Looking good! Are you going to pull the New Jersey out of mothballs from time to time and modernize it? Egads I had flashes of "Space Battleship New Jersey" with a wave motion gun...
Hehe. At various points, I've had a big spinal "wave motion gun" fitted, but I finally decided it wasn't neccessary, at least not for the looks of the ships. But there is a Space Battleship New Jersey - she's just not up to date, since I wanted to finish the Iowa first. She'll probably be the last of the class that I really finish, since her bridge was pretty unique for most of the war. (Iowa had an open bridge with no windshield or cover, New Jersey was built like this but had a round enclosure added in her post-shakedown refit, and Missouri and Wisconsin were built with the square-faced bridge which was later retrofitted to the others, and which I've already built.)
Here's a go at making something to represent the boat cranes from the real ships. Most of the ships were designed to carry at least one of these cranes and a bunch of boats amidships, but once the war started, they were omitted from ships under construction and in many cases removed from finished ships because the boats were a fire hazard and the space was more useful for more anti-aircraft guns. (There was never enough dakka. They tended to run out of room for gun crews and reserve buoyancy before they ran out of places to put the guns...)
Long time no update - stuff happened, and the changes I'd made to the battleship above and the last couple of cruisers on the last page were accidentally reverted, which put me off my game for a bit. But, I got better, and I've been working on these things again for a couple of weeks now. It's slow going, but stuff *is* happening.
New catapults were made for all the ships, though they're not nearly finished yet which is why they're not in the other pics. The "rail" splits to accommodate pretty much any convex shape, including those with centerline belly fins as long as they're not too tall. This should make it a bit easier to design the craft that go on these things, and allow for variation. The crane will be redesigned, and will probably look like something out of Macross when done - there is an excellent physical model of such a crane available as a garage kit, and one of the fan forums for the series has a ton of pictures, I just need to track them down again...
I've also redone the superstructure for the Fargo (CL-106) and Vallejo (CL-112) types - Vallejo was never built in real life, but there was a short list of planned improvements in one of my reference books, which I ran with. Among the changes I made to the model are a shorter (length-wise) funnel, a redone aft deckhouse and O1 deck, and a bunch of new platforms, with vertical sides this time in order to make things a lot easier on myself.
The Fargo-class cruisers never received enclosed bridges in real life, due to being retired very early. Their close relatives the Oregon City class did get them though, and I based the enclosures on those, despite it not being completely accurate. Only the bottom level is in place here, there's another more or less identical level above. The third tier, just under the fire control turret, has yet to receive its enclosure, but it's in the works.
I've also redone the turrets somewhat, with more changes to come. The turrets will be modeled as separate meshes now, which allows me to use different details and textures on each one - you'll see why in a little bit.
The USS Vallejo as she sits right now. The Oerlikon and Bofors mounts are missing right now since I'm planning on rebuilding them, and the platforms for the searchlight are not yet in place, but they're coming. I'm probably also rebuilding the secondary mounts soon, I'm not quite happy with them as they are.
The things on the side are refuelling booms, though I haven't designed the connector for them yet. The shuttle is due for replacement, anyway - the new ones will have a proper airlock, and the ships will have matching ones that can be used either for shuttles or for umbilical bridges.
The second turret shows off the hull number of the ship - I haven't decided if it looks better there or on the top of the forward secondary turret. I feel it's a little too big as is, but it's a fairly easy fix.
I built some new directors for the Bofors mounts, based on a FLIR/IRST ball turret I found some good pictures of. It took a little experimenting to get the size right, but I think I've got it now. The center of the ball is 225 cm above the deck the pedestal sits on, and it's 110 cm in diameter - fairly large, but it needs to be to get decent aperture sizes for the sensors. I managed to come up with a way of automatically slaving the director and the corresponding mount to the same target - it turns out all I needed to do was set up a single complete set (turret, director, target) in its own scene, and then "load items from scene" once for each turret I want on the ship. Cloning within the scene on the other hand makes the new copy track the original target, which is irritating and tedious to fix (especially since Lightwave's UI for setting up targets sucks, I can't seem to filter the selection any. )
My other project yesterday was a new radar for the mainmast, which is coming along fairly nicely. Making something that's supposed to be a grid in 3D is godawful difficult, as everything wants to form moire patterns and the renderer wants to exclude stuff that's too small to see (which means all the lamelles in the antenna array...) - there has to be a better way than either modeling it as a solid object and to hell with the lamelles, or upping the AA to something ridiculous. Gah.
