DYRL VF-1 WIP

[maxi]

I think this may be helpfull

It´s a scan I`ve found from the VF-1 Master File book...

[Chronocidal]

Have to admit, having the gear drop out the bottom of the nose would explain a lot, but I don't think there's room for that when the back plate comes down, and it could cause a multitude of other problems.

As for the video screens though.. I always assumed they were actually on the back side of the canopy shield.

Anyway, yep you're right about the gear door hinges, they really are getting tiny. I was going to suggest the indentations for the tires too, it might work well, and the F-14's gear clearly does the same thing. I don't doubt doors that thin would be possible given the level of technology involved, it just looks funny to my 1980's tuned aircraft senses.

[chillyche]

The viewscreen mystery has been sort of addressed finally! I think that a lot of people suspected it came out of that junk behind the pilot's seat, perhaps due to a similar insinuation in Macross Zero.

But the view screen on the inside of the of the canopy shield is something I have thought about in relation to the VF-4. The VF-4 battroid has a horizontal cockpit, similar to the VF-19, but unlike the 19, it doesn't have a holographic full cockpit projection (as best as I understand) and depending on the source, it shares the VF-1 block 6 cockpit. This leads to the question, "what about battroid mode?" Does the pilot remain seated, or does the entire seat assembly shift to put the pilot in a slightly more standing position as per the VF-1. If so, how? Landing gear extension as per this illustration? Screens on the inside of the blast shield would certainly make sense.

[danbickell]

Yeah, that Master File battroid cockpit is certainly interesting, I'll say that... The only point to the whole landing gear bay moving seems to be for the seat to raise out behind the head. They also seem to have gone with the idea of the screens being on the undersides of the front console and the rear box, which both move quite a bit to end up in front of the pilot in battroid. (I guess that is another reason to move the gear bay, so the WHOLE front console can move up in front of the pilot!) It isn't a horrible idea, but it doesn't remotely fit with anything in the original designs.

The screens on the inside of the canopy shield makes a fair amount of sense, but again, doesn't match up with the designs at all. The DYRL battroid cockpit screens are individual consoles that are close to the pilot, with controls mounted to them. Another problem with this idea is that the shield only really covers the front portion of the canopy, and the rear portion is covered up by the chest piece. The inside of the shield should really only be visible at the bottom half of the battroid cockpit. If we were to assume that the shield was long enough to cover the entire canopy (which was shown that one time in fighter mode in the TV series...), then there are big problems with it fitting anywhere inside the chest and back in fighter, and certainly with clearance for it during transformation (which is why the toys are all done the way they are).

Of course, the DYRL canopy itself acts as a 360 degree HUD, so I don't see why whatever system for that (projection or internal LED display) wouldn't work as view screens anyway. This seems like the most logical idea, and it kinda fits as a predecessor to the future holographic displays.

It seems a lot more thought went into the battroid cockpits of the later VF designs, and given all the problems there with the VF-1, I can see why!

[nightmareB4macross]

Dan,

Before you decide on moving forward, I think you should take note that the figure there appears smaller than what is represented on the lineart, or anywhere else for that matter. By the illustrator reducing the size of the pilot most of what you see can be achieved. Start with using a standing figure, about Roy's height and work your magic to get awkward limitaitions out of the way.

I myself did this the hard way. Using the 1/48 Yamato and pilot, I actually figured all this out long before the VF-1 Master File book.

Heck, I was asked to have a small session at MWCon about 3, maybe 4 years ago, when I finished the first 2-seater with topside egress and removable cockpit, while retaining the head in place.

Check out my 1/48 gallery and you can see for yourself. It is possible.

[Mr March]

But the view screen on the inside of the canopy shield is something I have thought about in relation to the VF-4. The VF-4 battroid has a horizontal cockpit, similar to the VF-19, but unlike the 19, it doesn't have a holographic full cockpit projection (as best as I understand) and depending on the source, it shares the VF-1 block 6 cockpit.

The Battroid mode cockpit of the YF/VF-19 Excalibur is not oriented horizontally like the VF-4 Lightning III. The transformation system of the YF/VF-19 is such that the cockpit rotates forward rather than backward like a VF-1 Valkyrie. The YF/VF-19 nose tip swivels 90 degrees to sit roughly horizontally in Battroid mode, but the rest of the cockpit swivels back to a vertical postion, acting as the battroid mode "spine". The YF/VF-19 pilot seat is rotated forward for Battroid mode, flying face first into what was the floor of the fighter mode cockpit, LOL The VF-25 has a very similar cockpit transformation, but the cockpit in Battroid mode rests a little bit lower than in the YF/VF-19 Excalibur.

