If we were speaking strictly in the realm of the real, I’d have to say that among the coolest things out there, including motorbikes/ninjas/robots, are Fighter Aircraft.  I used to be totally obsessed with them, and now I just like them alot.  To explore this fondness I created this model of one of my favorite warplanes: the A-10 Thunderbolt II also known as the A-10 Warthog.  This is one serious Jet: it has the largest gun and can also carry more ordnance to the battle field on 14 wing stations than any other single seat aircraft.  It’s basically a flying tank.  Used for killing tanks.

A10_01

Model/Texture Stats:

  • Model with all weapons shown, moveable canopy/landing gear/control surfaces, comprises 8883 Polygons
  • Model is divided into 8 sets of UVs.  Each UV has about 3-6 textures requirements: Diffuse(colour), Bump, Specular, Opacity, Reflection, Luminance, etc.
  • of the 8 base textures, half are for the interior cockpit which is meant to be seen closer, the other half are for the exterior.  Thus, the Cockpit textures are more than twice the resolution of the exterior textures
  • I used plan drawings and a ref library of over 200 images to ensure as much accuracy as possible
  • Model was made in 3ds Max; textures painted in Photoshop

Textures

The below image role shows most of the textures used for this model.  The majority are painted by me, but some areas I used images of machinery to fill for back panels and spaces in between panels.  Also, I managed to find a virtual cockpit layout of the actual A-10’s dash, which I modified a bit to put onto the instrument panels.

Reference Links:

I found the following links very useful in creation of this model and texture.  Feel free to compare mine to the real thing!
Wings Palette – colour scheming
disti – cockpit simulation and layout
Promodeller – Step-by-step construction of a 1/48 plastic model of the A-10.  Lots of photos and detailed visual information

Aircraft Resource Center – An excellent photo walk around of the real thing.  Great close ups as well

Warthog Territory – Probably the biggest non-official site devoted to the A-10

Wikipedia – Learn all about the real thing here

Feel free to leave some feedback below! Thanks for viewing.