Cool! I like the progress on the vessels. Good catapult positions, nice CIWS guns, neat little engine glowy bits. As for the aft CIWS, you don't need to mount them on a horizontal extrusion ha, think 3D, slap 'm directly on the hull. The turret articulation will allow it to fire straight aft, up, down, as much spherical arc as the hull shape allows. Don't worry too much about the amount of them either... I think that on my Heracles ship there are well over 50... And that's only a ship of 660 meters and then I have missile CIWS too, although a lot less. On vessels of this size, strategic importance, building costs etc etc it doesn't hurt to give them as much survivability as possible.
Speaking of which... why not add sectional blast doors on the aft hangar opening? One large gate on each side of the hexagon, it would allow for some serious protection during non-flight ops and when opened, they provide the perfect spot to put running lights on to help guide incoming ships, like a lit up flower. And the location on the hexagonal sides of the doors also allows for the placement of the CIWS to neatly avoid the opening of the giant flower petal doors.
Cool! I like the progress on the vessels. Good catapult positions, nice CIWS guns, neat little engine glowy bits. As for the aft CIWS, you don't need to mount them on a horizontal extrusion ha, think 3D, slap 'm directly on the hull. The turret articulation will allow it to fire straight aft, up, down, as much spherical arc as the hull shape allows. Don't worry too much about the amount of them either... I think that on my Heracles ship there are well over 50... And that's only a ship of 660 meters and then I have missile CIWS too, although a lot less. On vessels of this size, strategic importance, building costs etc etc it doesn't hurt to give them as much survivability as possible.
Speaking of which... why not add sectional blast doors on the aft hangar opening? One large gate on each side of the hexagon, it would allow for some serious protection during non-flight ops and when opened, they provide the perfect spot to put running lights on to help guide incoming ships, like a lit up flower. And the location on the hexagonal sides of the doors also allows for the placement of the CIWS to neatly avoid the opening of the giant flower petal doors.
As for the aft CIWS, you don't need to mount them on a horizontal extrusion ha, think 3D, slap 'm directly on the hull. The turret articulation will allow it to fire straight aft, up, down, as much spherical arc as the hull shape allows.
ThatAâs what I meant, too. But you put it into better words. :-)
I'm doing it this way because I'm lazy as heck, primarily, and it's a pain in the rear to mount the turrets on a surface with more than one angle and have it rotate properly. Also, even these little turrets have some deck penetration, and putting them on the sides would mean I'd need to hole the armor...
Apropos armor, I've had to nix the tiles for now, I can't get them to lay flat without more or less building the ship out of them to start with. That's just not in the cards. Time to figure out a plan B...
It's been a few days since the last update, but I've been busy working on my ships in the mean time, never fear. I finally got around to properly setting up some of my plugins, including Maxwell, a seriously heavy duty external renderer. It takes forever to finish a frame, but it looks soooo goood. :-)
I had to ditch the hexes on the battleship, they wouldn't align properly no matter what I did, so instead I put in a simple raised armor belt that extends along the leading and trailing edges of the wings. Maxwell doesn't show it properly, but it's got a lot more spec than the rest of the ship in LW, a state of affairs I don't know whether I'll be keeping.
On the other hand, I've completed all the turret and director rigging for the battleship, as well as the heavy cruiser (closest to camera), and I'm continuing to update the battlecruiser (center). I've reprofiled the forward hull significantly (old version had three sections of different taper, new version has nine); added the forward sensor cluster, a "christmas tree" and a foremast; and redone the main turrets to match the other ships in style. I've also done the rigging for those turrets in Layout, so they can be pointed around properly, though I haven't gotten started on the rigging for the secondaries (which are still a static mesh) and CIWS guns (not installed at all) yet.
Right now I'm also wondering how I'll solve the problem of the destroyer, seeing as it will look *really* slow compared to the others if I follow the WWII conventions I've used thus far. Battleships and cruisers have their superstructures mostly in the middle of the ship, with their armaments arrayed fore and aft of it; destroyers had most of the superstructure pretty far forward (and the forward main turrets almost on the bow), with torpedoes or depth charges on the deck amidships. Given the hull shape I've stuck to so far, it's going to be an interesting task to put a decent forward superstructure on...