[danbickell]

While it's true there's a lot of magic involved, I can tell you a little about the "mechanism" for the DYRL-style chair. Basically, there is none; at least there is no "mechanism" UNDERNEATH the seat. If you look at the DYRL seat line art on my website, note the small art at the bottom right of this picture:

http://www.macross2....1-dyrl-seat.gif

You'll see the seat appears to almost float ever so slightly above the floor of the fighter mode. If my eyes don't deceive me, the only true "mount" (besides a small mound on the floor at the front bottom of the seat) is a single strut based on the floor that rises at roughly 75 degrees through the back of the seat. This strut rests within a darkened groove down the center of the seat back. You can see this groove in the line art and it appears you've also built this groove into your model (however it appears the bottom underside of the groove on your model is solid when it should be "open").

Anyway, hope that helps.

I've spent plenty of time looking at that drawing in the gold book over the years, but thanks for reposting it here (and thanks for the other gold book images you had on your site that I used in my previous post!).

That does look similar to an ejection seat rail, but at closer inspection, it can't really work that way.

The angle only matches the botton rear corner of the seat, not the majority of that groove up the back of the seat which is at a different angle (which allows the space for it to tilt back for the battroid position). What that part does happen to line up with exactly is the floor of the cockpit behind the seat (which is the roof of the gear bay, the deeper part where the wheels fit). So, I built that portion of the cockpit floor behind the seat with a matching groove to fit that portion of the seat frame.

What would work is having that bottom angle of the grooved frame on the back of the seat be the connection point for a hinge mechanism that tilts the seat back for battroid. That would have to exist in that groove it sits in in that angled section of the cockpit floor. No biggie, but I just haven't modeled anything like that in there yet. If there were any hydraulics involved, the space limitations would require that they be taking up space inside the landing gear bay, in the space just above the tires, working around the hinge for the main gear actuator (which is offset to the side in my version anyway).

That part, at least, is doable. Still, it doesn't put the seat in a position that quite matches where the drawings show it relative to the front console. It would still require some fudging and/or a moving front console and that whole can of worms.

Maybe I will eventually work something out that will work. Believe me, I would really love to!

[SchizophrenicMC]

Huh... The landing gear thing actually makes sense. Use active structures instead of passive ones to make the whole thing work.

As for the display, Samsung unveiled an opaque-on-demand TOLED display at CES earlier this year. Apply that to the canopy of the VF-1, and you have an explanation for the expanded HUD and battroid display.

[Aurel Tristen]

Just went through this thread...I....I don't have words... They should have sent a poet...

So, Chillyche and I should start putting together a cast and crew for a live action / CGI BSG-like Macross pilot episode right? Fully textured (And with a joystick that a human hand could actually fit around), your model will probably be about as real looking as possible.

In all seriousness, I was curious. What are the chances you might consider retopographying and then doing a normals bake for a low res version? It looks amazing, but when I imagine the things that could be done with a version that real-time rendering could handle... well, it could be epic.

I think the landing gear issue is when I stopped working on my latest VF-1. That and I could never get the shape of the nosecone to look right. You've obviously nailed it. Keep up the great work!

[danbickell]

Thanks so much! Looks like I might just have some time this week to get back into it.

In all seriousness, I was curious. What are the chances you might consider retopographying and then doing a normals bake for a low res version? It looks amazing, but when I imagine the things that could be done with a version that real-time rendering could handle... well, it could be epic.

That has actually been in the plans all along. I've been trying hard to not get side-tracked into starting to do it with what I have already, just to see how it turns out. Making efficient game models seems to be a dying art these days (since you can throw so much geometry and textures at modern game hardware), but that's how I've made my living for 17+ years, and it is naturally what I'm best at.

I have a long history of putting together versions of my VF-1 models tailored for whatever game engine we were using at work at the time. It's been years now since I've had a modern (good) model to try, and we currently have some interesting shaders I would love to try out on it. Of course, I've always had to keep these things private, and I actually have got in a bit of trouble for this sort of thing in the past (ie. reps from publisher are visiting and get a glimpse of the "giant robot" in my test level, legal guy freaks out, and producer is all over my bosses about why I supposedly don't have bandwidth to do what they've been requesting... oops!).

