Chronocidal

I've bought several sets just for the clicking-type joints to build this thing. The backpack has about 16 of those hinges holding it up.

That's really great stuff there.. that Monster's incredible. I think the main issue with Legos is the weight of larger models.. you make something big enough to be detailed, and it gets too heavy for Lego joints to hold up, and the limbs sag, or won't hold up the weight they need to. I've been stumped for about a year on how to make legs strong enough to hold this thing up. It must weigh about 5 lbs. That's what happens when you make something this big.

Heheh.. Neither can I. I've got the reference pics all ready, I just haven't had time to start the model yet. It's gonna be a summer project.

emm... not really, no unfortunately. I've had to put pretty much all my hobbies on hold while I finish up my last two weeks of classes. But things should lighten up over the summer, and I'll be able to finish the cockpit, and release the final version of this thing.

Hehe.. I tried to use that same picture.. Maybe this will help though. This is based off of the Hasegawa fighter kit, so it may not make a good battroid, but it makes a beautiful fighter. I've got a full 5 view set in MUCH larger resolution if you want them.. the top view is 2000*3000 pixels.. too big to put up here, but I can probably zip them and put up the download.

Ooh, sorry I haven't checked in here in a while, but you're welcome to use my Flight Sim YF-19 model for reference if you want. It's not cg quality, and it won't transform properly, but it'll serve for an outline I think.

What kind of textures do you need? I may be able to help if with drawing them if the process isn't too complex. But I don't have Homeworld, so I wouldn't be able to do much else.

I don't really know how far off the nose is, it's very hard to tell from the few pictures I've seen of the kit. But from the one forward shot I found, the nose looked too flat, and the black front part of the canopy was almost half the length of the nose cone.. just looked kinda weird. I could be wrong though, I've probably been spoiled by the Hasegawa kit. It's probably not a terrible problem, but it didn't look very accurate to the lineart for the YF-19. But you're right, it wouldn't be hard to fix myself if I buy one. (and I REALLY hope I have the funds to do it ) Edit: Here's the picture, the nose just looks really duck-bill like, and that canopy extension is really long.. not at all like the rounded nose in the Anime. Now, I haven't seen the actual kit, it's possible that the modeler fouled this one up, and tried to cover it up. The bottom of the nose looks fine, the top just doesn't look like it matches any of the YF-19 side profiles I've ever seen. 1/48 YF-19 (I kind of wonder if the modeler ever realized he put the feet in upside down... )

Sorry, not at the moment.. I've been swamped with tests and work, haven't been able to work on anything for about two weeks. :S I still have the entire cockpit to do, so it'll still be a little while, but the exterior is done.

Very good news indeed.. One thing I want to ask though..would it be at all possible to fix up the nose cone on the YF-19 a little? the sculpt of that kit never looked quite right. If not, that's okay.. it can be sanded to shape.

Well, I dunno about a mistake, but I did add a custom "ejection seat" mod to one of my Hasbro "Flying Fighters" once.. it consisted of a rubber band wrapped around the tail that hooked around the neck of the pilot.. when I pulled on the band, the canopy would pop open, and the pilot would shoot out, yanked out by the neck. Can't think of any really bad things I've done to toys at the moment, except for two. First, I gummed up the landing gear of my Millia JM with clay to make them stay up when flying. Second, and much more recently, I tried to paint the cockpit in my GI Joe Space Shuttle.. looked okay, but for some reason at that time, yellow and red fascinated me, and all the controls are those colors.X_X It's in perfect shape aside from that though.. and some yellowing with age. Oh, I also got tired of fixing the pilot figure that came with it, just ditched the rubber band entirely, and taped his two halves on either side of a shelf for laughs.

Heheh.. With some of the stuff I've done, the contrails look more like heart-rate monitors. I have found some very weird things with maneuvering though.. If you roll for long enough, with the rudder, eventually it seems you get into a perpetual unrecoverable spin/roll, but you still generate lift...so you eventually hit the simulator max altitude, and just stay pinned there, rolling around and spinning, all while the indicated speed is zero... flying backwards sideways, upside down and forwards. I got into one of these things once, and spent half an hour trying to recover.. never regained control, but never crashed either. I just had to reset the sim.

Personally, I'd love to see one like this...

Soon, I hope.. I've got two weeks coming where I've got nothing to do, so I should be able to get some major work done soon. I might just release the mirrored version, then do a non-mirrored one later, since it will require a whole new set of maps.

Don't worry too much, the VF-22/YF21 will be the next plane I do.. when I have time. :S It might not be till summer. This one took me from Christmas until now.

Okay, I found out that someone did do a fairly decent YF-19.. but still, it's nowhere NEAR as detailed as FS2002/4 can handle.