The whole ship as it sits right now. As you can see, I'm experimenting a little with the lighting (actually, these are the default settings for a gradient backdrop) in order to make the details show up better. I've still got a bunch of stuff I need to add - mainly antennas and exterior details for the deckhouse, but I also need to build a new shuttle sometime soon. Maybe this time I'll actually manage to make some working retractable landing gear for it - that would rather cool if I could swing it.
I finally had some inspiration again, and I figured I'd best get cracking before it ran out. So, today I've been doing some construction:
The boatbay, with the (very provisional, non-animated and damned ugly) segmented door closed, and the rail extenders retracted.
Segmented door open (i.e. removed from view), rail extenders deployed.
The cradle slid out as far as it goes, with the shuttle loaded onto it. Ready for take-off.
The shuttle has separated, but the cradle hasn't been retracted yet. It's pretty basic right now, the finished item will grip the shuttle rather than just have it rest on top of it.
Still to come will be signal arms and a few other gizmos, some light greebling for the top of the boathouse, and the covered walkway to the main superstructure with its airlock. I'm right now debating whether this is actually the right way up - I'm planning to build an inverted version, with the rails extending from the roof instead of the deck edge. Originally it was going to be used on the underside, but now I'm wondering if I shouldn't flip the whole thing upside down so the cradle grips the shuttle from the top instead. (It would among other things make the placement of signal arms and landing gear easier.)
Before anyone complains that it looks tacked on - this is entirely intentional, as the arrangement mimics the one on the Cleveland Class cruisers of WWII - they were originally designed with the boats in the open space between the stacks, but once the war started, it became obvious that this was a poor way of doing things, so they designed a new system that put the boats near the deck edge, and which was eventually retrofitted to a great many warships. When new ships, such as the Fargo class, were designed, they kept the arrangement because it wasn't broke and thus needed no fixing. So what if it was tacked on? It worked, avoided the need for big cuts in the hull, and was much faster than using a huge crane to lift the boats from the middle of the ship.
I did some experimenting, and I think I've solved my last issues with the hull shape and the excessive symmetry that some of the people helping me have complained about: first, I increased the smoothing angle to get rid of the sharp edge in the middle of the hull, to make the mirroring less obvious; and then I rotated the wings downwards at the tip by five degrees and lowered them about a deck and a half. The result looks like this:
Given the increased space below the topside boatbays, and the corresponding lack of space above the ventral boatbays, I've decided that I will indeed flip the bays so that the shuttles are grabbed from above in both cases. It shouldn't be too difficult, hopefully. Another thing that I've been discussing with friends is changing the lower masts - though more likely, it's the upper ones that will be expanded on. I have other ideas for differentiating the top and bottom without changing them too much - I want to keep the general character, and I like that the designs as they are now are fairly well balanced, when it comes to where the engines and center of mass are in relation to each other.
More tomorrow - and don't forget that the true resolution of these pics is 1920x720 or 1920x1080, just right click and save (or open in new window) for the full size image.
Well, what I mean is, it's all cobbled up in one area while the rest of the hull-deck are basically empty.
The only really empty space on the deck is the forward glacis, and I'm thinking about putting either a missile battery, an unrep landing zone with a cargo elevator, or maybe even both in that spot. Haven't gotten around to doing it yet though, VLS cells are a pain in the ass for the software if you want them animatable and making an elevator means I have to make what goes inside as well...
Today's major project: a new and improved boat bay, with ceiling-mounted sliding cranes that can adapt to a range of different shuttlecraft. This is the ventral version, the dorsal one will be next. Still need to add some doodads and stuff for lighting and visual interest, also the mechanical parts aren't very detailed and need some spicing up. But the parts are at least all there.
I kept the overall shape, but I've made the tailgate a little more vertical, and the nose a little lower. I've also replaced the tiny windscreen and side windows with a big wrap-around canopy, and made the downwards windows a bit more useful by wrapping them too around the bottom corner. There is for now no interior, so I've left the windows opaque, but considering the normal view distance, it shouldn't be too much of a problem.
