Falcon of the East.
First seeing service over China in early World War 2, the Nakajima Ki-43 Hayabusa (“Peregrine Falcon”) was as maneuverable as it was deadly. Made throughout the war, the failure of Japan to properly push replacements left it in combat until 1945.
This 3D model was made as part of a project to adapt the infamous Call of Duty mission “Black Cats” into a VR setting. The aircraft was chosen due to it’s use as a kamikaze aircraft towards the end of the war, as well as being a common sight throughout the conflict.
As one of the first 3D models I’ve ever worked on, the project proved to be a major learning experience. In order to speed up the project, an existing model of the A6M Zero was used as a base, and subsequently modifications as well as major changes were made. The nose sections, tail, canopy and wings were remodeled with a focus keeping on vertex count low without breaking every modeling convention in modern history. There are some N-gons and sub-optimal triangles in the mesh, but once implemented it looked alright. Definitely something to look out for though.
A captured Ki-43 used for reference.
An A6M3 Zero
After vertex painting, the model was imported into Adobe Substance Painter, baked, and textured. References for a paint job were difficult since Japanese WW2 paint schemes were non-standardized, but eventually a chart was found. Notable bits of the paint scheme were the green paint, identification stripes, an unpainted silver undercarriage as well as the infamous Hinomaru (“Ball of the sun”). The rivets were also textured using normal maps, to the best of my ability. By god there were a lot of rivets.
References and documentation also indicate that Japanese planes during the war suffered significant weathering and surface wear due to painting practices used at the time; so there was a lot of bare metal and chipped paint.
Could it have been better? Looking back, most definitely. Having the wings be a separate mesh from the fuselage was a mistake, and now having tried a high poly to low poly workflow I wish I’d have done that here too. It probably could have also been modeled all the better via a subdivision workflow, but that’s something for future me to find out the next time I model a plane.