I sat down with one of the models I hadn't updated substantially since the early days: the light cruiser (CL). I've been having some trouble making it visually distinctive from the heavy cruiser, mostly due to my primary source of inspiration not being all that different from a similar period heavy cruiser. The orthos should make the difference fairly clear, though... :-)
The difference between the real-world "Oregon City"-class heavy cruisers and the "Fargo"-class light cruisers was 3700 tons of displacement (13700 tons vs 10000 tons), most of which was in the form of armor, and that the light cruisers had twelve six-inch guns in four turrets, versus the heavy cruisers' nine 8-inch guns in 3 turrets. For anyone who thinks the difference is minor, that 33% increase in caliber translated into a 150% increase in throw weight and muzzle energy...
I juts read through the whole thread after not keeping up for a while.
It is a shame about the hex's. They really made the ships come to life with detail. I am a big fan of pre-dreadnoughts, armored cruisers and BB's. Looking forward to more.:cool:
Thanks for the kind comments everyone!
Today's update isn't huge - I've rearranged the funnel on the heavy cruiser (I kept the old one as a separate version though :-)), and I added some PVLS cells based on the real-world Mk57 (much less poly-intensive than the old Mk41 cells...) on the light and heavy cruiser. Also, I switched the mast color so that they're all near-black. Dunno why they weren't that way before.
The light cruiser currently has 576 missile cells, while the heavy cruiser has 672 cells. There's room for at around twice that number if I double up on the launcher rows, though I haven't decided whether I will or not. Maybe I'll do it on a missile cruiser version and leave the current numbers as is.
I still have a few more ships that either still need modelling from the ground up or just updating to fit the current pattern better, but after that I'm kind of stuck for ideas. I haven't been able to come up with anything for my ships to fight, so here's a bit of a challenge for anyone who's interested:
Challenge: Pick any warship and try to come up with its spacegoing equivalent. Try to remain as true to the original as possible regarding the armament and superstructure layout, while accounting for the 3D-ness of space. Stealth features are completely optional. Try to keep them to roughly 4:1 scale relative to their real-world counterparts...
Also, anyone who wants to come up with some aliens for me to blast (or get chewed on by) is very welcome. Do try to keep some sort of coherency for their designs, is all I'm asking... :-)
576 tubes of missiles, why I wonder? If you shoot all at once you risk friedly-fire, apart from the fact that at least half of them won't hit anything anyways, even if they're homing, because a good salvo, combined with the main cannons can easily crush any good ship.
Apart from that, about the aliens to crush: If it's not about making the models but envisioning some fancy designs, I may lend a hand, I've got some good ideas of alien-looking ships and I am good at drawing them, at least good enough so a 3D-artist can decipher that.
And if you ask for background stories I can help as well. I've got a ver vivid mind.
The missiles are defensive, rather than offensive - they're supposed to intercept shipkiller missiles and the like. They're also quite useful for limited orbital bombardment, where the big guns might just be *too* big. Also, like real-world ships, no reloads are carried for these tubes, so that's the entire loadout.
I redid the launchers again, and doubled up on them - the light cruiser now has 1152 missile tubes, the heavy cruiser has 1344, and the large cruiser has 1920. The battleship won't be getting any of these small tubes, but will be equipped with something similar to the Mk26 twin launcher in each of the octagonal cutouts on the deck (at least that's the plan), with similar-sized missiles.
This is a closeup of the deck. I'm going to have to redo the launchers at least a couple more times to match the original (see pics here: Military - these are models though)
Aresius, your sketches would be a big help. Don't know if I can manage to do them justice in 3D (I haven't done much with organics yet, and rigging them is ughhh...), but I'll give it a shot. Cheers,
Ah, now I got the idea with the missiles. Hm. Wouldn't it be easier to have some sort of FLAK who uses some super-dense shrapnels go against the big boomers? I mean, missile against missile would incorporate the risk of having the missile shoot past it's target, missiles have a rather small area whre they can be hit. And a FLAK gun could do more area damage, with shapnels that might pierce the hull and cause a premature detonation on irgnite the fuel or whatever.