Luckily (I think), most of that stuff isn't around for anybody to see anymore! The Quake 2 player models I did still seem to be floating around a few places, but I couldn't find any decent sized images of them (whew!). Those were 900 triangles with tiny 8-bit textures, and transformed to all 3 modes (battroid for standing animations, gerwalk for crouching animations, and fighter for the taunt). That was pushing the limits back then, but totally out-classed by the PS2 and PSP games that came since.

I did manage to dig up this little blast from my past, circa 1999 (try not to laugh too much!):

That was a 4000 triangle model, fully transformable, with pilot, landing gear, and even movable wing control surfaces,flaps and airbrake. This was also some experimentation in the early days of bump maps. That was ahead of the times (PS1 days), and the PS2 game models that came in the years to follow left me a little disappointed.

These days, it would be a minimum of about 20k triangles to do it decently, with diffuse, spec, normal, and gloss maps. I would probably aim closer to 40k, though 100k+ models aren't out of the question at all anymore. It just depends on what else you have to render.

So far, this model only clocks in around 650k triangles. It is built more efficiently than it might look (old habits die hard...). The whole thing might come out to be in the ballpark of 2 million. Even that wouldn't be a problem for real-time on high-end PC gaming rigs, under the right circumstances.

In any event, I am very much interested in making it all available to the talented folks in the community who would do cool stuff with it. I'd love to see people make movies and games and such with it!

Now I just have to get it finished...

[Aurel Tristen]

Wow. That is awesome! I can spot a legacy bump-map from a mile away, but you've done what you could with it. So you made all your own animations too then? I've gotta find a video of this ingame... You know what would be a great test of your model? That new fancypants Cryengine! With good use of normal maps and LOD models, you could probably get a nearly flawless version in-engine and looking amazing. Not to mention the engine has all the cool new shaders everyone is crazy about.

If I could program, I would start plotting to make a working version in that engine, but sadly I'm only an average modeler and level designer.

I also agree about your optimization. I was blown away by your wireframe! I did NOT expect it to be that clean. I've always had issues with increasing detail incrementally because I try so hard not to use tris now. Sucks to work my ass off on a model just to have Mudbox crap all over it because it isn't all quads.

Should you ever decide on another engine/game that you want this thing in, I'll do anything I can to help. Love it.

Finally, if I might make a request? Some time when you are working on the model, maybe you could grab some timelaps video of the action? I've learned untold amounts of things about 3DSMAX from watching pros work, and its super fun to watch something like this come together.

[danbickell]

Yeah, most of my animation learning came from rigging and animating my various VF-1 models back then, though I haven't done any animation professionally since the 90s. Back when skeletal animation was the new thing, I learned Lightwave just so I could try it out with a transforming rig.

The Quake 2 stuff was an interesting challenge, since the format consisted of a bunch (something like 200) of key frames (so it was just 200 copies of the same geo, in different poses), and interpolated between them. So, I just did "real" skeletal animations and strategically picked frames to save out so that everything would work half way decently. A lot of people contacted me about that back then, wondering how it was even possible given the limitations. It was all a matter of tricky timing, so that the interpolation was mostly confined to just the linear motions.

Later, as skeletal animation became the norm in games, the skeletons we had were very basic in the early days, and usually limited to a one-size-fits-all scenario. Best I could do there was to rig a battroid model to the skeleton as best as possible, and have a laugh at a human-sized VF-1 battroid running around in the game (with parts clipping all over the place), driving cars and kung-fu fighting and such. A few times, I've set up VF-1 fighter models as cars (hovering above invisible wheels) and drove them around (set to be faster than any car in the game, of course!).

Most everything I've worked in on recent years has been all mo-cap, and likewise limited to a specific skeletal rig with around 20-30 bones. I will neither confirm or deny that any valkyries ever inhabited the Call of Duty universe, despite the freedoms that existed for vehicle rigs and the eventual increase of the bone count limit that was made for a particularly complicated game asset I worked on.

Needless to say, a modern VF-1 game model that fully transforms and has all the bells and whistles would require a fairly complex rig. The nose landing gear alone currently needs about 20 bones, with all the little hydraulic actuators for the doors and such. The canopy currently uses 5. A lot of the little things would need to be simplified, deleted, or just not animated to make it reasonable for a game. I'm thinking something in the ballpark of 100 bones would be good enough for a good sim-type valkyrie game. Something more arcade-like could maybe get away with <60.

