Week 4 - F-16 Model

This week I worked on an f-16 model and learnt a lot of useful tips for when I start working on my X-Wing.

What I learned from this?

Overall the model is pretty accurate to the schematics, although I could have cleaned it up a bit and made it look nicer but it was just practice and I learnt a lot from making this. Some tools that were particularly helpful during this exercise are:

Edge loop - This tool was very useful when trying to create curves with vertex and helped keep the shape together especially with the top window.
X-Ray view - Very good for viewing the schematics behind the model, it would be very hard to follow the schematics without this setting.
Extrude - I have used this before with the polygon houses but it is worth mentioning again because unlike with normal edge loops, extruding helps create a separate section of a model to work with which helped with the back part of my model and will most likely play a big part when I'm making my final models.
Vertex manipulation - This isn't really a tool but played a big part in creating this model, when edge loops are added so are vertexes and these are what I used to shape the model to the schematic shape.

Difficulties/Problems

The main difficulties for this exercise was moulding the window, I had a lot of trouble figuring out how to go about extruding a cylinder, in the end I used the global coordinates to extrude all the sides straight up and then edited the vertices to make the rounded shape. This is probably what I will do with my X-Wing model or I will extract the top window and work on it separately.

What Can I do better?

If I were to make this model again I would try to get a more rounded shape by using the smoothing tool somehow This would give a smoother finish to the model. Also I didn't use layers too much as I didn't have many layers to manage but I will use them when I create my main models as they are very useful when working on separate objects as you can hide other objects while you work on others.