Making of Q400

Making of Bombardier Q400

Hello everybody, it´s been a several month since I posted last article in this blog. This time I made a render of one of the last model I have made, and I wrote an article explaining how I made it.

Modeling

First of all I had to find a lot of references of this airplane, as always I used google to find  them, and I also needed to find and adjust the blueprints of this model, It is the main reference I use for modeling.

Once I had all those references images and blueprints I was ready to start to model the airplane. I rarely start to model using cylinders, I used to start using a single plane, but this time was different, I started modelling de peak of the plane with a cyclinder in a low poly way and once I had well modelled the whole main body; I collapsed turbosmooth modifier with just one iteration and I started to create the different details of the plane.

I like to create a continuous flow of loops of each model I made, it allows us to have a clear view of it, and also permits us to add details in an easy way.

The wings of this model was modelled as a different object, I started to model them using a single plane and a then I adapted them to the main body.

Texturing

I like to use mental ray render as renderer engine, so I use Arch&Design Material and almost all objects of the scene. The main object I had to unwrap and then texturize it was the main body of the plane, it was not difficult to unwrap it due to it is similar to a cyclinder and I just had to make a seam along the width of this object and then relax it and I was ready to assign it the material.

Others object like windows, rubber tires, wires, chromed parts and plastic parts, I used to texturize them the templates that Arch&Design includes.

Lighting

When I use Mental Ray as render engine, I like to use DayLight Systems to light every exterior scene, this time was pretty easy,I just needed to insert it in the scene and set as environment  a mr Physical Sky material, and adjust the expesure controls as image below shows.

Rendering

I use final gather to ganerate the shadows and light of my scene, it is easy to control and we get excellent results, I like to use Lanczos as Render Filter and 4 x 16 samples to get an excellent image quality.

Once I had configurated the render engine I was ready to start to render, I always use to retouch the final render using photoshop and andjut it thing like contrast, brightness, levels, and color correction. Other things like clouds  trail I like to create it using differents brushes and Once I finished of retouching I like to make a last adjust on Vignetting.