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Scifiwarships — AeroCat fwd engines
#aerotech #aircraft #dynamics #fighter #jet #jetfighter #powerboat #raceboat #stellar #gravracer #raceplane #scifiwarships
Published: 2015-08-29 21:40:24 +0000 UTC; Views: 2929; Favourites: 55; Downloads: 87
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Description
Another shot of the Aero-Catamaran /groundeffect racer I have just built. This time it's a coupe of shots of the fwd engines.These are the primary lifter engines and they form the big cushion of air that is trapped underneath the hull to provide lift. They are heat powered pulse jets and I went for this technology because it allowed for non cylindrical engines, as there are no spinning turbines within them.
I wanted big, muscular engine nacelles in the front of the craft to give the illusion of great power. At the same time I also wanted them sleek, and fast looking.
To achieve this I went for rectangular shapes. I liked the rectangles and they gave me better control of the curve of the engine cover and at the same time allowed for quite decent forward vision from the cockpit even though it is situated very low and far back on the fuselage.
I hope you like it!
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Comments: 25
Oh man, you just get the creative juices flowing, superb close in details are gorgeous as always, get a 3d printer for F... sake and start pumping these beauties out loll 
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Hehehe, thanks! Congrats on the exposure on conceptships, well done mate!
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Cheers Mate, was good to be posted, but as always yours and a few others comments and support always means more, keeps me going
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Absolutely love your designs! I'm actually amazed you convinced Sketchup to do this kind of detail. How do you deal with the tiny faces not showing up? I always have to manually go and remind sketchup that triangles smaller then 1/16" can exist. But it gets tedious.
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Thank you very much!
I do have issues with SU on models this size and it can be a real pain
The trick , I have found, is to have as flat curves as possible. Many facets in the steep curves, fewer on the bigger surfaces. Then I have to do like you and clean up the model along seams i.e. where the" nostep" stripes cross curved surfaces on this model. I also make the different colors into groups. That makes them easier to handle. One of the most handy tools in the program I have found to be the "soften edges palette". it is gold when you deal with curves as it allows for line control in small regions of the model.
Another useful tip: In order to get different colors and patterns on the hull I make 2d templates over a side or top elevation of the model. The I extrude the pattern through the model. You can then make the extrusion cut through the model in three different ways: One is to simply press intersect. The second is to use the "drape" tool, but then the pattern and the part you want intersected both have to be groups.
In both of these instances, SketchUp for all it's beauty, will leave a fucked up mess with tons of ghost lines and undivided surfaces especially where the intersect line is close to an intersection of planes or oblique angles (your tiny triangles) etc.
Now here's the tip: Use the intersect section tool, BUT make both template and part into groups FIRST. Then you delete the template group AND copy just the intersection lines BEFORE you explode the part you want intersected. Then you paste in place the intesection lines you've just copied and you get a clean cut with no ghost lines. In the case of an object cutting into another object. Follow the same procedure, up to you've copied the intersection line and then paste it in side the group of either part you want cut. it often helps to paste it 2-3 times. Then you remove the excess and you have clean cuts with no ghost lines and just a few small triangles to sort out. These I often redraw and merge into bigger ones.
I find this method to be the only way to get complex shapes to mesh together (nicely). Then I use one of Fredo's curve or camfer tools. Of course, there needs to be a certain level (Somtimes ALOT...) of cleanup afterwards, but the end result is some very smooth and curvaceous models
What I also do is to part up the model as much as possible. This model actually consists of a series of almost identical ones. I have a fuselage/ hull file made in five copies. One holds fwd and partial aft engines. The second one has the cockpit, the third one holds the reactor, the fourth have the aft engines, and then I have a fifth one which is empty. This one I use as a template for different livery patterns (I will over the coming weeks show a series of pic of this craft with different racing sponsors.
(I have a test pic in here with different style pontoons on the craft and "Trimble" racing livery on it)
Lots of work, but the end result is a nice model in many variants.
Thank you for taking an interest in my work!
-Joachim
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Those sound very similar to the tricks I've been using, so I'm glad to know I'm on the right track. I'll definitely take note of that drape tool, though..
Thank you!
I just wish sketchup would fix two things. Two things have been my upper limit for model complexity, both stemming from the same issue. The auto face generation not working on very small faces, and the camera clipping plane when the model gets very complex being so you can't zoom in as close as you'd like. How do you deal with that? I imagine you have issues.. The ship you commented on has a full interior as well, so it's pushed it past the point of no return when it comes to the camera clipping plane.