Yeah i have to agree Areisus a flak cannon would do so much better than over 1000 missle tubes and if you think about it the mere ammount of muntions they would have to carry and then the danger of one of the missle areas taking a hit and causing more internal damage then say a FLAK would. maybe 100-150 tubes with reloads and Some well placed AA/FLAK turrets would be more reasonable. because unlike realworld space warefare will be long range and a ship not not have time to reload after each assault not to mention the targeting computers/personell it would take to maintain that many missles
For flak guns, look no further than the twin turrets already on the ships. That's what they're for, mainly. :-)
As for the amount of missiles, they're not meant to fire in one massive salvo. Real-world ships nowadays store their missiles directly in their launchers, ready to launch - no maintenance or reloading required until the missile is fired. That way you don't lose all your missiles in case the launcher breaks...
The latest VLS systems have been moved to the sides of the ship both to give more deck space to guns, and to remove the hazard of having a big bunch of explosives in the middle of the ship. Instead, they're mounted outside the main armor, and work like reactive armor tiles in the event that they get hit...
All of that having been said, I've already removed the launchers since I didn't like the way they looked compared to the rest. Have to give it some more thought... :-)
Nice progress mate. Well, if you're having doubts about the VL launchers, why not come up with a sci-fi equivalent of a RAM launcher they use nowadays? Basically a missile turret but you could have it reload by rotating straight up and have a new batch of missiles slide in from the back. A bit like the quick-reload thingies for a revolver?
Meph, I've thought about RAM launchers, but the problem is where to put them. I kind of like their looks myself...
Today's work in pictures:
First of all, I redid the fire control systems, both for the main guns and the secondaries. The turrets were reprofiled, optical rangefinders were added, and the main fire control turrets got some radars and antennae. I also added periscopes, new main and backup rangefinders and some ladders to the main gun turrets. In addition, I added an occlusion shader to the main surfaces.
After that, I lit up the bridge, which was kind of painful due to the amount of longish test renders it took. Ten minutes to see the effects of each change felt like a lifetime. :-( The result in this pic isn't quite perfect, I don't like the artifacting along the floor/wall corners, but redoing that render with non-interpolated GI would take half an hour instead...and without GI it was a fair bit darker).
If I'm remembering my render numbering scheme right, this one should be a distance shot with the bridges of the heavy cruiser and heavy battleship both lit, after which I got bored with messing around with that. (now I know how to reproduce it, I can always go do it to the others later...)
Finally, I used my newly learned lighting skills and the materials I had on hand to once and for all fix up my navigation lights. The red one shows where it's supposed to show and nowhere else, as do the green and white ones. Regardless of range. Damn I'm good. :-) Now I just need to dig up the refs again so I can add all the other blasted lights. There's about two dozen I know I need so far... and I've done four, on one ship. o.O
But before that, I need to get some batteries for my trackball, cause it's running on fumes....
Bridge looks cool mate! Have you measured how tall they are? That can, be quite deceptive....
When I first cut out the bridge windows on the Olympic I was surprised to find them to be over 3 meters tall, so I made a panoramic bridge and large armoured sliding covers.
And for the interiror of the bridge, I'd suggest to export the bridge section, make a low poly interior, texture it, light it, and then bake the textures so one you import it back into the main mesh you'll have no trouble rendering it fast.
Yes, I know how tall they are - they're a shade under one meter from top to bottom, and the internal ceiling height is 2.4 meters. There's about a foot of space between the top edge of the windows and the ceiling, which makes up for the thin floor (.1 m) - I'm planning on lowering that a bit by building stuff on the underside. Already put in the lighting arrays, but I'll be lowering those a bit, I think.
The bits that are visible from the outside is the "day bridge", which amounts to an observation gallery which happens to have the ability to conn the ship, more or less. It does carry some combat consoles in case of an emergency, but the battle bridge and CIC (where the real work is done...) will be down in the belly of the beast, so to speak.
The conning tower, which is the bit that sticks up through the top, is the most well-armored part of the entire ship barring applique armor, and contains another set of consoles as well as a staircase and a lift that runs into the ship. Theres supposed to be a fairly hefty door between the interior of the conning tower and the day bridge, but it's on the rearward side, inside the covered corridor in the center, so I haven't bothered modelling it. :-) The idea is that in a combat situation, the day bridge is evacuated through the conning tower, which can take pretty much anything you can throw at it. :-)
My trackball died in the night, so no new pics this morning. In fact, I'm lucky to be online at all, apparently my router had bugged this morning and wouldn't let me out...
