It advertises itself as a flying Ford, so I say it needs wings! Here we will make our own custom wing for our van.
Start a new model. First we need to add some vertices:
Vertex 0 at 0, 0, 0
Vertex 1 at 0, 0, -100
Vertex 2 at 0, 70, -30
Vertex 3 at 0, 100, 30
Vertex 4 at -5, 50, -30
Vertex 5 at -10, 0, 0
Vertices 0, 1, 2 and 3 form the outside endplate for the wing. 0, 1, and 5 form the base, and 4 will be where the wing istelf is connected.As before, we can change the vertex coordinates at any time, so the initial positions are not important.
Before we can add faces, we need a texture. I'll load VANdal2.raw.
Now we add a face to vertices 0, 1, 2, and 3. This will give us the endplate for the wing. Then we'll add faces to 4, 2, 1; 5, 4, 1; 3, 4, 5; and 3, 5, 0.
Hmm, I was hoping it would come out sleeker than that. Well, we can resize it. At its current size it is about half a foot long and .4 foot high: let's make it about .8 feet long. We'll also use Y/Shift+Y and Z/Shift+Z to move vertices 1, 3 and 4.
There! Now we'll use Model -> Translate... to move it 3 feet along the X-axis.
I'll save this model as vandal_wing.bin. Now, I'll press Tab to cycle through the vertices. For each vertex I'll use Vertex -> Set Coordinates... and insert a minus ('-') sign in front of all the X values, to transfer all the vertices across to the other side. (Note: at this point in time I didn't know the handy mirror trick which is ideal for these types of applications.)
Now I've moved all the vertices to the other side, essentially mirroring the previous arrangement: vertex 0, which was at an X coordinate of 768, is now at -768, and vertex 5, which was at 758, is now at -758. However, this means that where vertex 5 was one to the left of vertex 0, it is now to the right. The problem now is that the faces are now all facing the wrong way - they're only visible from with them model! I need to use Face -> Select All Faces and then Groups -> Flip All Faces in Group to flip the faces the right way around. This gives me the model for the endplate for the right-hand side.
Now I can use File -> Insert... to insert vandal_wing.bin to get the left endplate back.
Now we have both endplates for the wing.
Now for the wing itself. Rather than do some long faces to reach from one endplate to the other, I will insert some more vertices so that the wing will be in four parts.
Vertex 2 is at -768, 70, -47; vertex 3 is at -768, 90, 57, and vertex 4 is at -763, 70, -17. I will add three sets of three more vertices using these same Y and Z values, but at different X values: the first set shall be in the middle (X value 0), and the other two will be approximately half-way between the middle and the left and right endplate respectively.
The two endplates bring the vert count to 12 (that means that the last vertex is number 11).
Vertex 12 will be at 0, 70, -47
Vertex 13 will be at 0, 90, 57
Vertex 14 will be at 0, 70, -17
Vertex 15 will be at 350, 70, -47
Vertex 16 will be at 350, 90, 57
Vertex 17 will be at 350, 70, -17
Vertex 18 will be at -350, 70, -47
Vertex 19 will be at -350, 90, 57
Vertex 20 will be at -350, 70, -17
Now we need to add faces to these vertices:
2, 3, 19, 18
18, 19, 13, 12
12, 13, 16, 15
15, 16, 9, 8
That will form the top of the wing. For the bottom, we need to add faces using vertices:
4, 2, 18, 20
3, 4, 20, 19
20, 18, 12, 14
19, 20, 14, 13
14, 12, 15, 17
13, 14, 17, 16
17, 15, 8, 10
16, 17, 10, 9
I could leave it al that, but let's put a bit of a curve in the wing by cycling through the vertices and using Z/Shift+Z to move the ones on the wing back a bit.
We'll map the wing to the same texture used for the van's roof, by selecting all the faces, saving them as face group "wing", and going into Groups -> Map Face Group to Texture...:
Now our wing has a matching "go-fast" stripe!
To finish off, I'll tag all the vertices and save the vertex group as "wing", then set the face type to MTM2 shiny texture. Now I'll save the model as vandal_wing.bin.
Now we can insert VANdal.bin to compare the wing size.
Here I've moved the wing close to where it will be placed. Now the first thing you should notice is that our wing is backwards (whooooooops!). The second is that it looks a bit small, and is too wide for the roof of the van.
So, we'll reopen vandal_wing.bin (without saving this comparison .BIN) and make the appropriate adjustments. We'll chop a foot off the width, and make it taller and longer. Finally, we'll rotate it 180 degrees about the Y axis to get it facing the right direction.
Now we'll save the wing, then insert VANdal.bin again and compare.
A perfect fit! I'll save this as VANdal.bin.
This will be our last addition to this truck. Sometimes when working on a model, it can be hard to know when to stop, but I think for the sake of my sanity I'll have to leave it here.
Click Next to go to the last page of this tutorial, from which you can download this truck.