I just sent out the first round of beta files to all the project supporters! If you made a pledge, please check the inbox of the PayPal email address you used to make the pledge. If you want that email address changed for future emails, simply reply to the email and include the address you want me to use. If you did not receive it at all or the PayPal email address is not accessible to you for some reason, let me know at melebbles at gmail dot com and I’ll get you taken care of.

Okay, so the beta files contain a 42 page PDF for the white scheme, plus a folder containing JPEG and DXF files for machine cutting. That way, it doesn’t really matter which machine you’re using and it should be forward-compatible with whatever new machines come onto the market.

I’m going to be starting on the instructions tonight or tomorrow. I figured you guys would want the model PDF as soon as it came out of the oven instead of feeling all teased and stuff if I sat on it while I worked on the instructions, so I decided to just send out the model files and then post the instructions on the blog as I go along.

I also set up a beta thread in the Lounge here, which is where you ought to direct all beta feedback and commentary. You don’t have to register or anything like that, just post.

Oh, and just so no one misunderstands this: I’ve closed the funding phase for the model, since the beta has started and it’s easier to keep everyone updated if the list of people to send mail to is frozen–otherwise, I’d have to keep sending out the same email every time somebody new made a pledge, which gets kind of silly fast. (Once the beta phase for the base model is completed and everyone gives it their thumbs up, it’ll go on sale and anyone who missed out on it before can acquire it then.)

I expect to start filling the supporter requests as soon as we wrap up the beta phase, starting with the props.

Thanks again for supporting this project and helping me try out something new!

…the question of the Pinzgauer’s pagecount.

Today, I did all the reinforcers, plus the start of the first sponsored accessory, the flight deck interior modification:

I wanted to get the major structural parts of the flight deck out of the way before unfolding the base model, so I took the opportunity to model them while doing the reinforcers. I’ll be revisiting the flight deck after the base model has been beta tested and finalized.

Once I’d finished the reinforcers and roughed in the flight deck, I spent the rest of the day unfolding all the parts. Tomorrow I refine the unfolding and start assigning fold line styles, then I start exporting the base frames for the PDF. After that, I’ll also need to start a beta thread in the Lounge so everyone has a place to direct their beta feedback, then start mailing out links to the beta PDFs to all the sponsors.

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Sorry about the lack of updates over the past couple of days–between my sleeping patterns inverting twice and some inconvenient household issues that pulled me away from work, I didn’t spend as much time on the Pinzgauer as I’d have liked. However, I spent all of yesterday making up for lost time.

The cargo bay is pretty much done. The belly plate is done. The only thing left to do at this point for the base model, really, is to save out the left side copy of the texture atlas and start mirroring the decals. There’s a lot of those.

Speaking of the texture atlas, this is the Pinzgauer’s texture atlas:

Doesn’t look like much, right? It’s actually zoomed way out. That’s actually 12 individual 2048x2048px textures ganged up into a single sheet:

And here’s one of them, the left side and ceiling of the main cargo bay:

Each one of those textures covers an 8×8-inch area. So, the Pinzgauer has a total texture acreage of 32×24 inches for just one side, and many of those individual textures are tightly packed with parts. The reason I keep mentioning the size of the Pinzgauer’s texturing is out of excitement–I wasn’t able to work with atlases that large on my older machines, and one reason why the UD-41 overhaul in 2010 took so long and left me traumatized was because a combination of hardware limitations and software limitations meant I had to work on 26 separate large textures instead of having them all in the same master document. So, any change I made to the layer structure basically had to be repeated 25 more times, one at a time. It was pretty painful.

The Dell XPS 15 notebook that replaced both my old Gateway convertible and desktop workstation in mid-2011 has no problem dealing with images that big, which is still something that I can’t get over because it’s just…so nice to be able to work on a model this big without having to individually edit a huge number of textures.

Okay, so what do I have to do now? Re-shade all the panels to get that nice multi-tone effect everybody liked early on in the process, then I start preparing the other side of the model. I’m hoping to finish that within a couple of days and get a start on the unfolding.

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Spent today tweaking the cargo bay and checking the dimensions and carrying capacity against the other canon vehicles.

First, a shot showing how the ladder is typically used:

Next, the hatch has been revised as mentioned yesterday, rotating it so that it can be more easily unlatched and opened from the ladder. I also brought it closer to the ladder so there’s less of an awkward, shin-barking ledge up top. I also moved the personnel ramp controls and added more decals to the cargo bay.

I did a series of cargo capacity checks, starting with the Onager and 6×6 APV:

Then I got to the GPV, and realized that the belly hatch and the cargo door clearance prevented me from putting two of them in. Putting just a single GPV in the cargo bay seemed like a horrible waste of hauling capacity, and let’s be serious, nobody is going to choose keeping a belly hatch that serves no game purpose over being able to squeeze in twice as many toys, and I didn’t really want to shave an inch off the modular pods that I wanted to do later either.

So, I removed the belly hatch and extended the tiedown grating all the way forward. A quick check showed that the arc described by the nose cargo door while it’s in motion is a non-issue if you close the cargo door before raising the load platform. Problem solved!

As you can see, you can perfectly squeeze in two GPVs now, and it can now fully live up to the “Vehicle Transporter” part of the VT-3 designation. Besides, if the cargo bay is stuffed full of containers and vehicles that block a belly hatch, 99% of the time there’s no room for anyone to be hanging out down there anyway.

Now, before the fans of the dearly departed belly hatch get too sad, have heart: the entire load platform is held in place only by friction, so it’s a removable part of the model. That means I can do a passenger transport and a mixed utility transport version of the bottom plate with a larger midbody belly hatch, and I intend to do exactly that later on.

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