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Hi mate! Glad I can help.
I'm not quite sure what you mean with auto face generation. I'm totally self taught on SU so I don't always know what the terminology means. If you can elaborate a bit maybe I've come across it and have an idea.
The zoom problem however, that I should be able to fix for you. Just change the camera (top pulldown menu) from perspective to parallel projection. That will allow you to zoom in much, much further and cure your plane clipping issues.
Hope this helps!
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I don't think thats a technical name for it. Keep in mind I'm totally self taught on sketchup too
If you use the solid tools, for example, to intersect shapes together, and you get it so that just the tiny tiniest triangle will form, for example, if you subtract a curve from another curve, and it tries to make a triangle with 1/32" sides, the face won't fill in automatically, and then breaks the solid manifold of the part. Does that make sense?
Also parallel projection.. I use that occasionally, though it is strange to get used to. The camera feels weird. I did not think of using it to cure this, though. I usually use it to export DXF's
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Aha, now I know what you're talking about! I get it ALL the time, and the only fix I have for it is a tedious one... A: fill them all in B: redraw the section just near to it to make bigger triangles. It's what I've found to be the biggest "time thief" in SketchUp. Knitting together/redrawing manually/correcting errors/ or whatever one wants to call it.
Parallel projection works a treat!
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Okay, good.. I've been using sketchup since around 4th grade (now graduated for two years) so.. I found that I tend to have a habit of learning a way around a problem and that way might not necessarily be the correct way, so its good to know someone of your caliber has the same solution I do!
I just wish they would adjust that.. Its my only issue with sketchup. Everything else is amazing.
Do you have advice for making realistic hoses, by the way? I find I have a hard time making droopy looking rubber hoses, It seems like you pull that off very well, or at least I think you could, given everything else
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I guess we all have out pet hates with this program
Realistic hoses, that's a tough one. It seems there's no easy way, I have however discovered that you can make quite realistic 3 point curves with the first(Classic) of the Bezier curves on the BZ toolbar.
I've used it quite a lot lately and it makes quite realistic curves.
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I've been doing that, along with manual lines and it seems to work, once again, glad I'm on the right track.
Yeah, this program is quirky, but there seems to be nothing else like it. I've tried solid works, I've tried inventor, I've tried 3DS and Maya, all.. terrible. They all have either primitives or separate sketch modes.. sketchup is in every mode at once. Why do programs make it so hard to edit the raw vertices?
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I don't know... I seem to have heard somewhere that at least 3DSMax is difficult because it has something to do with animation.
It's a program that is way beyond my intelligence and physical means so I don't really care to know that much about it.
SketchUp is, I think, second to none when it comes to user friendliness. Further more, in the right hands, this program is probably just as good as what 3DS can produce as well. at least with hard surface modelling.
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I think the only thing I wish sketchup had as well (and Im sure it does, in plugins I haven't explored yet) is a decent UV mapping / texturing engine. One day..
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I haven't checked lately, but it used to have very bad alternatives, I suspect that is about to change with Trimble owning SU these days. They seem to want to take the program much further than Google, and that's good news for the likes of us!
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Yeah! Though I did talk to them at a trade show once and they don't seem too inclined to fix the too small face not generating by itself and us having to stitch the model back to manifold issues, because it's apparently a very core limitation of the engine sketchup runs on. So.. We'll see.
If sketchup fixed that and then got some basic texturing, I'd be so happy. I'd never need another modeller.
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I wish they'd make a good animation program as well. that's my biggest wish, to make a short film colaboration with one of my craft fully rendered with engine sounds, heat blur, textures, the works.. Problem is I don't have the skills to pull it off or the funds to learn/buy software.
I do have one of my models that have been animated by a guy from UK. He'd downloaded a tank I posted on 3Dwarehouse and made a short film in Blender. He got the damn thing to work too. EXACTLY as I'd planned and seen in my head when I cooked up the articulation of the suspension and body. That was extremely cool.. For me at least Here's a link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ud8QMU…
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that looks amazing!! I'd love to be able to do that to one of my ships one day..
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It does look kind of cool.. I had no idea until the guy just sent me a link one day. I wish I had the funds to have a professional studio do this kind of thing to other models. That would be something...
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