03/18/2021 – Today was spent adding more structure to the interior of the Achilles weapon bay, now that I’m liking the look of the armatures powering the opening and closing.
The first addition was “ribs” to go with a central spine supporting the four arms. From way back in developing the internal missile bays, looking at reference images of F-22s with open weapon bays indicate this is typically what these spaces look like. Adding tons of cables and various outlets and electrical boxes would be the next order of business for a truly detailed implementation, but I don’t think that’s necessary for right now.
Once mirrored, the structure looks like this. This is fine, though you can see that there’s some annoying clipping left to take care of before it really feels engineered and precise.
This was an iteration I quite enjoyed. Pulling the cowl forward so it was flush with the upper hull and felt really integrated, and then carving out a void for the “wrist” of that armature to slide into. Unfortunately making everything rationally interact proved a bit harder.
These final two images don’t do it justice, so I threw together a quick p3d model one can go to to see the space put together. Using the Boolean command to combine the main body with the upper receiver was not as easy as I would have hoped – it produced a lot of geometry that needed laborious cleanup and may still yet prove to be a source of a lot of frustration and disappointment. However, there are now tracks the arms run in, everything fits together nicely without any unsightly clipping, and I’m quite pleased with it. Whether or not I add any further details, we’ll see. I’m hoping I can continue finalizing and prettifying the remaining pieces of the ship at a good pace!
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