Hi, I'm totally new to the group and I have no idea if this level of challenge is appropriate or not so please forgive me if I'm overstepping my bounds. I actually made the toy plane you see in 98 minutes using only the spline modeler in Carrara. The following is a list of the components. Vertical Tail Piece, Horizontal Tail Piece, Body, 2 Wings, Wing holder, Propeller (2 blades and the cylinder in the middle), The metal prop screw shaft, The rear metal rubber band clip, The wheel struts, The plastic nose piece holding prop and struts, the rubber band, and the wheels. The rubber band really is an open loop which you can see in the shadow. Since I was shooting for time, the shading is lame. Enjoy (and please let me know if this is more than the forum would allow).

-Kix

Yeah, I need to put a little more effort into the spline modeller. I feel like I'm still arm wrestling that feature of Carrara. I guess I better give this this challenge a try, but I better not hear any giggling out there when I post my result! --Terri

Grrrrrrrrrr.

I started using RD when it was a component of Corel Draw (a long time ago). This means that I started learning everything in the spline modeler. If I were to try making this plane in the vertex modeler, well it would have been called the 100 day challenge! This might actually be a good project to try exclusively in the vertex modeler. Any comments on the difficulty level?

-Kix

I think I managed to get this together in about 45 minutes.... This really brought me back to my childhood; I remember having a wind-up plane called Skeeter, so that's why I put the art on the wings.... I haven't thought about these things in forever. As for this challenge being too much? Nah! We're doing these challenges to learn. I think the 15 minute challenges are fun and I have learned, but this one was a good project, too. Since I wasn't so worried about getting the thing cranked out quickly, I spent some time learing Paint Shapes (the art on the wings). That was very cool. I also am loving the animation challenges, and Kixum, I love that you used this model for your a-b work. Thanks for posting this challenge.

Outstanding! I think azchip's picture is very cool. Nice work on the artwork for the wings. How did you do that? Was it a combination of shaders or did you use a totally separate picture? and map it? I'm completely impressed that you did it in 45 minutes. It took me quite a big longer. Also, I've had a hard time doing the soft shadow thing and still getting the object to look like it's sitting on the table/plane/whatever. What settings did you use? P.S., good twist on the rubber band and your wheels look awesome!

-Kix

Thanks for the compliments.... I've been playing with RDS for a while, so I can sometimes move pretty quickly.... The wing artwork was a Bitmap I made in photoshop; a JPEG of the BMP is above. (Had to be a BMP; JPG compression was too much and the white is transparent setting didn't work. There's only one light in the scene and its settings are white color, 100% brightness and Soft DRT shadows with a diameter of 3. I have to admit that I kept looking back at your posting for reference; it's been a long time since I've seen one of these things....

Well now I see how you get such good shadows. I am using Carrara and it doesn't have the same soft shadow thing (at least from what I can see). I did run RDS and found the options you were talking about in there. Also, applying a decal like you did for your wings appears to be a whole lot easier in RDS. I'm a serious beginner when it comes to shaders so I'm doing some reading and research to see how to paint my plane up and get it working better. I've done some minor clean up on my model and I turned on the soft shadows and the result is something that doesn't look like it's on the surface very well (I'm very disappointed). If I get my wings and tail painted up, I'll post it.

-Kix

OK. The spline modeller and I are still having a bit of a tiff, so I decided to go ahead and make a plane in the vertex modeller. Uh, I took some liberties with the subject interpretation.

Well I give you an A+!. It's becoming obvious to me I need to learn a lot more about the vertex modeler.

-Kix

You and me, both, Kixum. I am frightened by it, then I see something like this and wow! Awesome job, Terri! Very cool!

If it makes you guys feel any better, the spline modeller and I are still having a bit of a falling out. We just don't seem to communicate. Plus, it's always leaving the cap of the toothpaste. --Terri