The podded engines are staggered on this version, for a rather simple reason:
To enable the shuttle to take off more rapidly than the repulsorlifts normally allow, the shuttle is equipped with vectoring engines. I'm not completely happy with this design quite yet, I may end up reverting to a similar engine configuration as the older shuttle, though with more refinement.
The new shuttle bay and the shuttle in situ.
That's all for tonight. Tell me what you think, and if you have any suggestions for how to texture this beast (or ideas for better looking engines) please post them.
I'd say add some more weapons, they're not carriers after all...
The ships already have all the weapons they need... and if you meant it sarcastically, I *am* working from a real world prototype, still.
I decided to give another ship some love while I'm figuring out some things with the bigger cruisers:
This is the Atlanta-class anti-aircraft cruiser, which has been brought forward from the backburner after I don't know how long. I've focused on the hull so far, trying out some techniques for use on the other ships - IOW, I *finally* got around to making some plating for the hull. Go Me!
After I was satisfied with the plating, I redid the deck, specifically the forward parts of it, by moving the anchor hoists (err, tractor beam emitters...) forward and shortening them a bit, and extending the dark portion of the deck. I also added a rim to the deck, so that the deck surfaces don't go all the way to the edge as they did before. All this stuff will be used on the other ships as I get around to them.
Left to do on the hull proper is adding some form attitude controls, as the old thrusters were removed while I made the hull panels, and figuring out a better way of mounting the dratted engines... And then, I can get cracking on the superstructure!
I redid the hull (again!) to get the edges to look right, and then I got started on making a new superstructure. So far, I've gone from this:
to this:
I'm still missing the aft half of it, I'm having a little trouble with the shape of the bulkheads (walls, for the landlubbers) as the decks on top of them tend to have a bunch of overhangs. Another minor snag is that on the base model of the real ship, the raised deck behind the forefunnel was used for open storage of big boats - bigger than the ones I have, and stacked on top of each other to boot. Figuring out how to represent that will be... interesting. Especially if I want to do it both the dorsal and ventral structures, with all the boats loaded the right way up... I have a few ideas, though, so I'm not totally SOL.
Right now, the ship overall looks like this:
I've readded the hull number, and sticking out of the left edge of the picture you can see the CL-119 Juneau, the final iteration of the class, updated with the new hull. I'll be rebuilding her superstructure as well, it looks terrible... but Atlanta comes first.
I agree that the superstructure doesn't look right.
Perhaps it's because they're arranged in decks. In WWII crewmembers could walk around on those decks, however in space you can't really do that, so the obvious deck layout of the superstructures doesn't make much sense.
To me that looks more like it could operate in space, sealed superstructures instead of decks that nobody can walk around on.
Also the guns can go anywhere on the ship due to not having to worry about the ocean, you can mount them on the side of the hull and they'd look pretty good.
I did give that a try, waay back in the dark ages. I might even have the models somewhere on my hard drive. The problem with ships like that is that *they* will pretty much automatically look like bad CG, due to having all those hard edges and flat planes...
The decks on this ship *can* be walked on, both the top and bottom ones, though there are more deck features on the top due to the ship sometimes operating in atmosphere. They can't land, though - except in purpose-built docking cradles, which are a huge and expensive proposition to build, hence there aren't many of them. Yardwork and the like is most often performed in spacedock, rather than dirtside.
I compared the old aft superstructure to my reference material, and I decided that with a few minor tweaks, I could reuse the whole thing. So I did. Then I went over the whole thing and added lit portholes in most of the places they're supposed to go, a few ladders, and masts on the topside. On the bottom, I decided to try something new: I added a huge keel fin, in place of the masts and funnels. The base of the fin will have docking cradles for bigger ship's boats than the ones I currently have, as the real ships carried a bunch of them on the deck.
