UVW Mapping and Texturing

Unwrapping this plane was a simple task for the most part, since I could planar map large regions and assemble them into nice, big UV shells. However, Max decided to throw me an extremely nasty surprise once I started to create textures! It turns out that mesh smoothing can wreak havoc on UV seams, wildly stretching the UV verts along the seams for no apparent reason (Fig.06 and Fig.07). This caused me a major headache and several days of delay while I collapsed the meshsmooth in the modifier stack and fixed the seams by hand. (Even after  a thorough search on the web, this was the only way I could find to fix the problem.)



The textures themselves are several 4096 sheets (Fig.08 and Fig.09) and pushed the limits of my machine, using dozens of layers and vector shapes. Still, this was one of the most fun phases: watching this project come together. For the squadron markings, I decided to use those of the VF-84 "Jolly Rogers”. The reasons are simple: the squadron is one of the most famous ones, they fit the era of the F14A, and lastly, their colours and symbols are strong and vibrant, especially on the early era paint scheme. I wanted authenticity as much as possible, so I looked up the Federal Standard colour codes and their RGB counterparts, ensuring the plane would look exactly the way it should.