Thank you for purchasing at least one of these books:

Volume I: Preparations

Volume II: Modeling

Volume III: Materials and Textures

Volume IV: Detailing and Rendering

Complete book

Your purchase allows me to keep the files listed below up to date with the latest Blender versions and write the remaining volumes of this guide. Let me know about any problem you encounter in this book or in the accompanying data - by adding a comment at the bottom of this page or sending me an e-mail. I will fix it or propose alternative solution as quickly, as possible.

 
Download and unzip following files into a folder on your local disk (these packages contain appropriate subdirectories):
  • source.zip (57 MB): various stuff, used in this book: Blender plugins, scraps of the P-40 original blueprints, etc.
  • la5.zip (56 MB): *.blend the model used in the introduction to Blender.
  • p40.zip (55 MB): *.blend subsequent stages of the P-40 model.
  • optional.zip (31 MB): optional files - exmaples of HDR panoramas, etc.
  • textures.zip (395 MB): texture files (*.xcf, *.svg, *.png).
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    Comments and corrections
    General
  • The new Adobe Reader interface makes difficult reading books like these - with multiple chapters and internal hypertext links. Fortunately, it is still possible to switch to the previous layout - I suggest using this option. It brings the program back to the state described in the Introduction (section "How to read this book").
    If Adobe decided to definitely drop this old layout in the future, I would suggest using Firefox browser as the PDF reader. It is faster than many other PDF readers, and its standard [Previous]/[Next] buttons also work for the internal PDF links.
    • Volume I: Preparations
  • Section 6.1 (about Jumpei Temma's scale plans): Temma was right about the windscreen, I was wrong (Figure 6.1.9). The gun cowling behind the firewall and the windscreen were modified in the P-40. (I assumed that they were identical to the P-36). My red updates in Figure 6.1.12 are also wrong: Temma's fuselage contour behind the firewall fits the ordinals from the original blueprints. Eventual differences do not exceed the width of his contour line.
  • Section 9.1 (about the original documentation): it mentions plans.aero portal, which disappeared in 2020. However, I would like to recommend a better source for buying complete documentation of a historical airplane: Hugh Thompson's TechNotes. First of all - for some of these aircraft Hugh provides tables of geometric ordinates, compiled from the original blueprints. In this way, he saves you hundreds of working hours! Another big advantage is that by sending an e-mail to Hugh you are not contacting an impersonal Internet portal. There is a real mechanical engineer, a specialist, who worked with these scans and knows all “pros and cons” of each package. Before buying any of these aircraft blueprints you can ask Hugh about its details, blueprint quality, image resolution. His offer is "buried" at the end of his resources page, so here I am providing direct link to his price list (this is an image).
    • Volume II: Modeling
  • Section 10.10 (about installing and managing add-ons): in Blender 4.x add-ons "infrastructure" was modified. All the optional add-ons that accompanied the standard installation are placed in an online repository. Thus, the UI of the Preferences window has changed. Now there are two tabs related to the plugins:
    • Get Extensions: allows for browsing and installing Blender plugins (extensions) available from the official blender.org repository. (Requires enabling the Allow Online Access option in the Preferences:System pane).
    • Add-ons: manages locally installed plugins. You can recognize their origin by the icon on the right: built-in = [Blender logo], community = [people], user = [folder]. There is no longer the "User" filter from the previous Blender versions. However, the shorter add-ons list still allows you to manage these plugins.
  • Section 12.10 (about smooth mesh shading): in Blender 4.x the Normals:Auto Smooth option (shown in Figure 12.10.5) was replaced by an Auto Smooth modifier. You can quickly apply it in the Object Mode, using Object->Shade Auto Smooth command (for example - from the context menu).
    • Volume III: Materials and Textures
  • Section 9.5: see note about section 10.10 in the Volume II errata (above)
  • Section 9.9: in Blender 4.x, you can install the Copy Attributes Menu plugin from the Blender online repository (Preferences:Get Extension - see note in the Volumne II errata above, about Section 10.10).
    • Volume IV: Detailing and Rendering
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    Complete book
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