Aircraft prop blades

[Simon_Lister]

Many thanks for all the tips and advice guys, much appreciated. This is a random question and it is something I have thought about for a while. The flight sim I use has a development package (and if you are clever enough to work out all the binaries and stuff you can get all the updates prior to a new version being released) unfortunately I am not that clever and the development package makes use of shaders and bump maps...so if I didn't want to use a bump map for the rivet effect, does anyone know if it is possible to somehow follow the contour of the fuse/wing etc and add spheres to create the rivets? I know this might bump up the file size quite a bit but its just something I have been thinking about.

Cheers

[Stiglr]

I really, REALLY wouldn't go there. That's a headache you definitely don't want.

Bump mapping is the way to go. Perhaps what you need to do is find a production partner for whom creating such maps is easy (and fun).

If that's completely out of the question, I'd settle for high quality (flat) textures for rivets long before ever entertaining the notion of creating 3D rivets.