I've been mulling over the idea of "idealizing" the dimensions, and whilst I'm not entirely averse to the idea, I'm not really sure how one would go about it.
I can see how exactly replicating all of the wiggliness along the edges of the upper and lower fuselage as seen here would not only be undesirable, but also difficult to achieve -
- but I don't see that you'd want to go much further. Take for example the roof of the cockpit. In essence, it's a simple isosceles trapezoid, but in actuality, there's a lot of subtle curvature to it. the front part swoops downward to meet the forward canopy smoothly, rather than having an abrupt angle at the "hinge" line, the sides are curved, and the rear corners have a sizeable chamfer to them.
Now consider, as an example, the eFx x-wing's cockpit roof. I know that many people would probably consider the entire canopy on the eFx to be one of it's weakspots, with its toy-like hinge and obvious join line, but look beyond those aspects and notice how the idealized roof also has a horribly boxy appearance when compared with original miniatures:
In my opinion, that's an idealization too far. It's clear to me, at least, that if and edge is
almost straight, a surface
almost flat, one ought to be cautious about making it
completely straight,
completely flat.
Ray, I agree with you almost completely. I think you are confusing what I mean by
idealization with
simplification. What I mean by idealization is to straighten out areas that are obviously warped - not to straighten out areas that appear to be meant to have a bit of roundness. To decide between the two cases, one has to pay very close attention to the photographs, but such a thing is fairly easy to see. Where the top plane above the R2 strip meets with the back window, it is not a sharp angle. There is roundness there that I believe whole-heartedly should stay. I am not at all for
simplification of features that are quite obviously intended to be there. I am only for ironing out warpages and other imperfections that are clearly
not supposed to be there.
The most difficult issue is the asymmetry. Obviously, the miniatures weren't intentionally created that way, but since they are asymmetrical, how should one go about eliminating the asymmetry?
This is what I meant when I said its almost too hard to tell what was exactly intended, in all cases, and a decision has to be made at some point. In some places its very straightforward to see what was intended and what was not, and in other places it's more difficult to tell. On the one hand you're trying to recreate asymmetry on purpose, which I personally would not do. But that's just my own preference. I would gladly point out where the fuselage is asymmetrical for someone who wished to recreate it. The only qualms I have with this are purely conceptual. If someone is so concerned about reproducing every teeny tiny flaw, and they set out to do it, I can't help but notice that this task is impossible - because they will miss some flaws and introduce their own. If they are THAT concerned with it, they might drive themselves insane :wacko! But, of course, anyone is free to do whatever they want and reproduce whatever imperfections they want until it looks good enough to them and they are happy with their own model.
One might simply decide upon a mirror plane (and how would one do that?) and for each pair of points that one feels ought to be symmetrical, place them at the average distance from the mirror plane.
Well, one could make an educated guess on where the mirror plane might be, and all of us could take a look and see if that looks feasible or not. I can't imagine that all symmetrical configurations would look 'wrong' unless you're judging it by each and every imperfection of the asymmetrical version, which is precisely what's in question here to begin with.
Alternatively, one might surmise that for each pair of points, one or the other is closer to the "intended" location, and move the other point to the corresponding mirrored location, or one might come up with a completely different method.
The method I use goes like this. Pretend you look at an X Wing from top view and see that it is severely wiggly - it wiggles back and forth, deviating in either direction all the way along the fuselage. What I would do is pick either the very rear or the very front as a starting point, measure down or up a certain distance, and take the measurement of the whole width at that point. Then in a 're-symmetrized' model, I would make sure 1/2 of that distance is on one side of the midline, and 1/2 is on the other. This doesn't commit me to any specific mirror plane on the original warped model, but allows me to straighten things out.
The real difficulty arises when you realise that, having altered the topography of at least half the model, you now need to devise a method for relocating the non-symmetrical details onto this altered topography. Since the entire model is pretty much covered in non-symmetrical details in the form of panel lines and weathering, it's not a trivial problem.
The panel lines could be relocated in a very similar manner. to how the fuselage is 'ironed out' or straightened. Once that is resolved, the weathering patterns can be located relative to both the panel lines and the larger fuselage features.
Weathering is another thing that could not conceivably be replicated perfectly. There are what appears to me to be little nicks on the surface that were made by letting a rotary tool hit the surface somewhat randomly. You can either copy the method - but your random nicks will not come out the same. Or you can try to replicate each little nick manually by some other method. If you do not go nuts trying to do it, it will not necessarily look like the same effect. Recreating the weathering, too, is the responsibility of each individual builder. Once you have the overall geometry and the panel lines in place, then take a look at the weathering of the X Wing of your choice, squint your eyes, and
pretend the model in the picture is symmetrical. This way you ought to be able to locate a particular weathering mark with relative ease. The same could be done with a CG model.
At the bottom line, it all comes down to what the builder thinks looks right or good to their own eye. If they cannot be satisfied with anything short of replicating all the asymmetry and warpage, then they are free to do as they see fit.
In a few minutes I am going to make another (shorter) post...