Here's an ortho profile, in 2 pixels per meter scale:
Today I've been working on the forward deck - first of all, there's a new deck color, which is more like a modern warship than the old wood decks. To go with that, I added a warning circle around the first turret, and VERTREP markings (where cargo for the ship is dropped off). These were made using raised detail - they're actually modeled, rather than textured. Then, to get some kind of scale reference, I looked up the specs for some standard cargo types, and built a NATO airlift pallet (the flat gray thing in the VERTREP area) and a 40ft shipping container, both completely to scale. In order to get the cargo below decks, I added some basic hatches (not sure if I'll keep these particular ones), under which there'll be a cargo hold and an arm to grab the delivered cargo. I'm not sure exactly how this will look yet.
Finally, I spent a couple of hours adding the most detailed railings I've ever made all around the main deck edge (topside only, right now). These look awesome, even up close, so I'm quite proud of them. I'll be adding similar railings to the other decks, and eventually to the other ships. They're a little hard to see in the dark, so I'm considering adding a small light at the top of each stanchion (post) to make them stand out. Will see how that looks later...
Happy new year! Decided to venture completely out of my comfort zone for once, and I'm liking the results:
The smaller ship is based on the USS Colorado, BB-45, the last pre-treaty battleship class. The bigger one is of course an Iowa-class ship, updated *almost* to my latest standards (no hull number, no portholes - they're coming). Light AA is still missing from everything, due to me not having decided which version(s) of the light AA guns to go with.
Light AA is still missing from everything, due to me not having decided which version(s) of the light AA guns to go with.
Why not use both and simply define them as different systems? One for "long range interception" and the other for "point-blank defense and suppression" or some such?
Why not use both and simply define them as different systems? One for "long range interception" and the other for "point-blank defense and suppression" or some such?
Ah, it's not actually different guns, it's different mountings for the same gun design. I have five different single mounts and at least two different twin mounts for the light AA (basically, my version of the Oerlikon 20 mm cannon), and while I can judge whether to go with a single or a twin for any given mount, I'm not sure which, if any, of the ones I've built would fit the best.
In the mean time, I've been wrestling with something different:
This is the start of my go at an Essex-class carrier. It's based on the hull of the Alaska-class cruiser, but stretched and widened some (the Essex class carriers were a little larger than the cruisers). The hangar deck was a pain in the rear, and it's about to get worse since I'll be opening the sides; and I'm unsure what to do with the bottom. I've been thinking a bit about using the same parts as on the Atlanta-class from earlier, as it has a similar number of guns of the same types as I'll be mounting around the edges of this thing...
I will of course also do the Lexingtons (both the battlecruisers and the carriers, using the same base style of hull as the Colorado battleship), as well as the Midway class (will be using the hull from the Montana class battleships as the starting point for that, I think) - once I've figured this beastie out.
I haven't been feeling any inspiration for some time, but I dug the models up for a bit and started experimenting with lighting and other stuff. The results look somewhat promising, IMO:
Among other things, the windows on both the main bridge, the flag bridge, and the auxiliary conning platform are now all transparent, though lighting the spaces is tedious as heck so I'm leaving that for later. I've also added the ambient occlusion shader to nearly all surfaces, and a temporary spec map to make it look like there are panels on the ship.
Hopefully the ship will look less plastic-y when I try rendering it in Earth orbit next time...
Hey nice to see you are still kicking this one around. I like the Essex class, I could see it having over-under flight decks; one for launching fighters and one for recovering them. For fighter planes I could see you merging the F6F Hellcat with the F-86 Saber and give it wing tanks like those of the Grumman Panther.
The Essex is sadly on hiatus, I haven't been able to figure that thing out. Most of the others are looking very nice at the moment though, like the USS North Carolina which can be seen in the background of the closeup. I actually kept going for a bit after the last update here and made a bunch of cranes and stuff, and while they're on the respective ships they belong on at the moment, the computer is busy with something else so I can't make any new renders right now to show them off in situ. And many of my old renders are way too dark to see what's going on in them.
I did find some stuff I can show off, though.
These are the new catapults I built for the battleships and cruisers. Unlike the original WW2 items, these can be pitched up around 20 degrees, allowing drones to be launched at off angles. Depending on the exact orientation of the catapult, the possible range of angles is quite wide.
This one is a little too dark to make out details, but it shows the deck detail I put in on the fantail of the North Carolina. The crane is an enlarged version of the earlier one, and I've been messing about with the drones, adding Harrier-style landing gear, and a rotodome (it looked so neat it became standard issue).
