Boeing 747-8 "Intercontinental" project:

Finished with the wing/fuselage fairing for now.


Adding the fuselage liner, for realistic thickness:

To create the fuselage liner, I duplicated the fuselage, and scaled the copy slightly down, in both the x and y axis. Then I imported that slightly smaller fuselage into the normal fuselage layer, and bridged all the edges together. At the end of that process, I thickened all the doors to match, and also thickened the windows. Much better realism now.

And, I've added the windscreen frame. (I'll add the screws later.)

Next, I spent a bit of time tweaking the windscreen frame to straighten edges, make it seem more flush, etc.. I also added a recessed mounting flange around the cockpit windows, as on the actual aircraft. (You'll see it soon.)


A little fun...

After hours of tweaking tiny details, I sometimes like to step back and have a look at the overall model. At this stage, I'm constantly using different lighting and environments, to see if the reflections and shadows show anything that doesn't look right. It really helps, and it's a fun way to end the day.


Wing control surfaces:

Here's the boolean setup for producing the cuts in the wing, to create the flaps, ailerons, and spoilers. Once these are finished, I'll make the cuts for the leading edge devices (new slotted version of Krueger flaps) and the landing gear doors.

Below, I've made the boolean cuts, and hidden the cutters. All control surfaces were pasted into their own mesh layer as they were cut, for shaping, which was next.

I've started to refine the shapes of the control surfaces, by adding end caps and leading edges, and also by placing them back into sub-d mode, to get the nice curves on those leading edges. Now you can see how the inboard flaps, for example, ride just under the inboard spoilers, and extend into the wing when retracted. The false coloring helps during this phase, by clearly showing if any surface penetrates another. Once they're in pretty good shape, I'll go back to normal coloring.

Back in their native colors, and looking pretty good.


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