Over SU's capabilities? Painting a Jet

Peer help needed here!

A client of mine has asked me to do some schemes for their Jet; “cool, what an awesome job” I think.

The output I need is:
• A load of 3 view options and some renders for presentation
• Iteration of design
• Dimensioned drawings showing the painters how to implement the scheme.

I use Thea Render for the obvious.

So I bought a model of the plane from one of the online model vendors in .3DS format (I also have a load of other formats) and imported it. It’s incredibly accurate. So much so that I think it possibly came from the manufacturer originally. It also has the projection maps for a standard colour scheme in .psd format.

The converted file was 200MB and I used the Artisan toolset to reduce it to just under 100MB but it’s still very dense, plus I had to spend a whole evening fixing holes and errors.

So as far as I can think there are two ways forward as far as scheme designs go:

  1. Model the scheme onto the plane so the SketchUp materials are burnt into the geometry

This has the advantage of being able to use Thea Render materials but hugely time consuming for complicated schemes (the client likes plaid (tatran)

  1. Slap projection maps of the scheme on the model using the projection mapping technique used for more organic shapes.

I have a strong feeling that this might be a lot easier in 3D Studio, but I don’t own a license and haven’t used it for a decade.

How would you approach this?

Attached are some views, a grab of the photoshop document and the LayOut sheet


A couple of things come to mind that I would do before starting to add textures. First, since the plane is mostly symmetrical, I’d split it down the middle and delete one side. Most likely the starboard side of the plane could go. The port side has the doors. If you need to show the starboard side, you can make a copy of the port side and flip it to create a mirrored image. The seams around the doors can be managed separately.

I would also consider reducing the triangulation in the surfaces. I bet you can simplify the model more than it has been. And use ThomThom’s QuadFace tools on it. That’ll make applying the paint job easier.

Thanks @DaveR

First, since the plane is mostly symmetrical, I’d split it down the middle and delete one side. Most likely the starboard side of the plane could go. The port side has the doors. If you need to show the starboard side, you can make a copy of the port side and flip it to create a mirrored image. The seams around the doors can be managed separately.

I took a different tack in componenting the parts (wings engines etc) and mirroring them. I didn’t want to tackle the fuselage because it has non-symetrical parts (like all the cargo hatches and doors)

I would also consider reducing the triangulation in the surfaces.

As I said; I have already more than halved the poly count using Artisan but in the process had to fix a load of areas where the surfaces doubled over themselves.

OK.

Those cargo doors and such could be handled with the split fuselage.

The close up view of the mesh at the front of the port flap shows an awful lot of triangulation, much of which can probably be eliminated. That would make it much easier to add textures. It would also make reflections look better in the renders. Notice the sawtooth sort of edges in the reflections on the fuselage behind the wing. The forward edge of the blue should be straight since trailing edge of the flap is being reflected forward of the blue.

Do you think I should pass it through @thomthom 's tools as well then?

Probably wouldn’t hurt.

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