An animation of the catapult in action. Youtube really did a number on this, the original file is much nicer:
A nice shot of one of my new cranes, the new rotodome-equipped drones, and the catapults. I still haven't built the claws needed to grab the drones and lift them onto or off the catapults, I'm not sure where to start on those. Hideously complicated things they are...
These are the hangar spaces on the Alaska-class, which are well lit and I've made sure the hangar doors can close properly. The drones need a little modification to fit through the doors, but the wings were supposed to be folding anyway...
Last but not least, a picture of my pretty assistant: =^_^=
i like those ships and the detail is good. renders are much too dark though. i assuming that they are some kind of starship, if so remember that starships and water ships are quite different, for a start you MUST have turrets on the underside as well as the upper deck. overall i prefer the iowa class derived one as it looks a bit more like a spacecraft. if these are steampunk airship of some kind then you can get away with making themvery ship like, otherwise remember space is 3D the ocean is 2D.
Posts
Here's a go at making something to represent the boat cranes from the real ships. Most of the ships were designed to carry at least one of these cranes and a bunch of boats amidships, but once the war started, they were omitted from ships under construction and in many cases removed from finished ships because the boats were a fire hazard and the space was more useful for more anti-aircraft guns. (There was never enough dakka. They tended to run out of room for gun crews and reserve buoyancy before they ran out of places to put the guns...)
New catapults were made for all the ships, though they're not nearly finished yet which is why they're not in the other pics. The "rail" splits to accommodate pretty much any convex shape, including those with centerline belly fins as long as they're not too tall. This should make it a bit easier to design the craft that go on these things, and allow for variation. The crane will be redesigned, and will probably look like something out of Macross when done - there is an excellent physical model of such a crane available as a garage kit, and one of the fan forums for the series has a ton of pictures, I just need to track them down again...
I've also redone the superstructure for the Fargo (CL-106) and Vallejo (CL-112) types - Vallejo was never built in real life, but there was a short list of planned improvements in one of my reference books, which I ran with. Among the changes I made to the model are a shorter (length-wise) funnel, a redone aft deckhouse and O1 deck, and a bunch of new platforms, with vertical sides this time in order to make things a lot easier on myself.
The Fargo-class cruisers never received enclosed bridges in real life, due to being retired very early. Their close relatives the Oregon City class did get them though, and I based the enclosures on those, despite it not being completely accurate. Only the bottom level is in place here, there's another more or less identical level above. The third tier, just under the fire control turret, has yet to receive its enclosure, but it's in the works.
I've also redone the turrets somewhat, with more changes to come. The turrets will be modeled as separate meshes now, which allows me to use different details and textures on each one - you'll see why in a little bit.
The USS Vallejo as she sits right now. The Oerlikon and Bofors mounts are missing right now since I'm planning on rebuilding them, and the platforms for the searchlight are not yet in place, but they're coming. I'm probably also rebuilding the secondary mounts soon, I'm not quite happy with them as they are.
The things on the side are refuelling booms, though I haven't designed the connector for them yet. The shuttle is due for replacement, anyway - the new ones will have a proper airlock, and the ships will have matching ones that can be used either for shuttles or for umbilical bridges.
The second turret shows off the hull number of the ship - I haven't decided if it looks better there or on the top of the forward secondary turret. I feel it's a little too big as is, but it's a fairly easy fix.
Cheers for now!
Nice work. I like the level to detail so far.
I built some new directors for the Bofors mounts, based on a FLIR/IRST ball turret I found some good pictures of. It took a little experimenting to get the size right, but I think I've got it now. The center of the ball is 225 cm above the deck the pedestal sits on, and it's 110 cm in diameter - fairly large, but it needs to be to get decent aperture sizes for the sensors. I managed to come up with a way of automatically slaving the director and the corresponding mount to the same target - it turns out all I needed to do was set up a single complete set (turret, director, target) in its own scene, and then "load items from scene" once for each turret I want on the ship. Cloning within the scene on the other hand makes the new copy track the original target, which is irritating and tedious to fix (especially since Lightwave's UI for setting up targets sucks, I can't seem to filter the selection any.
