Happy New Year & Update

Happy New Year everyone!! May 2008 be rewarding to you all. (PS - Slightly late as it's 2nd January here in Oz.)

I'm now back with 3DS Max & Photoshop and slowly making progress.

A few posts ago in my post 'Time to down tools', I posted a list of projects I hope to tackle during the course of 2008. There's others in progress too that may join that list.

Anyway first up will be the Sopwith Snipe. The Snipe has been an on & off project since 2005. The external model, sans textures was actually completed in the space of one week in July or August 2005. Since then there have been a couple of fuselage revisions. The cockpit and Bentley BR-2 engine were largely modeled in 2006/2007. There have been changes in goalposts with FSX now being the primary target, although the CFS3 version is still planned. Much has happened during that time. My modeling skills have developed and approach changed, and the FSX SDK has been through 3 iterations in addition to the betas. Thankfully everything has now settled down. It's now known that FSX can support 2048 textures. Whether I further mod the Snipe to accomodate 2048, I don't yet know, apart from 1 cockpit texture which I have already changed. I use a full set of specular textures on the external aircraft and increasing these to 2048 may cause FSX to croak on older cards. I'll experiment. I am working on the cockpit textures and rendering ambient occlusion maps, working my computer overtime (I have a break or get on with household chores while the computer renders away.)

Next it will most likely be the Sopwith Baby, once my Clerget model is complete. After that or in parallel it will be the F6F-3, then followed by the Albatros DVa. There's one other possibility that I won't reveal just yet..... Now that Gennadich have released their freeware Dr.1 I have re-scheduled my Dr.1 way down the list (yep I was doing one of these too - for a payware project - that's the way the cookie crumbles LoL). Anyway the parts will be useful for another Fokker aircraft - freeware for FSX, which I might start today, just for the challenge and a refresher - my first all new aircraft for 2008 :) It won't delay the Snipe. I'll try and include the Junkers D.I into the mix too, in the next few months.

Cheers

Rob