drawings are done I'll show them, they'll be definitive (save for details like rivets and pipes) if you can't find any weird stuff on them.

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Guns don't kill people, -I- do! - Dwarven Rifleman, Warcraft III

I've focused my attention on finalizing the engine cowl and support column. I'm making definitive versions of all aircraft parts since the beginning of june using NURBS geometry.

Here's the tweaked version of the engine cowl and support column. It hasn't been finished yet. I can't find any reliable way to precisely tell how far behind the intake lip the support column begins. I've already dragged it back 25% compared to the previous model. I'm just asking, does this look natural to you?

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/58404024/

I'm beginning to wonder if the whole NURBS idea is a disaster. How long has it been by now?

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Guns don't kill people, -I- do! - Dwarven Rifleman, Warcraft III

Looks right to me. I'll measure it tomorrow though, and get you pics of it and the canopy/windscreen area.

This is the forelast version of the engine cowl + attachment pylon. Due to the lack of shading in the pictures I have I cannot tell exactly how sharp all the folds should be. If you spot any slight deviations from reality, please tell me. I will then make the final version.

View 1:

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/58494816/

View 2

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/58494844/

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Guns don't kill people, -I- do! - Dwarven Rifleman, Warcraft III

Those look right.
Check your email, I sent you two emails, 9 pictures total, but I just got an error message for one of them, so let me know what you did/did not get and I'll resend it.

Those look right, but are they supposed to be missing the aft shroud and LPT? Looking aft toward the motor, at any angle, you can see the after inner-shrouding (with the *small* gaps and a glimpse of the LPT blades.

--Raven

jackb: I didn't get any of them unfortunately.

TheLastRaven: This is a specific set of parts. The engine cowl + attachment pylon. The innards aren't supposed to be in this picture, I have intentionally hidden them.

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Guns don't kill people, -I- do! - Dwarven Rifleman, Warcraft III

Re-sent.