My other project yesterday was a new radar for the mainmast, which is coming along fairly nicely. Making something that's supposed to be a grid in 3D is godawful difficult, as everything wants to form moire patterns and the renderer wants to exclude stuff that's too small to see (which means all the lamelles in the antenna array...) - there has to be a better way than either modeling it as a solid object and to hell with the lamelles, or upping the AA to something ridiculous. Gah.
The whole ship as it sits right now. As you can see, I'm experimenting a little with the lighting (actually, these are the default settings for a gradient backdrop) in order to make the details show up better. I've still got a bunch of stuff I need to add - mainly antennas and exterior details for the deckhouse, but I also need to build a new shuttle sometime soon. Maybe this time I'll actually manage to make some working retractable landing gear for it - that would rather cool if I could swing it.
Cheers for now!
The boatbay, with the (very provisional, non-animated and damned ugly) segmented door closed, and the rail extenders retracted.
Segmented door open (i.e. removed from view), rail extenders deployed.
The cradle slid out as far as it goes, with the shuttle loaded onto it. Ready for take-off.
The shuttle has separated, but the cradle hasn't been retracted yet. It's pretty basic right now, the finished item will grip the shuttle rather than just have it rest on top of it.
Still to come will be signal arms and a few other gizmos, some light greebling for the top of the boathouse, and the covered walkway to the main superstructure with its airlock. I'm right now debating whether this is actually the right way up - I'm planning to build an inverted version, with the rails extending from the roof instead of the deck edge. Originally it was going to be used on the underside, but now I'm wondering if I shouldn't flip the whole thing upside down so the cradle grips the shuttle from the top instead. (It would among other things make the placement of signal arms and landing gear easier.)
Before anyone complains that it looks tacked on - this is entirely intentional, as the arrangement mimics the one on the Cleveland Class cruisers of WWII - they were originally designed with the boats in the open space between the stacks, but once the war started, it became obvious that this was a poor way of doing things, so they designed a new system that put the boats near the deck edge, and which was eventually retrofitted to a great many warships. When new ships, such as the Fargo class, were designed, they kept the arrangement because it wasn't broke and thus needed no fixing. So what if it was tacked on? It worked, avoided the need for big cuts in the hull, and was much faster than using a huge crane to lift the boats from the middle of the ship.
PS: Comments make my world go round.
I did some experimenting, and I think I've solved my last issues with the hull shape and the excessive symmetry that some of the people helping me have complained about: first, I increased the smoothing angle to get rid of the sharp edge in the middle of the hull, to make the mirroring less obvious; and then I rotated the wings downwards at the tip by five degrees and lowered them about a deck and a half. The result looks like this:
Given the increased space below the topside boatbays, and the corresponding lack of space above the ventral boatbays, I've decided that I will indeed flip the bays so that the shuttles are grabbed from above in both cases. It shouldn't be too difficult, hopefully. Another thing that I've been discussing with friends is changing the lower masts - though more likely, it's the upper ones that will be expanded on. I have other ideas for differentiating the top and bottom without changing them too much - I want to keep the general character, and I like that the designs as they are now are fairly well balanced, when it comes to where the engines and center of mass are in relation to each other.
More tomorrow - and don't forget that the true resolution of these pics is 1920x720 or 1920x1080, just right click and save (or open in new window) for the full size image.
Now cheers, and good night!
But right now, the whole superstructures seem somewhat crowded...
Have a look at the real-world warship this was based on, and you'll see what crowded really means... :-)
The only really empty space on the deck is the forward glacis, and I'm thinking about putting either a missile battery, an unrep landing zone with a cargo elevator, or maybe even both in that spot. Haven't gotten around to doing it yet though, VLS cells are a pain in the ass for the software if you want them animatable and making an elevator means I have to make what goes inside as well...
Today's major project: a new and improved boat bay, with ceiling-mounted sliding cranes that can adapt to a range of different shuttlecraft. This is the ventral version, the dorsal one will be next. Still need to add some doodads and stuff for lighting and visual interest, also the mechanical parts aren't very detailed and need some spicing up. But the parts are at least all there.
I kept the overall shape, but I've made the tailgate a little more vertical, and the nose a little lower. I've also replaced the tiny windscreen and side windows with a big wrap-around canopy, and made the downwards windows a bit more useful by wrapping them too around the bottom corner. There is for now no interior, so I've left the windows opaque, but considering the normal view distance, it shouldn't be too much of a problem.
