F/A-18C Hornet - US Navy Wild Cats Strike Fighter Squadron 131

This project began as a task to be used a tutorial format at my internship at 3DOM Studios for their 3DUni educational content. Unfortunately the internship ended before I could finish the model to a higher quality. Until then I had done a low poly version suited for game engines but not detailed enough for VFX. So I decided to finish it after my studies were completed. I used the NURBS Surface technique before converting it to polygons and continuing to box model the details, to model the jet. Unfolded the UVs manually in Maya before bringing it to RizomUV to layout the UVs in the most efficient way for UDIMS. I then continued in Substance Painter where I added all the texturing details.
To finish it off I added a particle simulation for the thrusters heat distortion, which I rendered as a different pass to be used as a mask for the distortion in Nuke.