Progress report on soft top jeep

[hubbabubba]

Hi guys!

This is a very preliminary work on a soft top jeep;
Attachment 13072

It was done more than a month ago and I hope that, by publicly showing where I am, it will give me the proverbial kick in the a$$ I need to restart the "flow of creativity".

My efforts were stopped by a stupid accident that could have killed me, but (unfortunately some will say...) didn't. Ask Ivan for details.

The wound is mostly healed and only lazyness keeps me from getting back on the saddle.

[mariereid]

Hi H; I am using your jeeps in cfs2, they put the stock jeep to shame! A rag top would be nice. Thanks for the great model.

[Ivan]

I take it you will have some provision for putting textures on the canvas top? Will it be doing anything that isn't obvious?

Looks Good!
- Ivan.

BTW, That sure was a fancy way of stabbing yourself in the back!

[hubbabubba]

Since the windshield can no longer fold, I'm thinking of having the window lift upward. But apart from that possible "movement", nothing special.

The jeep was, after all, designed first with the idea of creating a "follow-me" vehicle, so the top was always in the back of my mind. The .50 cal model was a "en passant" construction.

And, yes, the top will be painted...

[smilo]

it's coming along rather very nicely...

now, quit

and get 'er done...

all joking aside,
the jeep is a fantastic piece of work.
well done!!!
I am also very pleased to see
that it has been noticed
and used over at CFS2.

[hubbabubba]

Today, I worked for about three hours on the project, but nothing worth showing.

The folding windshield it took me days, weeks, to build and tweak is gone. The headache for the removal is not as strong as the one for building it, but it is there !

Now that I'm back on the saddle, let's hope the horse won't buck!

Tonight, we're going to see the last Harry Potter movie. I just hope I won't be thinking of my next move while watching Hermione, Ron and Harry chasing the hoxcruxes.

[Ivan]

Hey Hubbabubba,

Over the last few days, I have spent many hours working on drawings and templates and such and not created more than about 4 polygons for a project. Plenty of work, but not much to show yet....

I know the feeling.
- Ivan.

[hubbabubba]

Yesterday evening, I made polygons to "extend" the top on the sides. Although it will be textured-over, it must give the impression of cloth stretching near the supporting arches poles and sagging in-between. Well... let's just say that it needs to be redone.

But this is part of the "fun"; experimentation -> failure -> re-experimentation -> re-failure -> headaches -> re-re-experimentation -> re-re-failure -> bigger headaches (put as many iterations as you want HERE) -> solution -> elation.

The "elation" is the fun part btw...

[hubbabubba]

Hello!

Sides are done to my satisfaction. The stretching-draping effect along the poles is looking okay. The stretching between the center and aft main pole is pretty straight but, after examining all the pictures I could find, thats the way it is. Sagging was only evident between the windshield and middle pole. Texturing should, I hope, do the rest.

Attachment 25221 The idea here is to give the basic polygons a "textile look" as much as possible before applying the painted texture. No so easy with triangles...

[Ivan]

Hi Hubbabubba,

The top looks pretty good. Texturing this thing I am sure will be fun. If you were doing this in AF99, I would ask how, but with SCASM, there probably aren't the same silly issues.

- Ivan.

[hubbabubba]

Hi Hubbabubba,

The top looks pretty good. Texturing this thing I am sure will be fun. If you were doing this in AF99, I would ask how, but with SCASM, there probably aren't the same silly issues.

- Ivan.

Hi Ivan,

I had to think really way back to remember how painful AF99 texturing was... yeah!

Not that texturing in SCASM is a "walk in the park" but, if you look at my textures for the jeep as an example, you are not limited at up/down - front/aft - right/left for one element. The same "component" (I use the term loosely as it makes little sense in SCASMing) can be textured in many different ways. I don't only mean the direction of the texture projection, but also the rendering (smooth/hard), the color (FS or CFS style), even the transparencies or luminosity.

Yeah... AF99 was very restrictive and was not taking advantage of the improvements made between FS5 and CFS1 texture-wise.

[Ivan]

I don't know that I find AF99 texturing particularly difficult. It is tedious, but not really all that difficult. The 256 x 128 pixel limitation is a pain but you have the same even within SCASM. Yes, there are more limitations such as the constant scale which you don't have in SCASM.....

- Ivan.

[hubbabubba]

Something worth showing;
Attachment 32887 The folded poles are gone. The rear of the canvas is in place. The new extended poles are in the making. I had to research a bit before going further; there are four or five different ways summer top were made. I've chosen a "classical" style; top and rear are sewed together permanently. Contrary to what Ivan has accustomed us to, the exterior is one color only. The reason is simple; different colors are useful to find bleeds - which was done before - but stands in the way of judging if light reflections are OK. As I will be using transparencies, shaded polys have to be restricted (transparency doesn't work on them), so simple polys "well draped" must do their best to look like fabric.

Another important step was made;
Attachment 32888 In previous pictures, the top was a one big component showing last. Now it is a series of smaller components attached from front to rear as shown by the yellow lines. The red line shows the "frontier" between the main jeep and the top, where the "glue-like" command changes showing order. They're still a few bleeds, but nothing I can't get rid of.

I also have to think how I will implement the windshield movement.

[Ivan]

Hi Hubbabubba,

I see you have the top in the "Canopy / High Wing" section of AF99.


Just kidding.
It does look pretty good. Now since you mentioned the windshield movement, what will THAT do?

For folks who don't do this kind of work, I can tell you that in AF99, adjusting shapes, flipping the craft around in the sim and going back to adjust some more is a serious amount of labour to really get things right. I would imagine that doing this in SCASM is much MORE work!

- Ivan.

[hubbabubba]

I see you have the top in the "Canopy / High Wing" section of AF99.

You had me with that one Ivan, for an instant, I thought "He's he gone mad???".

Now since you mentioned the windshield movement, what will THAT do?

When the top was on, the only way to fold the windshield was up. But you won't find many picture of that;

Attachment 33042The reasons why are quite obvious. In a summer top configuration, you had plenty of air coming from the sides. In a winter configuration with side panels, you could "roll" the doors' panels. If, like in this picture, you just opened slightly the inner frame, the two "slider-like" fixations were acting like steel daggers pointing to your face or the face of the front seat passenger. So, why not take the five minutes to remove the top and fold the entire windshield on the hood?

In "my" jeep, I will have the inner frame go all the way up in a one shot motion using the spoiler key... or not at all.

Anyone's takes on that will be appreciated while I'm working on that windshield...