The podded engines are staggered on this version, for a rather simple reason:
To enable the shuttle to take off more rapidly than the repulsorlifts normally allow, the shuttle is equipped with vectoring engines. I'm not completely happy with this design quite yet, I may end up reverting to a similar engine configuration as the older shuttle, though with more refinement.
The new shuttle bay and the shuttle in situ.
That's all for tonight. Tell me what you think, and if you have any suggestions for how to texture this beast (or ideas for better looking engines) please post them.
The ships already have all the weapons they need... and if you meant it sarcastically, I *am* working from a real world prototype, still.
I decided to give another ship some love while I'm figuring out some things with the bigger cruisers:
This is the Atlanta-class anti-aircraft cruiser, which has been brought forward from the backburner after I don't know how long. I've focused on the hull so far, trying out some techniques for use on the other ships - IOW, I *finally* got around to making some plating for the hull. Go Me!
After I was satisfied with the plating, I redid the deck, specifically the forward parts of it, by moving the anchor hoists (err, tractor beam emitters...) forward and shortening them a bit, and extending the dark portion of the deck. I also added a rim to the deck, so that the deck surfaces don't go all the way to the edge as they did before. All this stuff will be used on the other ships as I get around to them.
Left to do on the hull proper is adding some form attitude controls, as the old thrusters were removed while I made the hull panels, and figuring out a better way of mounting the dratted engines... And then, I can get cracking on the superstructure!
Cheers!
to this:
I'm still missing the aft half of it, I'm having a little trouble with the shape of the bulkheads (walls, for the landlubbers) as the decks on top of them tend to have a bunch of overhangs. Another minor snag is that on the base model of the real ship, the raised deck behind the forefunnel was used for open storage of big boats - bigger than the ones I have, and stacked on top of each other to boot. Figuring out how to represent that will be... interesting. Especially if I want to do it both the dorsal and ventral structures, with all the boats loaded the right way up... I have a few ideas, though, so I'm not totally SOL.
Right now, the ship overall looks like this:
I've readded the hull number, and sticking out of the left edge of the picture you can see the CL-119 Juneau, the final iteration of the class, updated with the new hull. I'll be rebuilding her superstructure as well, it looks terrible... but Atlanta comes first.
Cheers!
Perhaps it's because they're arranged in decks. In WWII crewmembers could walk around on those decks, however in space you can't really do that, so the obvious deck layout of the superstructures doesn't make much sense.
Perhaps try something more like this: http://www.thinkmaritime.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/stealth-ship.jpg
To me that looks more like it could operate in space, sealed superstructures instead of decks that nobody can walk around on.
Also the guns can go anywhere on the ship due to not having to worry about the ocean, you can mount them on the side of the hull and they'd look pretty good.
I did give that a try, waay back in the dark ages. I might even have the models somewhere on my hard drive. The problem with ships like that is that *they* will pretty much automatically look like bad CG, due to having all those hard edges and flat planes...
The decks on this ship *can* be walked on, both the top and bottom ones, though there are more deck features on the top due to the ship sometimes operating in atmosphere. They can't land, though - except in purpose-built docking cradles, which are a huge and expensive proposition to build, hence there aren't many of them. Yardwork and the like is most often performed in spacedock, rather than dirtside.
I compared the old aft superstructure to my reference material, and I decided that with a few minor tweaks, I could reuse the whole thing. So I did. Then I went over the whole thing and added lit portholes in most of the places they're supposed to go, a few ladders, and masts on the topside. On the bottom, I decided to try something new: I added a huge keel fin, in place of the masts and funnels. The base of the fin will have docking cradles for bigger ship's boats than the ones I currently have, as the real ships carried a bunch of them on the deck.
Here's an ortho profile, in 2 pixels per meter scale:
Today I've been working on the forward deck - first of all, there's a new deck color, which is more like a modern warship than the old wood decks. To go with that, I added a warning circle around the first turret, and VERTREP markings (where cargo for the ship is dropped off). These were made using raised detail - they're actually modeled, rather than textured. Then, to get some kind of scale reference, I looked up the specs for some standard cargo types, and built a NATO airlift pallet (the flat gray thing in the VERTREP area) and a 40ft shipping container, both completely to scale. In order to get the cargo below decks, I added some basic hatches (not sure if I'll keep these particular ones), under which there'll be a cargo hold and an arm to grab the delivered cargo. I'm not sure exactly how this will look yet.
