Hoi There!

Well Gentlemen, it seems that the HR B-24 is ready. Or more like i have decided to call it good enough to be announced and presented in front of the Players of EAW.

Please as a respect of the work done by Dean and me, read this part.

Just a few details about the terms of it's creation:

The work had begun with the Splitting up of the 3dz, which was on the 6th of October 2003.
Itself the splitting had lasted only a few hours, and the plane had recieved it's jointing hardpoints to the end of the day.

Next step was the planning and drawing of the wireframe on the new skin. That lasted for one or two days, but i can't recall that exactly.
When that was done i have Re-mapped the wireframes by the new hand drawn skin shapes, of course while mapping i have accidentaly done some mapping errors, and those had to be corrected.

After the basic mapping was done, the work proceded with the major changes on the Main 3dz. As You will see the PB24ATEX.PCX/TPC file and the PB24AF.3dz contains mostly 'only' the transparent areas of the plane.

To achieve this i have had to Delete all the not used elements from the 3dz and i had to recalculate the whole Rendering Sequence table. And since there were no Working Rendering Sequence calculator availabe i had to do it by my own hands and by my mind.

After the RS had been redone, i had to add the Top Turret to the plane, what meant that the points and the Element of it was shifted from the original 3dz of the turret, but even then i had to re-calculate the RS in a few parts again.

When the Top Turret was added, and the RS was redone, i had to solve the Prop's problem. What that was? well i definetly did not wanted a HR plane what has the Engines Propellers rotating still when the Engine was already Destroyed, or to have EACH propeller stop when the engine Nr. 2 had been destroyed. You know i'm a kind of maximalist about my works/jobs.
i allready had an idea in 2002 November when i was doing the HR FW-190 about how the spinning of the props on Multiple engined planes could be solved but i have not announced that, only made a few tests on a Me-110 and posted a pic about it.

so the next step was to create a totally new Prop 3dz, and add hardpoints to the Main 3dz, and Re-calculate the RS again on a few parts, to fit the Props in front of the Wings, but without overlaying the Nose, or the Body of the Plane.
Of course even this solution won't be perfect, because on slower computers it can (and i'm sure that it will) cause LAGG. since than i have thinked out another solution what would be the best, but because of lack of time i've not made that yet. That will be probably a future add-on to the HR B-24.

This was the point when i decided that the Main works on the 3dz are ready. The next thing that i've done was i've contacted with Dean (Nickname DeanH - Dean Hill by His real name) about the last week of October 2003 about the Skinning of the Bird. i could have done that too, but i already knew that by that time that i'll have to give helt to Shreck and CB. in the Flyable B-24.  And that will take lots of time away from me.

Luckily Dean is a realy good skinner and has His brain on the right place, and with the sharing of the work we could process it well.

When the first basic skin was done and all the realy bothering RS errors were removed and the whole plane could be announced even then, i have 'suspended the 3dz work' for a bit on the HR B-24 and dropped a mail to Shreck to Help them out on the Flyable B-24.

Probably some of You would ask: Why? well my reason is very simple.

Because i did not wanted to ruin their works what they have done that far.
Itself the Flyable B-24 (this is only my judgement and i'm not trying to decrease it's honours because i have worked on it too) was a big thing but not Sutch a big thing.

What i want to Mean is the following: the HR B-24 COULD have been an X-mas present to the EAW community for 2003. But then the Flyable B-24 (by my judgement) woudn't have as mutch of intrest by the users than it had.

Another thing next to these that i have asked Dean to create the first HR B-24 to look like the Diamond Lil'.

The creating of the Flyable B-24's 3dz files took about 3 weeks and by the time i have finished them Dean was off to New Zealand, His home country with His Family. That meant 5, almost 6 weeks of delay.

While Dean was having holidays i have created a totally new wing skin with some more details, than originaly it included.

After Dean had returned from holidays, the work had continued. Of course we have found new errors on the plane and those had to be corrected out again, and by the request of Dean i have created a new really HR noseart skinfile and 3dz.

Today on the 16th of January 2004 i have added the last requests of Dean to the 3dz the tailgunner.

now i call my job on the High Resolution B-24D Liberator finished.

just a few more/extra information on/about the creation of this plane:

Between Dean and me, there were some incredible amount of mailing:
 - Dean sent me 37 mails.
 - i have sent over 42 mails there.
 - Nearly 120megs of ZIPS were sent and recieved.
 - Lots of images DLed.

i have invested about 1000 work hours, used 17 pages of A/4 paper for the draws/plans one pencil and one pen. ;)

Personally i have drunk 127 liters of Coffee, and smoked 214 boxs of cigarette.

Have been curseing a lots of times.

Dean, it's Your time to speak up!

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About the paintjob:

I DEFINITELY couldn't have done these skins without a LOT of help, both from Mr. Johnson. (to help me figure out where things were supposed to be placed, and also with a lot of the small and fiddly bits)
and also help was given by FreddyB, without his endless supplies of appropriate noseart images, all prepared and layered in photoshop files for me, we wouldn't have had anything like the great range of changeable noseart for this ship.

Due to the nature of this model, with the use of the Pb24aN.tpc file, it is able to show multiple images on the noseart area of the left side.

We have made 2 sets available to users, one has 6x nose images in higher resolution, they look cleaner but they begin to 'repeat' in large formations sooner. The other has 16x nose images, consequently they are a lower resolution, however there is much more variation throughout the squadrons. 
You can choose for yourself which set you prefer. 

We hope you like what we've made - we realise that there are limitations using this method, so you are going to need to accept that some tail insignias won't change between different planes, they have to be somewhat "generic" to suit all the noses. Despite what may have originally appeared on the RHS of the noses of these ships, we decided it was smarter to include another 'generic' BG emblem, so they DO show the correct outfits from the right side.

Operation Tidal wave (2nd raids on Ploesti) low level 1-2 Aug 1943
 
This is the "Flying Eight Balls" AKA the 66th, 67th, 68th and 506th BS of the 44th BG(heavy) from the 8th Air Force.

In August 1943 a group of 177 B24's attack the oil refineries at Ploesti in Rumania. 
 
 
55 Libs were lost on that raid, 53 were damaged and 440 crew were killed or missing.

The aircraft skins supplied are of aircraft from these units, but the colour schemes may not have been used during the actual raid.

Thanks to FreddyB for helping out with the Nose Art files :-)


Anyway, enjoy them folks 8?)

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Some Technical details:

the most Special part:
 - Props, as a best solution on the separately rotating propellers i have created a multi time called in PB24AP.3DZ what will cause that the Propellers blades will be darker when Rotating, and will get lighter when an engine is shuted down.

 - HR Nosearts including 6 big surfaces to paint.

 - LR Nosearts including 16 Standard sized surfaces to paint, and one smaller to the empty one.


What to do with the files: just simply unpack them to Your EAW folder, and choose the type of nosearts You want to have LR or HR. Their 3dz and TPC files are included in a separate directory.

Enjoy Hunting or Defending!

Cheers:

Mr. Johnson.











