I found this program, pepakura, that makes unfolded plans from 3d objects that you can use to make paper models. Well, that got me started thinking (always a dangerous thing... to quote Max Byalistock.. "worlds have turned on such thoughts")
Many of you have heard of this program already. Being an inveterate tinkerer I got to playing with it. I have made thousands of 3D shapes and aircraft for flight sims like MSFS and X-Plane and Microflight over the years, so wondered what it would take to get one into a model?
As it turns out my flightsims models are often too intricate to make good models as they are , but simplified models made from them seem to work better.
My intital test has been with my Lockheed Vega, using a simpler form of it, made in Ac3d software then exported as a .3ds file that pepakura can import. Heres how it looks so far
as you can see just the fuselage wing and cowling were used. IChose the Vega for its simple wing planform but also to see how the thingy handled the curved fuselage. I used 24 sided sections for the fuselage.
Had trouble initially with the wingtips, but seemed to be on track now with some splits to help form the shape.
I can now add tabs and work on colors, having already sized and moved the parts to be across 2 pages.
Its kinda neat how this little proggie works, and this is just the shareware demo, not the 'registered' version (what the difference is I dont yet know - some features are supposedly not active in the demo)
Stay tuned for further developments, as the darkroom assistant said...
BD
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I haven't made stuff for MSFS for ages but have made a LOT for X-Plane, my name once came up like a rash until they changed the server and dumped all the files. But the handle was always BD Ford.
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