Tu-95MS – Bear (2010)

I began the creation of this iconic Cold-War aircraft in 2010.
It was meant to be a mod for Arma 2, it was a real challenge to create a good looking and at the same time light weight 3D model, of operational aircraft that the engine could handle. I am a member of Red Hammer Studios, the aircraft was implemented into a game by Redphoenix and other members.

By looking at the model today, I would deffinetly change a lot based on my current knowledge – especially cockpit and textures, which where painted with a mouse and some of them where generated with dDo. I still consider this mod a success, as it thought me a lot of lessons about 3D. My goal was to create this iconic aircraft, in which you can fly with friends and have a ton of fun! I have achieved my main objective and I love seeing people enjoying this plane to this day 🙂

See the review video and work in progress images below. The demonstration video was made by a Arma 3 community member – SoLiD’a.

Arma 3 community is enjoying the plane 🙂

Below are work in progress images of the cockpit with baked normals.

Interior textures where generated within dDo. It had quite some limitations, such as simple hand painting was impossible. By adding any non-dDo layers you could ruin the whole structure of materials and the way dDo operated. At that time I also had no tablet to hand paint the textures and give them a proper wear, this was the main reason for going with dDo. Mouse alone was just not enough.

Ambient occlusion maps where generated with Faogen software.

The exterior was textured with Mari and a mouse. I had a lot of crashes and Mari file corruptions, all Mari’s up until v3.2 had this tendency back then.
While baking textures I had frequently hit my memory limit of 48GB.

Test renders of the plane with textures.

Final renders of the plane with tweaked textures.

Wireframes turned out to be not in a perfect condition. I had some Ngons here and there, I was not aware of importance to not have them at that time. This happend due to my lack of knowledge for 3D modeling back in the day. It was a real challenge to add extra edges, loops, create a model at high level of detail and stay within given limitations of the engine, so I’ve being cutting corners everythwere.

Tu-95MS – Hoax videos

I am not a supporter of the following… Unfortunately some people are using this mod today to create fake videos of modern conflicts…
It have never been my intention for this mod.

Having fun with friends within a coop game – it is the only purpose for this mod. Fortunately most people are enjoying this plane, be it flying or shooting it down, it’s a game after all 🙂