Guys, there are a couple of issues with the mesh created over top the images of Red 3. The first thing is I switched to using fractional inches and am getting some great measurements. For instance, if I set my units to 64th's and end up getting measurements that come out on the 16th or the 8th, I am confident that these measurements are correct. I know you guys who are not in the US are used to millimeters. If I switched to using millimeters, I would get decimals mixed in there, which would crop up anyway if you were to take a fuselage made from inches and measured it with millimeters. It's great to see a measurement come out to 3/8" when I have it set to 64ths, but if I used millimeters I would have to wrestle with decimals throughout. The likeliest explanation for this, as I saw with the Y Wing, is that the ILM model builders used fractional inches when they built the fuselage.
It all comes down to how 'precise' you want the measurements to be.
Which leads to the next issue.
There is enough distortion and warpage in the fuselage that some measurements cannot be pinned down exactly, and a decision has to be made on which measurements to use. For instance, the distance between two lines that are obviously supposed to be parallel - at either end the measurement should be the same. However, something like this could be off by 1/32.
I could continue surfacing the whole fuselage, and pass it on with warpage and all ... but then what would anyone do with it? It's very difficult as it is to open the Max file and take measurements in order to draw up plans to build your own X off of. Believe me it's very tedious - and my intention was to surface the mesh as much as I needed to take measurements and draw up plans/3D Cad for everyone to use.
As far as I see it, there are two types of variation we are seeing here. The first is the variation between the different studio models - say one is a little longer here, a little wider there, or the torpedo tubes are a little bit further forward one on than the others. The other type of variation is asymmetry, distortion, warpage, etc ... or, the subtle amounts that a model deviates from an ideal version of itself.
All I am trying to say is that there is enough warpage in this model and enough unknowns that the measurements cannot be pinned down "exactly." In other words, there is no "exactly" to speak of. We can speak of an ideal that the model builders had in mind when they built the things, but to try and derive that ideal from what we have to work with 33 years later is impossible to pin down "exactly" - but it can be within, say, 1/32 of an inch, or about a millimeter.
If you ask, "what is the width of the front edge of Red 3's canopy?", that can be found pretty reliably - it's 1 1/16", or, as has been pointed out, 27 mm. But other measurements don't have as straightforward an answer. If you ask, "What's the height from the mid-line, where the top and bottom fuselage meet, to the top surface of the fuselage aft of the canopy?", then the answer depends on where you measure. The difference between that measurement taken right behind the canopy and it taken all the way aft is as much as 1/32. Does this mean the thing tapers down by 1/32? Yes, in actuality the model does, but was it intended to? Is this just warpage?
The bottom line is that I don't think it's possible to get measurements as exact as some of you want them (like millimeters to 6 decimal places!!!). And even if we did, the thing would be so warped and distorted that it would be a nightmare to try and reproduce every imperfection. Not to mention you will introduce your own imperfections when you build.
It's not an exact science, and the best bet is for me to get as close to what appears to be the measurements intended by the builders and from that create drawings. The result can then be varied in the first way I mentioned above - moving the torpedo tubes around a bit, making a slightly longer nose, etc...
What are your thoughts?
P.S. Some of you are talking about things like, "in what way and by how much is Red A or Red B asymmetrical?" Do you really plan to build a fuselage and intentionally put this asymmetry in? And if so, why?
