Hello guys, good to know you both like the choice I made.
The intention is to do the whole set eventually, however, the few drawings I have of the Queen Mary trailer are not very clear, I think I pulled
them from the net and they were themselves what seemed to be scans from a book, I have a better drawing for the Bedford tractor unit that
pulls it though. The Thorneycroft uses a scale drawing from the Blueprints site, was the best I could find so I made a start.
Here are the remaining images I put together to show the remainder of the build over the last few months:
It was difficult to see what was underneath, some of the shots from the site I posted the link for had parts
obscured by certain things, in the end I found a Airfix forum where one had been made and that helped.
Testing in game:
The chassis has become a Body mesh for the test, the poly limit is getting just over 2500 at the moment:
There is still the rear hook to add, seen here on this photograph from the Yorkshire Air Museum at Elvington, York, that with one at
the front will take the mesh to the normal IL-2 limit:
BodyTop has been added with the hier, this will have the drivers cab and all the mudguards as well as
the turntable for the crane:
Mapping is done as I construct certain elements, that way I do not have to do it all in one go, very tedious:
At the moment the trick is to get onto one texture all the necessary parts, what I intend with the above is
to finish the chassis parts and then add the upper body to here if I can get it all to fit, wheels and Coles crane
will most likely need their own texture, we will have to see.
Also, where possible I am trying to map each face from all the individual parts so if need be painting one side
a different colour is no issue, that said if I have to I can take some of the less easy seen parts and double up
the mapping to save some space, I never do things the easy way it seems always the long hard road.
Strictly speaking this is purely a build project of something I thought would be interesting and so keep me at
what will be quite a slow build, it is not necessarily for the game, trouble is I keep thinking in terms of how it
will go into IL-2 just because it is somewhere I can test things as I go because I know the format.
It looks like the build will become four sections:
Chassis.
Upper bodywork.
Wheels.
Coles crane.
To make this a running model in IL_2 1946 modded is straight forward enough as the mesh of each section can be
assembled using the hier and the vehicle set up in its traveling configuration, difficulties arise though to set it as
a static object if users do not have the necessary DLL files to allow a object to be multiple parts and also if I get
carried away with the polygon count then other DLLs will be required for that as well.
The issue for a object is you really want to be able to set the Coles crane into a position that fits your scene in
a mission, it might be I have to make four separate objects for those without the appropriate DLLs but they would
basically have to put the vehicle together from four or more objects.
The alternative would be to have Chassis, body and wheels assembled as one but considerably reduce the poly
count, if I can by that stage, the Coles could then be a second object that could be added and rotated to
where it was required to complete the illusion of a working gang rather than just have the thing in its mobile
configuration.
Anyway, much to think about as I build, further updates will now be smaller and less frequent as I will add them as I
do each particular piece.
Wishing you all the very best, Pete.
Author
Topic: Thorneycroft Amazon WF/AC6/1/Coles Mk VII, series 2. (Read 57586 times)