I've moved the nav lights around some to get them up to code, so to speak - at least the running lights should now be compliant to the 1972 Collision prevention regulations. This includes one white "masthead" light with 225 degree visibility forward and another one at the top of the mast; a white stern light with 135 degree visibility aft, and a side light on each side with 135 degrees of visibility from the axis of motion, red on the port side and green on the starboard side. There are a few dozen other lights to add, but those are all for various special occasions.
Once I was "done" lighting the battleship, I fixed up the heavy cruiser. In the process, I split off a new branch of the heavy cruiser to reflect the changes, and then brought the old branch back up as well, with a different superstructure based on a slightly earlier US navy model. So now I've got the equivalent of the Newport News and Oregon City classes, only the Baltimore class to go. :-)
The major real-world differences between the three classes of heavy cruiser built for the USN during WWII weren't all that pronounced, really. The Baltimore class had two thin funnels, while the Oregon City class had a single larger funnel - the change was made to improve the layout of the anti aircraft batteries. The very late-war Des Moines class (they weren't actually finished until 46/47) was a further improvement, with new faster-firing guns and more fire control directors (and AA).
The above is my version (for the moment!) of the Oregon city class. Note the very high location for the bridge. (also, that I haven't lit that part yet...)
And this is the Des Moines class. The bridge has been moved down and forward; also note the very tall towers for the main fire control systems, and the extra pair of secondary directors near the funnel.
Neither ship has gotten its anti-aircraft batteries installed yet, it's on the todo list. I haven't finalized the placement of all of them yet, and I want to avoid having to reposition a bunch of rigged turrets more than neccessary... :-)
In addition to these, I'm studying up on my light cruisers. I've got what will eventually become a Fargo-class type; I'll be backdating it to a Cleveland-class as well. Then there's what became the CLAA types, cruisers which were armed exclusively with 5-inch dual purpose guns, twelve to fourteen of which could be fired as a broadside. I've also got a couple of prewar light cruisers that are calling out to me, which had interesting fits such as five triple turrets and the like.
Wow, they look wonderful. These big rounded engines look a bit strage tho.
I'm almost finished with the first sketch, I only need to get it to my mums Pc, who is the only one connected to a scanner.
I don't have a digital pen, relying on pencil and such things, so my drafts will not be as eloquent as from someone who does such things in high art.
I got fed up with the cruiser superstructures and more or less started over on them to get something I could feel satisfied with. The new versions are more closely based on the original USN cruisers, and I'm pretty happy with them now...
First off, the Baltimore-type cruiser, AKA the Mk1 Heavy Cruiser. Twin funnels, directors on top of the bridge, two secondary directors.
Next up, the Cleveland-type, which is similar in overall arrangement except for having four triple light guns rather than the three triple medium guns. AKA the Mk1 Light Cruiser.
The Oregon City-type, or Mk2 Heavy Cruiser. Single, larger funnel, and the towers have been moved towards the center, in an effort to improve the anti-aircraft fire arcs. The name ship of the class in the real world has the dubious distinction of being the shortest-serving cruiser of the WWII-era USN, being decommissioned after only 21 months of service.
The corresponding light cruiser. The real-world name was the Fargo-class, of which only two out of eleven ordered were built. Same Mk2-series superstructure as the Oregon City, more or less.
I've yet to redo the Mk3 Heavy cruiser (Des Moines-type), but I'll be working on it tonight. I've also got some trouble coming up with decent medium anti-fighter guns - the twin gatlings aren't quite what I want after all, as they're tremendously polygon intensive.
To get some idea of the relative sizes again, I rendered out another profile view in 1 meter per pixel scale. I really need to do something about those destroyers, they look hideous... :-)
I never did get around to the third heavy cruiser, instead I sat down to remodel the battleships a bit... :-)
I started over fresh on the rigging and lighting, haven't gotten around to doing the bridge lights just yet. The nav lights are now lense flares, to make sure they're visible even from some distance. Of course, this messes up my careful arrangement of the arcs of visibility, which make me a little frustrated.