Did you guys happen to see the screens from the new PS3 game that comes with the DYRL BluRay set?

http://www.ncsx.com/2012/040212/ncs0402u.htm

That is looking pretty good so far, and certainly better than previous games. I'm 100% confident that I could put something together that would easily rival it, though. Of course, that's easy to say when you can spend all the time you want doing it, and don't have any tech limitations of a certain engine framework to work within.

And THAT is precisely what I love about working on this VF-1 model. Then again, that's exactly why it will end up taking so long to ever finish!

[Zinjo]

Wow you were so THIN then!

Middle age spread huh?

[danbickell]

Wow you were so THIN then!

Middle age spread huh?

Happens to the best of us!

I'd love to go back in time and tell that guy that he would still be modelling the same old subject matter in 2012, only with HUNDREDS of times the polycount. Maybe in 2025, we'll be looking back at the quaint old-school 2 million poly VF-1 model and be amused at how so much was done with so little, while working on the multi-billion poly holographic simulation model!

[Chronocidal]

As far as bones go, if you're thinking of adapting this VF-1 to a flight sim, you most likely won't need them. I don't think you'd be forced to remove them, but at least in FSX (or any of the other MS flight sims) you'd only use bones to make flexible pieces. Any solid moving part would just be keyframe animated by rotation and motion, relative to a determined part reference point.

Making gear animations without bones becomes a pain, because you have to manually align linkages and actuators, but it also really makes you appreciate all the mechanisms that go into making them work. I've done several aircraft that way, including an F-14 and F-106, and even a nearly realistic set of gear for the YF-19, and the way all the pieces have to work together always amazes me.

[danbickell]

As far as bones go, if you're thinking of adapting this VF-1 to a flight sim, you most likely won't need them. I don't think you'd be forced to remove them, but at least in FSX (or any of the other MS flight sims) you'd only use bones to make flexible pieces. Any solid moving part would just be keyframe animated by rotation and motion, relative to a determined part reference point.

Making gear animations without bones becomes a pain, because you have to manually align linkages and actuators, but it also really makes you appreciate all the mechanisms that go into making them work. I've done several aircraft that way, including an F-14 and F-106, and even a nearly realistic set of gear for the YF-19, and the way all the pieces have to work together always amazes me.

Doing just a flight sim for the fighter is one thing, but animating battroids and gerwalks is another can of worms.

In my experience, pretty much everything these days uses skeletal animation in games. In some cases it might not seem so, and might be transparent to the artist, but it is still getting "rigged" for skeletal animation during export or in the engine itself. Some engines just look at the pivot points of each object, create a "bone" there with rigid "skin", and link it to the next bone via the object hierarchy. The end product is the same thing, and it generally works for any rigid-bound hard-surface stuff.

One way or the other, I'm really just looking at it from a performance standpoint. Dreaming about a pie-in-the-sky ultimate Macross sim/game, designed for current-gen consoles and/or PC, how would I go about putting together a real-time game asset out of this VF-1? If you've got a world to render, inhabited with a decent number of mecha, poly count and bone count end up being the major limiting factors involved. No biggie. I'm thinking that a 40k poly VF-1 requiring 60+ bones could work really well, as long as the rest of the game design is kept manageable. Current-gen consoles could easily struggle if you tried to render too many of those at once. I can guarrantee that PS3 game that is coming with the DYRL BluRay is lower poly and uses less bones, but why would I aim to replicate that?

I hear you about the landing gear animations. I had the nose gear all rigged up and rendered out some animation tests in Maya last year. Like I said, there was a good 20 bones just for the gear, and setting up constraints and timing it all took quite some effort. I'll have to see if I can put together an AVI or a GIF from the renders...

[danbickell]

Ok, I got one of those old animation test renders put together as a video:

http://s362.photobucket.com/albums/oo68/danbickell/?action=view&current=nose_gear_anim_test4_6.mp4

This is from about a year ago, so there was no detail on the exterior of the nose yet. I was just spending forever getting the landing gear to work right.

Bummer, I thought I had a version somewhere after the head was in there, with the head gun moving to get out the way too.

Edited April 5, 2012 by danbickell

[VF5SS]

Do you still have the cool TEST paint scheme for your VF-1 back back when it was a part of the Valkyrie Simulation Project :3

[Mommar]

I've always found that extra bit with the A's head laser having to move for the landing gear to come down was pretty silly. The J and S don't have that issue but why make one that requires that extra bit of engineering when landing... especially when it's the Cannon Fodder version too. It would make more sense to have a J model with a single laser if you really had to differentiate.

