I caught the D-Day
episode of BAND OF BROTHERS the other day on the History Channel. The
episode about the D-Day airdrop is remarkable. I'm sure ILM or another digital
house in Hollywood created the actual drop sequence featuring numerous C-47's
and digital paratroopers. There was a lot of enemy gunfire and I can't
imagine the terror of actually being in the cockpit of one of the C-47's or
about to jump into darkness punctuated by flak and tracer fire.
So...I was inspired to create a digital diorama of this moment in history.
It started with a win on eBay of an old Airfix 1:72 C-47 kit. The decals
were crap, so I decided I would try making my own (I never seem to learn).
Well, the kit went together pretty nicely. It was a very basic and fun
build. I also like the challenge of doing invasion stripes. The
decals looked good on the decal paper but were so opaque that they barely showed
against the dark Olive Drab paint on the model. I painted over the decals
in flat white and applied the yellow decals again. It looked worse.
So, I left the white-painted "decals." Not terrible but not
great either.
But, I was about to use the decals again in another way...
The model kit sat atop my Mac G4 as I began modeling it in 3D. I use an
older 3D software package called Strata. This 3D model is one of my better
ones to date. I captured the lines of the C-47 pretty well. I used
the homemade model decals from Photoshop in the texture maps for the C-47.
I also had a 3D guy from a 3D PT-109 model I made about two years ago. I
dressed him up in 3D trooper fatigues and gear and suddenly he became a member
of the 101st Airborne "Easy" Company.
The attached images are the result of my work. I tried to find a balance
of darkness for the images without making it look to bright. It was a
moonless night but you can't see what is going on if I render the images too
dark. I added the tracer fire and flak explosions using Photoshop.
I may render a few more images in the future. On my website
www.shortfuse3d.com
(new URL), there is one more image - a close-up of a trooper. You can't
see it, but I have actually put 101st Airborne patches and US flags on their
sleeves :)
Next up after some rest, I want to create a short animation of the D-Day drop!
Until next time,
Konley
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