I discovered I'd made a classic mistake during construction of the superstructure on the heavy battleship, and built one that was more appropriate for the smaller ship. So I saved a copy, deleted a turret and shortened the ship by fifty meters or so. Presto Iowa-class. Then I reopened the Montana-type ship and deleted the offending bit (in the middle), and stretched it sixteen meters. I also moved the wings a bit to accomodate the stretch. The major bits of rigging that still needs to be done is the addition of the anti-fighter batteries, but I haven't gotten the new turrets even blocked out yet so that will have to wait for a while.
The nice part about all this is that I haven't had to slog through updating the older model fast battleship, which is a chore I'd been kind of dreading. Instead, that ship may end up being used as a base for versions of the North Carolina and South Dakota classes. Time will tell. :-)
Thanks! Nice to hear some words of encouragement after coming home from a 90 minute round trip on my bicycle, in chill winds and bright late afternoon sun (i.e. eyelevel and not very warming), to a dentists appointment that had been cancelled...
The main difference in technique for these renders is that I've moved the key light to a higher angle above the horizon and changed its type from a spotlight or distant light to a fairly large area light. I've also changed the color some, from pure white to a very light cyan (202-255-255). Was supposed to be blue, I must have been half asleep when I changed the color. It worked, though... :-)
Yeah the ships look really nice :thumb: Some of them are a bit too similar to each other but I'm sure that detail work will give them personality. Looking forward to seeing more !
Well, can't do much about the basic similarity really, given what my base material is. It's kind of like the real world, or the honorverse - all warships look basically the same except for size and details, because someone came up with a shape that suited the the drive system so well that no one has figured out anything that works better. Yet.
The WWII US navy in particular, which is my chief inspiration, believed strongly in the concepts of bulk purchasing and off the shelf components and sub-assemblies. Why design a completely new part when something already in production does the job? Unless of course it's doing it poorly, in which case the new component will be an update across the board.
The post cold-war idea of developing the full capability before production seems to have only ended up in early cancellations due to high unit costs - no wonder when the huge R&D costs for that one system that took forever to get right has to be spread out over the first production contract. Imagine if they'd started full production of the F-22 with what was available when the first airframe flew, using off the shelf bits for whatever wasn't ready just yet - the way they did with the Super Hornet, or Typhoon...
Posts
Speaking of which... why not add sectional blast doors on the aft hangar opening? One large gate on each side of the hexagon, it would allow for some serious protection during non-flight ops and when opened, they provide the perfect spot to put running lights on to help guide incoming ships, like a lit up flower. And the location on the hexagonal sides of the doors also allows for the placement of the CIWS to neatly avoid the opening of the giant flower petal doors.
Speaking of which... why not add sectional blast doors on the aft hangar opening? One large gate on each side of the hexagon, it would allow for some serious protection during non-flight ops and when opened, they provide the perfect spot to put running lights on to help guide incoming ships, like a lit up flower. And the location on the hexagonal sides of the doors also allows for the placement of the CIWS to neatly avoid the opening of the giant flower petal doors.
Apropos armor, I've had to nix the tiles for now, I can't get them to lay flat without more or less building the ship out of them to start with. That's just not in the cards. Time to figure out a plan B...
Cheers,
SP
I had to ditch the hexes on the battleship, they wouldn't align properly no matter what I did, so instead I put in a simple raised armor belt that extends along the leading and trailing edges of the wings. Maxwell doesn't show it properly, but it's got a lot more spec than the rest of the ship in LW, a state of affairs I don't know whether I'll be keeping.
On the other hand, I've completed all the turret and director rigging for the battleship, as well as the heavy cruiser (closest to camera), and I'm continuing to update the battlecruiser (center). I've reprofiled the forward hull significantly (old version had three sections of different taper, new version has nine); added the forward sensor cluster, a "christmas tree" and a foremast; and redone the main turrets to match the other ships in style. I've also done the rigging for those turrets in Layout, so they can be pointed around properly, though I haven't gotten started on the rigging for the secondaries (which are still a static mesh) and CIWS guns (not installed at all) yet.
Right now I'm also wondering how I'll solve the problem of the destroyer, seeing as it will look *really* slow compared to the others if I follow the WWII conventions I've used thus far. Battleships and cruisers have their superstructures mostly in the middle of the ship, with their armaments arrayed fore and aft of it; destroyers had most of the superstructure pretty far forward (and the forward main turrets almost on the bow), with torpedoes or depth charges on the deck amidships. Given the hull shape I've stuck to so far, it's going to be an interesting task to put a decent forward superstructure on...