[danbickell]

Do you still have the cool TEST paint scheme for your VF-1 back back when it was a part of the Valkyrie Simulation Project :3

Wow, I completely forgot about that until just now! Unfortunately, no, I don't seem to have any of the A models, or most of the texture sets any longer. I lost all of that stuff in a hard drive crash, except some copies of the VF-1S that I had converted to test out at work. Doing a quick google search, I see there are still some images left from that though:

That model serves as a good example of trying to do too much with too little. It would look ok at a distance though, at the low resolutions of the day, and that was the whole trick back then.

Bonus! There are a few images of the Quake 2 model in there too! 900 polys and a single 8-bit 256x256 texture, circa 15 years ago...

I've always found that extra bit with the A's head laser having to move for the landing gear to come down was pretty silly. The J and S don't have that issue but why make one that requires that extra bit of engineering when landing... especially when it's the Cannon Fodder version too. It would make more sense to have a J model with a single laser if you really had to differentiate.

Yeah, I don't think they ever thought that out. Even funnier is that with the original landing gear design the main actuator is directly behind the gear strut (rather than offset to the side like I have it, because it won't actually fit any other way), so the A head gun needs to be angled way down to the entire time the gear is down in order to clear the actuator. At least with the offset actuator, the gun just needs to pivot to clear the doors and wheels, and then can pivot back into place.

Edited April 5, 2012 by danbickell

[VF5SS]

Ah neat. I think the last time I saw that test VF-1 was back when the website was up.

I used to use your Quake 2 model all the time. Some people were trying to kludge it into Air Quake 2 somehow.

All these issues with the landing gear kinda beg the question of why does the VF-1 use realistic 1980's style struts and hydraulics when just the fingers and elbows must use fully functional compact actuators :3

I recently picked up the second VF-1 Master File and I can see what you're saying about some of their changes. Actually I that cockpit transformation diagram appears to be trying to reconcile the TV Battroid cockpit, which is best left forgotten in my opinion :v

Have you tried working backwards from the VF-0 cockpit? Junya Ishigaki did a pretty good job realizing how it would work. Although the VF-0 is a big bigger so everything isn't as restricted by space constraints. The mystery of the main battroid viewing monitor may be why they went with the canopy acting as a display in Zero since they could no longer fudge the interior with more consistent CG designs.

[teknos]

Wow. My vocabulary isn't nearly large enough to begin to describe your work. But if I tried, it would be some kind of mumble of: "Will you be my hero?"

[Zinjo]

Thanks for this sexy cockpit view!!

I got nose bleeds looking a those renders.

BTW, how in holy hell did you get the images to show up in full 1920x1080 resolution???

I thought the site restricted the max size of the image files!

Edited May 30, 2012 by Zinjo

[danbickell]

Thanks for this sexy cockpit view!!

I got nose bleeds looking a those renders.

BTW, how in holy hell did you get the images to show up in full 1920x1080 resolution???

I thought the site restricted the max size of the image files!

Thanks. Looking at that cockpit render, I'm just extremely anxious to texture it. That's when it will come alive. Right now, it just looks like an unpainted plastic model kit, to me. I want to paint it up, decal it, weather it, and add some lighting!

I was hoping to update this thread soon. I've been working on the VF-1S head over the long weekend, and it is coming along well, but not quite ready to post yet. Hopefully soon (if I'm not jinxing myself...).

I think the image size limit is just for images stored here. I have been adding most of my images to my gallery here, but I've been linking to higher resolution versions from my Photobucket in this thread.

[danbickell]

Finally, an update with new content! Better late than never, right? I'm only going to do 1 day of E3 this year, so I've been taking advantage of the down-time this week to finish up my VF-1S head model:

I was originally planning to save this until the complete VF-1A was done, but while working out the chest and LERX and transformation mechanisms, I came to the conclusion that I really had to nail down another head and the rear of the nose and head cavity details before I can move on with confidence.

I started with the Hasegawa 1/48 plans (though I still don't have a copy with decent resolution...), but ended up matching the Yamato 1/60 V2 head shape quite closely. The details are all from the Kawamori detail drawings done for DYRL, which match pretty remarkably well between them, but are actually each pretty far off from a shape that works. I think this is why we see a fair amount of variations between all the toys and models throughout the years.

