I caught the D-Day episode of BAND OF BROTHERS the other day on the History Channel.  The episode about the D-Day airdrop is remarkable. I'm sure ILM or another digital house in Hollywood created the actual drop sequence featuring numerous C-47's and digital paratroopers.  There was a lot of enemy gunfire and I can't imagine the terror of actually being in the cockpit of one of the C-47's or about to jump into darkness punctuated by flak and tracer fire.

So...I was inspired to create a digital diorama of this moment in history.  It started with a win on eBay of an old Airfix 1:72 C-47 kit.  The decals were crap, so I decided I would try making my own (I never seem to learn).  Well, the kit went together pretty nicely.  It was a very basic and fun build.  I also like the challenge of doing invasion stripes.  The decals looked good on the decal paper but were so opaque that they barely showed against the dark Olive Drab paint on the model.  I painted over the decals in flat white and applied the yellow decals again.  It looked worse.  So, I left the white-painted "decals."  Not terrible but not great either.

But, I was about to use the decals again in another way...

The model kit sat atop my Mac G4 as I began modeling it in 3D.  I use an older 3D software package called Strata.  This 3D model is one of my better ones to date.  I captured the lines of the C-47 pretty well.  I used the homemade model decals from Photoshop in the texture maps for the C-47.  I also had a 3D guy from a 3D PT-109 model I made about two years ago.  I dressed him up in 3D trooper fatigues and gear and suddenly he became a member of the 101st Airborne "Easy" Company.

The attached images are the result of my work.  I tried to find a balance of darkness for the images without making it look to bright.  It was a moonless night but you can't see what is going on if I render the images too dark.  I added the tracer fire and flak explosions using Photoshop.

I may render a few more images in the future.  On my website www.shortfuse3d.com (new URL), there is one more image - a close-up of a trooper.  You can't see it, but I have actually put 101st Airborne patches and US flags on their sleeves :)

Next up after some rest, I want to create a short animation of the D-Day drop!

Until next time,

Konley