Cheers,
SP
Looks nice so far, even without them.
The difference between the real-world "Oregon City"-class heavy cruisers and the "Fargo"-class light cruisers was 3700 tons of displacement (13700 tons vs 10000 tons), most of which was in the form of armor, and that the light cruisers had twelve six-inch guns in four turrets, versus the heavy cruisers' nine 8-inch guns in 3 turrets. For anyone who thinks the difference is minor, that 33% increase in caliber translated into a 150% increase in throw weight and muzzle energy...
Here's the corresponding top view,
perspective view,
...and Maxwell GI view of the same scene.
Cheers,
SP
I juts read through the whole thread after not keeping up for a while.
It is a shame about the hex's. They really made the ships come to life with detail. I am a big fan of pre-dreadnoughts, armored cruisers and BB's. Looking forward to more.:cool:
Regards,
Scott
Today's update isn't huge - I've rearranged the funnel on the heavy cruiser (I kept the old one as a separate version though :-)), and I added some PVLS cells based on the real-world Mk57 (much less poly-intensive than the old Mk41 cells...) on the light and heavy cruiser. Also, I switched the mast color so that they're all near-black. Dunno why they weren't that way before.
The light cruiser currently has 576 missile cells, while the heavy cruiser has 672 cells. There's room for at around twice that number if I double up on the launcher rows, though I haven't decided whether I will or not. Maybe I'll do it on a missile cruiser version and leave the current numbers as is.
I still have a few more ships that either still need modelling from the ground up or just updating to fit the current pattern better, but after that I'm kind of stuck for ideas. I haven't been able to come up with anything for my ships to fight, so here's a bit of a challenge for anyone who's interested:
Challenge: Pick any warship and try to come up with its spacegoing equivalent. Try to remain as true to the original as possible regarding the armament and superstructure layout, while accounting for the 3D-ness of space. Stealth features are completely optional. Try to keep them to roughly 4:1 scale relative to their real-world counterparts...
Also, anyone who wants to come up with some aliens for me to blast (or get chewed on by) is very welcome. Do try to keep some sort of coherency for their designs, is all I'm asking... :-)
SP
Apart from that, about the aliens to crush: If it's not about making the models but envisioning some fancy designs, I may lend a hand, I've got some good ideas of alien-looking ships and I am good at drawing them, at least good enough so a 3D-artist can decipher that.
And if you ask for background stories I can help as well. I've got a ver vivid mind.
I redid the launchers again, and doubled up on them - the light cruiser now has 1152 missile tubes, the heavy cruiser has 1344, and the large cruiser has 1920. The battleship won't be getting any of these small tubes, but will be equipped with something similar to the Mk26 twin launcher in each of the octagonal cutouts on the deck (at least that's the plan), with similar-sized missiles.
This is a closeup of the deck. I'm going to have to redo the launchers at least a couple more times to match the original (see pics here: Military - these are models though)
Aresius, your sketches would be a big help. Don't know if I can manage to do them justice in 3D (I haven't done much with organics yet, and rigging them is ughhh...), but I'll give it a shot. Cheers,
SP
Well if you like I can also leave organics out.
Sorry for spelling on a MAC
For flak guns, look no further than the twin turrets already on the ships. That's what they're for, mainly. :-)
As for the amount of missiles, they're not meant to fire in one massive salvo. Real-world ships nowadays store their missiles directly in their launchers, ready to launch - no maintenance or reloading required until the missile is fired. That way you don't lose all your missiles in case the launcher breaks...
The latest VLS systems have been moved to the sides of the ship both to give more deck space to guns, and to remove the hazard of having a big bunch of explosives in the middle of the ship. Instead, they're mounted outside the main armor, and work like reactive armor tiles in the event that they get hit...
All of that having been said, I've already removed the launchers since I didn't like the way they looked compared to the rest. Have to give it some more thought... :-)
Cheers,
SP
Meph, I've thought about RAM launchers, but the problem is where to put them. I kind of like their looks myself...