One particularly tricky area is having clearance for the guns in fighter mode while tucked up against the nose (guns straight forward). With the bottom-heavy trapezoidal cross-section of the nose (as seen in most later iterations of the design, as opposed to the earlier round shape), the wider flatter bottom of the nose leaves less room for the guns. The wedge shape of the Yamato 1/60 head (wider at the rear) helps this, while also providing for having the guns point straight forward in fighter, while angled apart the more you rotate the guns up and back. Most toys, models, and drawings seem to treat the guns like they are on the same axis, rather than each having it's own angeled axis, which would require each gun barrel to have to be jointed (which never made much sense to me mechanically) in order get the angles right in the different positions.

The model clocks in at over 140k polys. Much of that is in the eye details, which actually has nearly 4x the surface area to cover compared to the 1A head. Some of the detail is borrowed from my 1A model (the parts that are consistently the same in the DYRL detail drawings), but all that extra space required most of it be built from scratch.

Here are a couple of wireframe renders, for those who might enjoy them:

[EXO]

Ah. Updates on this thread is like Christmas morning.

I still love the 1/48 1S head the most. It's pretty much what I've always interpreted the 1S head to look like.

[Talos]

Damn that looks nice! I've found all the VF-1 heads tricky to match. I've yet to really find an appealing A/J/or S when viewed from the side. Went with the Macross the First style one for the VF-1D though.

[EXO]

bTW... I love the wireframes... I have the previous fighter mode as my phone wallpaper since you first posted them.

[danbickell]

Thanks!

Ha, another reason it might be like Christmas is because it only seems to happen once a year! Wish I had more time to work on this...

The Yamato 1/48 S head is pretty good, at least for a TV head. It matches the original TV lineart quite well, but it falls short in a few areas, especially for a DYRL head. Of course, the Yamato 1/48 doesn't tuck the head in very well into the nose recess (it hangs low, which at least helps with the shoulders being too low as well), so that got them around any clearance issues with the guns and the nose. The front of the head has good taper, but it doesn't follow through to the rear, and so the gun turrets don't have the angle. As a result, the guns are always straight when rotated. The neck detail has more than 2 neck rings as well, and while it still has a similar look to the TV lineart, it isn't a good interpretation for the more detailed DYRL design. The targetting sensor/laser on the top of the head is too small, and positioned too high up as well.

Both the Yamato 1/48 and 1/60 V2 heads suffer from a visor that isn't recessed enough (again, works better for the TV version), and don't have enough of a protruding "hat bill" above the visor.

Here are the DYRL detail drawings I used for my primary reference:

This one shows the long overhang "hat bill" I'm talking about, which I think looks great, and it really helps with the fit in fighter mode (assuming the head tucks in as it should). The overall shape is too narrow, with too wide of a chin. To match a model to it, even with a lot of perspective, it looks totally weird. The details on this drawing really bring the design alive to me though, and I only wish the A head got as much attention.

This drawing is another favorite of mine, and it is surprising how much of the new details match between the previous ones. Again, the S head shape is wrong though. It is too short (front to rear), with too big of a visor and not enough space between the visor and the guns. I think Yamato might have been looking at this drawing when they placed that sensor on the top of the head on their 1/48 (placed incorrectly high and too small).

This one has a lot of the updated S head details as well, though the gun turret details are a bit different. I actually went more with these details, because I felt they work a little better. This is also where the panels on the neck come from as well. I'm going to try to replicate some of the detail from the head transformation mechanism, but it won't actually work right for the transformation. I chalk it up to another attempt to make sense of the impossible elevated seat egress concept.

I hear you, Talos. The heads can look pretty weird in orthographic views. We're so used to seeing them drawn with perspective, and the designs tend to get oddly interpreted when modeled. The VF-1 Master File (vol. 1) orthographic views are particularly hideous (to me) when it comes to the heads. Here's some ortho side views of my A and S heads, just for you:

EDIT: Here's another shot that I forgot to post. This shows the head tucked in fighter mode. I might make a S model-specific fairing panel to fit the head closer, but I actually like a little bit of the eye showing anyway, so we'll see. The "hat bill" fits nicely with the bottom of the nose, reaching almost to the back of the landing gear bay.

Edited June 6, 2012 by danbickell

[Benson13]

I'm totally getting an education here.

[Talos]

Thanks!

