Fokker Dr1 - ‘Remember Me?’

[Becco_UK]

This World War 1 Fokker DR1 is one of those do a bit when time allows models. Started getting reference materials quite some time ago and read about the constuction methods and materials used for making the real thing.

This digital version will be made similar to the real thing, subject to satisfactory results from Cinemas' cloth engine.

Software beng used:
Modelling - Cinema4D 9.6 MAXON - The makers of CINEMA*4D and BodyPaint*3D
Texture Creation: BodyPaint MAXON - The makers of CINEMA*4D and BodyPaint*3D / Paint Shop Pro Corel - CorelDRAW, WinDVD, Ulead Video Studio, Paint Shop Pro, WordPerfect, WinZip, & Painter.
Materials and Rendering - Maxwell Render Maxwell Render ™ : The Light Simulator. Render engine. Multilight ™. Materials. Photorealistic...

I ended up with plenty of drawings and plans to work with and this is the plan have used for general dimensions. Seen here cut up in Paint Shop Pro. I'm using a different plan layout in Cinema - instead of making the usual 3 sided box type I've decided to use the arrangent shown. In Cinemas flat' view the plans look just the same as using the box style. I find this easier to work with in Cinemas perspective view.

[Becco_UK]

To give the 'cloth' something to shrink onto I'm making an accurate fuselage structure. A more detailed plan of the fuselage construction is being used here, supplemented by some line drawings.

[Becco_UK]

Underway! The longest rails are splines with a sweep nurbs using a cirle spline for the profile. The upright and cross member parts are nothing more complex than cylinder primatives with the caps turned of. Only the outer parts are needed to place the cloth over but while I was making this structure I added some extra bits that may be useful later on - the engine mounting frame, seat frame, etc.

To enable movement of the rudder and tail the parts of each item have been placed into a null object. The reason for testing movement this early is because it's easier to adjust splines now than waste time adjusting mesh after the cloth stage.

[Becco_UK]

The next major components to tackle are the three wing structures. I will be trying cloth for these. To make a start I used an accurate Fokker DR1 wing profile image, applied to a plane and used as a guide to draw a Cinema spline. This took several attempts to use the least amount of points possible and rely on the spline to smooth the missing bits. Another time saver doing this because it seems easier to adjust a few points rather than loads if the spline shape needs adjusting.

An extrude nurbs is used to determine how the spline performs.

Couldn't resist the temptation to add a couple of shiny metal bits! The engine cowl is a chopped up cylinder and the fuel tank nothing more than a reshaped cube in a hyper nurbs.

[Becco_UK]

This is the how the wing profile I ended up. The initial attempt at the bottom uses uniform intermediate points, to subdivide the Cinema4D spline, but didn't quite do the job - to get the trailing edge correct would have meant an intermediate point value that would have made far to many polygons. So, with an extra couple of points added to the spline I used the natural intermediate points which looks like a good compromise to my original intentions.

[Becco_UK]

At render time the natural intermediate points type wins the day - uses fewer polygons and the trailing edge is accurate. The real test is at the cloth stage though!

[Becco_UK]

The wings are now just about ready to see how the cloth works out. The problem with completing these was the end caps which on the real aircraft are also cloth. Cinemas extrude nurbs caps wasn't up to the job so in the end I made some from a hypernurbed cube and welded them onto the main wing part. The working airlons also ended up being hand made.

The main wing struts have been positioned to check alignement of the 3 wings and to determine what parts of the wing will not be subject to Cinemas' cloth engine.

The next tedious thing was cutting out the middle wing shape and in the end a cylinder with a deformer was used as the cutting shape in a boole.

[Becco_UK]

With the first attempt at modelling the centre section of the wing section a number of problems arose - the boole cutting left sharp corners and made a mess of the mesh in that area. Also on closer inspection the dimensions were not very accurate which wasn't that noticable but would have affected alignment of other parts later on.

After looking at some photos' I decided that I would make a spandau machine gun that could also be used as a scaling object for the mid wing. The fuselage framework is fairly accurate and this was used to get the machine gun scaled and positioned in the correct place.

The gun was the key element in getting the mid wing more accurate.

[Becco_UK]

With an improved mid wing the cockpit area has got underway. Fuselage side panels added ready for the cloth stage.

[Becco_UK]

I'm making the wing 'cloth' similar to the axle fairing: usingCinema4D's cloth engine but with a more pronounced effect:

1.Select points of mesh which are to remain fixed.
2. Adjust size and gravity settings in the cloth tag.
3 Run the simulation for a few frames.

The cloth gravity value setting was found with trial and error, - because the cloth was being reduced in size I still needed the underside of the wings to have a very slight sag.