Today's work in pictures:
First of all, I redid the fire control systems, both for the main guns and the secondaries. The turrets were reprofiled, optical rangefinders were added, and the main fire control turrets got some radars and antennae. I also added periscopes, new main and backup rangefinders and some ladders to the main gun turrets. In addition, I added an occlusion shader to the main surfaces.
After that, I lit up the bridge, which was kind of painful due to the amount of longish test renders it took. Ten minutes to see the effects of each change felt like a lifetime. :-( The result in this pic isn't quite perfect, I don't like the artifacting along the floor/wall corners, but redoing that render with non-interpolated GI would take half an hour instead...and without GI it was a fair bit darker).
If I'm remembering my render numbering scheme right, this one should be a distance shot with the bridges of the heavy cruiser and heavy battleship both lit, after which I got bored with messing around with that. (now I know how to reproduce it, I can always go do it to the others later...)
Finally, I used my newly learned lighting skills and the materials I had on hand to once and for all fix up my navigation lights. The red one shows where it's supposed to show and nowhere else, as do the green and white ones. Regardless of range. Damn I'm good. :-) Now I just need to dig up the refs again so I can add all the other blasted lights. There's about two dozen I know I need so far... and I've done four, on one ship. o.O
But before that, I need to get some batteries for my trackball, cause it's running on fumes....
Cheers,
SP
When I first cut out the bridge windows on the Olympic I was surprised to find them to be over 3 meters tall, so I made a panoramic bridge and large armoured sliding covers.
And for the interiror of the bridge, I'd suggest to export the bridge section, make a low poly interior, texture it, light it, and then bake the textures so one you import it back into the main mesh you'll have no trouble rendering it fast.
Yes, I know how tall they are - they're a shade under one meter from top to bottom, and the internal ceiling height is 2.4 meters. There's about a foot of space between the top edge of the windows and the ceiling, which makes up for the thin floor (.1 m) - I'm planning on lowering that a bit by building stuff on the underside. Already put in the lighting arrays, but I'll be lowering those a bit, I think.
The bits that are visible from the outside is the "day bridge", which amounts to an observation gallery which happens to have the ability to conn the ship, more or less. It does carry some combat consoles in case of an emergency, but the battle bridge and CIC (where the real work is done...) will be down in the belly of the beast, so to speak.
The conning tower, which is the bit that sticks up through the top, is the most well-armored part of the entire ship barring applique armor, and contains another set of consoles as well as a staircase and a lift that runs into the ship. Theres supposed to be a fairly hefty door between the interior of the conning tower and the day bridge, but it's on the rearward side, inside the covered corridor in the center, so I haven't bothered modelling it. :-) The idea is that in a combat situation, the day bridge is evacuated through the conning tower, which can take pretty much anything you can throw at it. :-)
My trackball died in the night, so no new pics this morning. In fact, I'm lucky to be online at all, apparently my router had bugged this morning and wouldn't let me out...
At any rate, TTFN.
SP
I've moved the nav lights around some to get them up to code, so to speak - at least the running lights should now be compliant to the 1972 Collision prevention regulations. This includes one white "masthead" light with 225 degree visibility forward and another one at the top of the mast; a white stern light with 135 degree visibility aft, and a side light on each side with 135 degrees of visibility from the axis of motion, red on the port side and green on the starboard side. There are a few dozen other lights to add, but those are all for various special occasions.
Once I was "done" lighting the battleship, I fixed up the heavy cruiser. In the process, I split off a new branch of the heavy cruiser to reflect the changes, and then brought the old branch back up as well, with a different superstructure based on a slightly earlier US navy model. So now I've got the equivalent of the Newport News and Oregon City classes, only the Baltimore class to go. :-)
The major real-world differences between the three classes of heavy cruiser built for the USN during WWII weren't all that pronounced, really. The Baltimore class had two thin funnels, while the Oregon City class had a single larger funnel - the change was made to improve the layout of the anti aircraft batteries. The very late-war Des Moines class (they weren't actually finished until 46/47) was a further improvement, with new faster-firing guns and more fire control directors (and AA).
The above is my version (for the moment!) of the Oregon city class. Note the very high location for the bridge. (also, that I haven't lit that part yet...)
And this is the Des Moines class. The bridge has been moved down and forward; also note the very tall towers for the main fire control systems, and the extra pair of secondary directors near the funnel.