Ha, another reason it might be like Christmas is because it only seems to happen once a year! Wish I had more time to work on this...

The Yamato 1/48 S head is pretty good, at least for a TV head. It matches the original TV lineart quite well, but it falls short in a few areas, especially for a DYRL head. Of course, the Yamato 1/48 doesn't tuck the head in very well into the nose recess (it hangs low, which at least helps with the shoulders being too low as well), so that got them around any clearance issues with the guns and the nose. The front of the head has good taper, but it doesn't follow through to the rear, and so the gun turrets don't have the angle. As a result, the guns are always straight when rotated. The neck detail has more than 2 neck rings as well, and while it still has a similar look to the TV lineart, it isn't a good interpretation for the more detailed DYRL design. The targetting sensor/laser on the top of the head is too small, and positioned too high up as well.

Both the Yamato 1/48 and 1/60 V2 heads suffer from a visor that isn't recessed enough (again, works better for the TV version), and don't have enough of a protruding "hat bill" above the visor.

Here are the DYRL detail drawings I used for my primary reference:

This one shows the long overhang "hat bill" I'm talking about, which I think looks great, and it really helps with the fit in fighter mode (assuming the head tucks in as it should). The overall shape is too narrow, with too wide of a chin. To match a model to it, even with a lot of perspective, it looks totally weird. The details on this drawing really bring the design alive to me though, and I only wish the A head got as much attention.

This drawing is another favorite of mine, and it is surprising how much of the new details match between the previous ones. Again, the S head shape is wrong though. It is too short (front to rear), with too big of a visor and not enough space between the visor and the guns. I think Yamato might have been looking at this drawing when they placed that sensor on the top of the head on their 1/48 (placed incorrectly high and too small).

This one has a lot of the updated S head details as well, though the gun turret details are a bit different. I actually went more with these details, because I felt they work a little better. This is also where the panels on the neck come from as well. I'm going to try to replicate some of the detail from the head transformation mechanism, but it won't actually work right for the transformation. I chalk it up to another attempt to make sense of the impossible elevated seat egress concept.

I hear you, Talos. The heads can look pretty weird in orthographic views. We're so used to seeing them drawn with perspective, and the designs tend to get oddly interpreted when modeled. The VF-1 Master File (vol. 1) orthographic views are particularly hideous (to me) when it comes to the heads. Here's some ortho side views of my A and S heads, just for you:

EDIT: Here's another shot that I forgot to post. This shows the head tucked in fighter mode. I might make a S model-specific fairing panel to fit the head closer, but I actually like a little bit of the eye showing anyway, so we'll see. The "hat bill" fits nicely with the bottom of the nose, reaching almost to the back of the landing gear bay.

Thanks for the ortho, I might have to use them then.

The Master File heads were, as I recall, basically the same ones as This is Animation Special: Macross Plus Movie Edition. Not the bastion of line art accuracy, just look at how off the VF-4 and VF-5000 are in it. The A-type head almost looks tilted back until the top/bottom of the head is near parallel with the ground.

Did not look good at all. There is a diagram with different heads on another page, which look a lot closer in basic shape to your's, though not as detailed of course. That it what I had used.

This is a shaded VF-1S a friend of mine did a while ago with my line art to illustrate what I mean.

And just because it's a fun shot, Hikaru's VF-1S head from the Pachinko footage from the bluray.

[Shaorin]

I am liking the newer Hasegawa model, but I loath the look of the Yamato 1/60 v2 (and I say that having two of them). The contours of the nose and canopy just look atrocious.

like it or lump it, it's pretty much the way it has to be in order to make it all work...

[VF5SS]

It almost looks like you homogenized the VF-1S head with the VF-0S head with the way the laser cannons stick out a bit on the side of the head.

Also have you seen the redesigned VF-1S head from the Ultimate Frontier UMD movie?

It's a bit more TV but also has some other modern touches.

[Talos]

like it or lump it, it's pretty much the way it has to be in order to make it all work...

Yeah, totally. I have a 1/48 and a couple 1/60s and I love them. I just don't view the shape as the definitive one, since it's so far away from the animated design.

[Mr March]

Again, more simply amazing material. I don't believe I've ever seen the VF-1S head modelled in CG this well with this much detail. Bravo!

Btw, where did you get that artwork of the SDF Macross girls sitting on top of the VF-1 head units in the blue line art? I think I've seen that drawing only once before, but never knew where it came from.