Measuring the Model

[JohnLoftyWiseman 1]

I'm just starting off with modelling in O2, and I've followed through the Piper Cheyenne tutorial, or at least the four parts that are there, so from that I have a knowledge of how to model at least the outside of a plane. Unfortunately, it seems very difficult to find any tutorials online for O2, especially things like how to build the interiors of planes or how to get started with making the different LODs. Anyway, at this time I've started to model the one plane I've wanted in ArmA for a long time now; a C17. (I know someone did try to make this a while ago, and showed images and videos of it, but they never released it as far as I'm aware.)

My question right now is how do I measure the model properly and make sure it's true to the real life dimensions? I know what the real dimensions are, and I know that I can create planes of those dimensions in O2. However, in the Piper Cheyenne tutorial images of the plane are used to trace the shape of the different parts of the plane, and I'm presuming that this is advisable with every vehicle model, but those images aren't the same size as the planes that are created. So: How do you make sure that the aircraft is the same size as the real-life version, whilst making sure that the shape of it is accurate too? Resizing the images just takes the aircraft image out of proportion, so how should this properly be done?

If my question sounds a little unclear, I apologize, but I think that should give people the general idea of what I would like to know. Thanks in advance.

[da12thMonkey 1943]

The grid lines in O2 represent 1 meter in the game's scale so if you want a plane with a wingspan of say 7 meters, you'd scale the model so that the wings spanned 7 grid squares in the O2 viewports (or 3.5 grid squares either side of the origin).

If you have decent reference drawings you can set up some modelling reference guides from the get go and build the model to scale. Rock wrote a tutorial on how he sets up his reference images to scale for O2 modelling here:

http://forums.rkslstudios.info/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=197

It's a matter of standardising your reference images in an image editing program before loading them in O2

You can also create a box (F7) and input the real-life dimensions of what you're modelling into the dimensions of this box mesh, and use that as a boundary indicator for scaling your model.

[Messiah 2]

You build the interior in the same way you build the exterior, the only difference is that you build it in the view pilot LOD.

https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/LOD