Finally, I spent a couple of hours adding the most detailed railings I've ever made all around the main deck edge (topside only, right now). These look awesome, even up close, so I'm quite proud of them. I'll be adding similar railings to the other decks, and eventually to the other ships. They're a little hard to see in the dark, so I'm considering adding a small light at the top of each stanchion (post) to make them stand out. Will see how that looks later...
Dammit. I knew there had to be a catch with DropBox.... Gimme a moment and I'll upload them to Photobucket.
Edit: Argh. The Maxwell renders get resized to a quarter of their original size when I upload them to Photobucket...
Edit2: Photobucket resized everything. Graaah! Anyone wanting to see the full size renders can download them from my public DropBox: https://www.dropbox.com/el/?r=/sh/88fjmy8b152698e/6I_v__BY9X&b=clk:70565045:17531170310769386986:776:445&z=AADzNyeekNXW_18TwYctWflzfRhuWnrt5nWObhFjy8pNlQ
They're in the Cruisers/CL-51 folder.
http://minus.com/
Use them. They're not terrible.
The smaller ship is based on the USS Colorado, BB-45, the last pre-treaty battleship class. The bigger one is of course an Iowa-class ship, updated *almost* to my latest standards (no hull number, no portholes - they're coming). Light AA is still missing from everything, due to me not having decided which version(s) of the light AA guns to go with.
Cheers, and happy holidays (what's left of them)!
Why not use both and simply define them as different systems? One for "long range interception" and the other for "point-blank defense and suppression" or some such?
Ah, it's not actually different guns, it's different mountings for the same gun design. I have five different single mounts and at least two different twin mounts for the light AA (basically, my version of the Oerlikon 20 mm cannon), and while I can judge whether to go with a single or a twin for any given mount, I'm not sure which, if any, of the ones I've built would fit the best.
In the mean time, I've been wrestling with something different:
This is the start of my go at an Essex-class carrier. It's based on the hull of the Alaska-class cruiser, but stretched and widened some (the Essex class carriers were a little larger than the cruisers). The hangar deck was a pain in the rear, and it's about to get worse since I'll be opening the sides; and I'm unsure what to do with the bottom. I've been thinking a bit about using the same parts as on the Atlanta-class from earlier, as it has a similar number of guns of the same types as I'll be mounting around the edges of this thing...
I will of course also do the Lexingtons (both the battlecruisers and the carriers, using the same base style of hull as the Colorado battleship), as well as the Midway class (will be using the hull from the Montana class battleships as the starting point for that, I think) - once I've figured this beastie out.
Among other things, the windows on both the main bridge, the flag bridge, and the auxiliary conning platform are now all transparent, though lighting the spaces is tedious as heck so I'm leaving that for later. I've also added the ambient occlusion shader to nearly all surfaces, and a temporary spec map to make it look like there are panels on the ship.
Hopefully the ship will look less plastic-y when I try rendering it in Earth orbit next time...
I did find some stuff I can show off, though.
These are the new catapults I built for the battleships and cruisers. Unlike the original WW2 items, these can be pitched up around 20 degrees, allowing drones to be launched at off angles. Depending on the exact orientation of the catapult, the possible range of angles is quite wide.
This one is a little too dark to make out details, but it shows the deck detail I put in on the fantail of the North Carolina. The crane is an enlarged version of the earlier one, and I've been messing about with the drones, adding Harrier-style landing gear, and a rotodome (it looked so neat it became standard issue).
An animation of the catapult in action. Youtube really did a number on this, the original file is much nicer:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/70565045/battleships/catapult_test.mp4
A nice shot of one of my new cranes, the new rotodome-equipped drones, and the catapults. I still haven't built the claws needed to grab the drones and lift them onto or off the catapults, I'm not sure where to start on those. Hideously complicated things they are...
These are the hangar spaces on the Alaska-class, which are well lit and I've made sure the hangar doors can close properly.
Last but not least, a picture of my pretty assistant: =^_^=