Neither ship has gotten its anti-aircraft batteries installed yet, it's on the todo list. I haven't finalized the placement of all of them yet, and I want to avoid having to reposition a bunch of rigged turrets more than neccessary... :-)
In addition to these, I'm studying up on my light cruisers. I've got what will eventually become a Fargo-class type; I'll be backdating it to a Cleveland-class as well. Then there's what became the CLAA types, cruisers which were armed exclusively with 5-inch dual purpose guns, twelve to fourteen of which could be fired as a broadside. I've also got a couple of prewar light cruisers that are calling out to me, which had interesting fits such as five triple turrets and the like.
But that's a story for another day... :-)
Cheers,
SP
I'm almost finished with the first sketch, I only need to get it to my mums Pc, who is the only one connected to a scanner.
I don't have a digital pen, relying on pencil and such things, so my drafts will not be as eloquent as from someone who does such things in high art.
First off, the Baltimore-type cruiser, AKA the Mk1 Heavy Cruiser. Twin funnels, directors on top of the bridge, two secondary directors.
Next up, the Cleveland-type, which is similar in overall arrangement except for having four triple light guns rather than the three triple medium guns. AKA the Mk1 Light Cruiser.
The Oregon City-type, or Mk2 Heavy Cruiser. Single, larger funnel, and the towers have been moved towards the center, in an effort to improve the anti-aircraft fire arcs. The name ship of the class in the real world has the dubious distinction of being the shortest-serving cruiser of the WWII-era USN, being decommissioned after only 21 months of service.
The corresponding light cruiser. The real-world name was the Fargo-class, of which only two out of eleven ordered were built. Same Mk2-series superstructure as the Oregon City, more or less.
I've yet to redo the Mk3 Heavy cruiser (Des Moines-type), but I'll be working on it tonight. I've also got some trouble coming up with decent medium anti-fighter guns - the twin gatlings aren't quite what I want after all, as they're tremendously polygon intensive.
To get some idea of the relative sizes again, I rendered out another profile view in 1 meter per pixel scale. I really need to do something about those destroyers, they look hideous... :-)
Cheers,
SP
I never did get around to the third heavy cruiser, instead I sat down to remodel the battleships a bit... :-)
I started over fresh on the rigging and lighting, haven't gotten around to doing the bridge lights just yet. The nav lights are now lense flares, to make sure they're visible even from some distance. Of course, this messes up my careful arrangement of the arcs of visibility, which make me a little frustrated.
I discovered I'd made a classic mistake during construction of the superstructure on the heavy battleship, and built one that was more appropriate for the smaller ship. So I saved a copy, deleted a turret and shortened the ship by fifty meters or so. Presto Iowa-class. Then I reopened the Montana-type ship and deleted the offending bit (in the middle), and stretched it sixteen meters. I also moved the wings a bit to accomodate the stretch. The major bits of rigging that still needs to be done is the addition of the anti-fighter batteries, but I haven't gotten the new turrets even blocked out yet so that will have to wait for a while.
The nice part about all this is that I haven't had to slog through updating the older model fast battleship, which is a chore I'd been kind of dreading. Instead, that ship may end up being used as a base for versions of the North Carolina and South Dakota classes. Time will tell. :-)
SP
The main difference in technique for these renders is that I've moved the key light to a higher angle above the horizon and changed its type from a spotlight or distant light to a fairly large area light. I've also changed the color some, from pure white to a very light cyan (202-255-255). Was supposed to be blue, I must have been half asleep when I changed the color. It worked, though... :-)
Cheers!
SP
The WWII US navy in particular, which is my chief inspiration, believed strongly in the concepts of bulk purchasing and off the shelf components and sub-assemblies. Why design a completely new part when something already in production does the job? Unless of course it's doing it poorly, in which case the new component will be an update across the board.
The post cold-war idea of developing the full capability before production seems to have only ended up in early cancellations due to high unit costs - no wonder when the huge R&D costs for that one system that took forever to get right has to be spread out over the first production contract. Imagine if they'd started full production of the F-22 with what was available when the first airframe flew, using off the shelf bits for whatever wasn't ready just yet - the way they did with the Super Hornet, or Typhoon...
SP