Boeing 747-8 "Intercontinental" project:

Starting to look like a real airplane now...

A brief review:

With the model so early in it's construction, it's really too early to do any fancy compositing. The reason I do it at this stage is because of these two things...

First, everything else that I build from now on gets attached to this airframe. So, any errors that be fixed now will help later. For example, the flat area where the horizontal stabilizer attaches had to be done, before I could finalize the tail. I've also fixed the part of the fuselage where the cabin windows are, to represent a more constant radius, so that there's no twisting of the windows at the nose and tail.

The other reason is that, lacking precision drawings for everything, I often use shadows and reflections on the model, compared to photos of the actual aircraft, to see if my shapes are right.

So, I spend some time at this stage tweaking small details. That way, when I continue, the parts you see now are effectively "frozen", and I don't have to backtrack much, fixing annoying errors.


Wing/Fuselage Fairing:

The wing/fuselage fairing is an important part of every airliner type. It not only acts as a fairing for the wing/fuselage joint, but also provides a housing for the landing gear, fuel, and various inlets and exhausts.

This fairing, like many of Boeing's innovations on their most modern aircraft, isn't a simple as older models, and took considerable fiddling in sub-d to get the shape right. I've now frozen it, so I can use boolean cutters to make all the landing gear doors, inlets, etc..


Click the "Page 03" link below to continue...

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NOTE: I am not at liberty to redistribute any of the documentation used to build any of the 3D models on this site.