Gillig School bus for Flight Simulator:

[Guest Bell206freak]

This is an interesting thread, one in which I hope doesn't get removed for the weird request I am making.Upon the completion of my Sanderson Field/Tacoma Narrows Bridge/Mount St. Helens rerelease scenery projects, I am going to continue scenery development and branch out into developing driveable vehicles for FS, and perhaps a few versions of the JetRanger that aren't currently available.My first conquest will be an unusual one - a school bus that's totally driveable. The type of bus I am developing is a Gillig, a bus that was produced from the beginning of the 1900s until 1980 (The Gillig Corporation still builds buses to this day. School bus production stopped in 1981 and resumed again in 1986. It ceased permanently in 1993). In my first Gillig school bus release, every variation of the Gillig's 1965-1980 body style will be included. This project is a personal endeavour since I used to own one. I was restoring it to its factory-new condition when I ran out odf resources and regrettably had to let the entire project go.The shape of the bus is rather complex. It features rounded front and rear roof corners and the corners of the body at the rear of the bus are also rounded, as well as front body wall. I cannot figure out how to get the body shape right in gMax. I've tried rectangles and modifying the vertex locations, to modified cylinders.Right 1/4 view.Left rear 1/4 view.I realize this may not be quite the appropriate forum or messageboard to post this in, but I just cannot figure out how to get the general shape of the body right.Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. This will be released here at AVSIM under the Miscellaneous category once I am finished with it as well.

[n4gix 4,947]

Your best bet for such a complex shape is to break it into several sections.Build the front, the middle and the rear, and then join the sections later in the project.Use the line tool to lay out a set of spline shapes, then lay out a path for the splines. Attach the splines along the path, apply a cross-section modifier to create the mesh.Alternatively, you can use Patch modeling to create the front and rear panels, then use spline/path modeling to create the center section.

[Guest Bell206freak]

I'll try to do what you suggest. If you could, could you e-mail me a short tutorial on that? I'm not familiar with that part of gMax yet.srosenow_98 at yahoo.com is my e-mail address.

[n4gix 4,947]

Sorry, I really don't have the time to do that, but you might like to check into http://freeflightdesign.com and check out the tutorials there, as well as asking in the modeler's forum.Also, check out "Patch Modeling" in the GMax Tutorials & Help Files.