Starting from scratch – Jetplane (Blender Cycles)

I have not written anything for a while. As what comes to Blender, I have been experimenting with texture painting and UV-wrapping objects. Airplanes fascinate me and they are very symmetric so I decided to test if I could create something that looks like a jet fighter. As you can see, the window covering the cockpit didn’t come out anyhow well, but on this project I focused more on how to paint directly on the model.

Making the model

Here are some notes on how to create something that looks like this.

• Start off with a cylinder, rotate it 90 degrees (RKEY + x/y then hold down ctrl and rotate 90 degrees.
• Switch to edit mode. Extrude (EKEY) the other end a bit forward. Select the face in the end and scale it down to 0 (SKEY + 0). The mesh should look like a pen now.
• Extrude the other end twice. Then change your transformation manipulator to scale (the red/blue/green drag-able arrows change into cubes) and then drag one of the boxes to scale the round end vertically.
• Change the manipulator again to translate. Drag the flat end up, so it matches the plane.
• Ctrl + RKEY and loop cut and slide from somewhere in the middle twice. Then extrude the middle faces on the side of the cylinder to get something that looks like wings. Scale the tips of the wings and move them a bit to get them to look like the wings you want (Its hard to explain these things you know. The most important thing is that you try and experiment with what you can get out of this!)
• Change your manipulator to scale again and select the loops going along the cylinder and scale them down – try make the plane kind of flat from the bottom.  Also lower down the cockpit part in the front.
• Delete half of the plane and create a modifier called “mirror”. (See the picture below.) We need this so we can make the turbines and texture painting symmetrical.
• For the turbines – just create three cylinders and extrude/scale them from both ends. (Wanna be wild? Try make an use out of “Extrude individually” while making these.)

This is what you should have after playing around while using the instructions above.

In the next post I will be covering how to prepare your model for painting and finishing the project properly.