I would make one for X-Plane but for one thing: I don't think there is any way to model anything this complex in X-Plane. It would come out pretty badly, and probably wouldn't look much like the actual plane. Yes, X-Plane has thrusters, etc, and is realistic in that it actually calculates the flight specs for the plane.. but that is also it's greatest limitation. Since the game has to constantly do all these calculations, you can only make the model in the X-Plane software, which, frankly, in my experience, is nothing short of craptacular. There is no real control over shapes (ALLL of the fuselage parts are simple cylinders and you have to work with the number of cross sections given you.. no control over polygons at all), and angled wings and tails like on the YF-19 are impossible, at least with the version I have. You can manage to do some nice aircraft, but in the case of something this complex, you run out of parts to use REALLY fast. Also, there is no way to alter the way the textures are mapped, so these textures would never work. There is actually a YF-19 for X-Plane believe it or not though.. it came with the game. It's called simply a "Japanese Anime" plane to avoid copyright infringement, but it's clearly a YF-19. I'll see if I can get a picture of it. Edit: Here it is... good grief that's hilarious...suffice to say you get nothing but big cylinders to work with, and only get about 8 cross sections per part. The YF-19's fuselage alone needs about 30 separate cross sections to get the shape right. I did make a pretty darn detailed VF-1 once for this program, but the people in charge of the next version compressed all the textures into one map, and killed any chance it had of nice detail.. the model was decent, but the VF-1 is VERY simple compared to the YF-19, and is much easier to make... course, I still had to use fuel tanks to make the fuselage. SEVERE lack of modeling options. They also changed the texture format for the new version, and it corrupted the way the textures were applied, so it looks like crap now.

and...

#2, and #3, guess who?

K, I looked at the other planes I've downloaded for reference, most of them use between 4-10 mb of textures... and they usually all run very well. I think I can probably double up the textures and it won't be a problem Here's paint scheme #1, a variation on the Hikaru VF-1J.

Well, that isn't to say I can't make the textures UN mirrored, it just means that it'll just about double the amount of textures the game has to load. It probably wouldn't be that much of a system hit considering you're the only plane that you see most of the time... I'll see how much doubling up some textures adds, and get back to you. I'll just need to make two versions of some textures, one with the text forwards and one with it backwards for the opposite side. The fuselage is already fully wrapped around so that won't be a problem but the engines, wings, and tails are all mirrored directly across. I probably should also see about remapping the tails.. right now,both sides use the same texture, so it eliminates putting stuff on only the outside or inside. :S Right now I'm using the DXT3 format for textures, I didn't know there was anything else.. if there is a better way to do it I'm all ears. Anyway, I have 5 paint schemes almost completely done, I'll post pics a little later if I can.. gotta memorize more lines in Shakespeare before I do though.

Well, I'm working on blank skins currently, I'll distribute them with the plane in a separate folder. I've got two versions done, and I'm also working on making Max, Millia, Hikaru and Roy versions right now, sort of a "what if" set of paint schemes. The only downside to the skins is that they are all mirrored, so any text would be backwards.. it took some major tweaking just to get the 19 on the nacelles right, and it only worked because that part of the nacelle is pretty much symmetrical. Actually, there is one more annoying thing.. the skins FS2002 uses aren't regular bitmaps.. they're DirectX formatted bitmaps, that contain alpha channels. Most programs can't open them, you need a special converter to edit and export them. It's free, but it isn't just as simple as pasting new textures into the folder and seeing a new paint scheme. Btw, the low speed handling in 2002 is incredibly good, the flaps not working is what is making it stall so easily I'm pretty sure.. I need to research the 2004 flap configurations so they work in both. In 2002, I can get this thing down to about 75 knots with full flaps and brakes...you need a lot of power to stay in the air though. I've adjusted the handling a bit over the last couple of days, so the roll is easier to control now, but still very responsive.. but part of it has to do with the axis sensitivity settings in the configuration. Setting the aileron axis to a lower sensitivity and maybe a little more null zone helps the roll control quite a bit. I'll keep the updates coming. I should have some alternate paint scheme shots up soon.

Heheh, technically, I could send it to you, but it wouldn't do you any good.. the version I put up for download wasn't even UV mapped yet, so the textures wouldn't work anyway. I'm pretty close to getting a textured version out though. Just tweaking the flight model to work a little better and less erratic. I'm going to see if I can get 3-4 paint schemes out for now, maybe more later.

LOL.. Oy, yeah.. one of the main things that motivated me to start some Macross stuff was that VF-1J.. I saw it and my brain went "BLECH"... it was just so ugly to begin with I never downloaded it. I'm planning on doing one of those too eventually, probably a set of all the models of VF-1 with about a dozen different texture sets.

Heheh.. Well, I tried putting this in Combat Sim 3 without much luck.. The plane works technically, but the game is STRICTLY a WWII sim, physics-wise and technology wise, so the plane is limited to about the performance level of a P-51. I don't know about other games though, LOMAC might be a good candidate, if it's mod-able. Of course what we really need is a dedicated combat flight/mech sim that can handle transformations, kind of like a combo of LOMAC and Mechwarrior.