I haven't been able to keep this blog as fresh as I originally intented due to being very busy working on the Bristol Fighter itself. I intend to post further articles on the evolution of this project.
The Bristol Fighter or 'Biff' as it was known by its crew in WW1 is currently at the texture development stage. I am never happy with it and have remapped the aircraft twice and the virtual cockpit 3 times. I have just added a switch box in the observer's cockpit and am making up my mind as to whether to fit spare Lewis Gun magazines in the cockpit. The magazine on the VC Lewis gun is 1000 triangles in size. While that's ok for the main lewis gun adding 5 spares would add 5000 triangles - a bit much. I am experimenting with lower resolution versions of the magazine at the moment.
I have been experimenting with ambient occlusion maps rendered in 3DS Max 8 and composited in Photoshop 6. So far the results have been pleasing.
Here are some some in game [CFS3] WIP screen shots of the recently remapped virtual cockpit as at Sunday 11 December 2005 AM.
