The Ship Model Forum

Thanks Tea,
Yeah I'm new to the whole texture making thing as you can tell, I'll try out those tips. I'm also thinking those deck tiles look too small, probably change that too.
Yeah, the color scheme , was having a little fun with that. There's plenty of work left to do, I hope to get back on it in the next couple days.

Dean

While I'm fiddling away on the Chickasaw model, I thought I'd show a couple of the basic Solidworks modeling techniques used in making it. This example is nothing new or revolutionary, but it can be a time saver with certain shapes.
How I started the deck:

Pic 1 - Side sketch.


Pic 2 - Top sketch.


Pic 3 - Extruded each sketch keeping them separate bodies.


Pic 4 - Added a chamfer around the top sketch body.


Pic 5 - Combined the two bodies using the common command.


And where it's at so far.


I realize this is pretty basic stuff, but I wanted to show part of the workflow that I used. If there's any interest, I can show more.

Dean

Dean,

You've done some great work with those rudimentary plans! That final image is fantastic, there's something about the lines of this class that really speak to me; can't decide if it's the twin turrets, the deck camber, or what.

Question, any idea what the structures are on the bow? I thought latrines/heads, but there appears to be one on the stern, where they tended to put them on powered ships at that time.

Great work.

-Devin

_________________
We like our history sanitized and theme-parked and self-congratulatory, not bloody and angry and unflattering. - Jonathan Yardley

Thanks Devin, it's been a challenge figuring it out, but a fun one. Plenty more to do yet.

I think your right, the one at the stern is the head ( I put a quarter moon cut-out on it anyway ), and the ones on the bow I think are anchor stows, I could be wrong though, since none of the old pics show any anchors I assumed that's what they are.

Dean

Anchors. That makes sense. I'll try to remember to dig out Canney's "Old Steam Navy" tonight and see if he makes any mention of them.

_________________
We like our history sanitized and theme-parked and self-congratulatory, not bloody and angry and unflattering. - Jonathan Yardley

That looks amazing. One of things that Blender currently does NOT have is any kind nurbs/splines modelling. There is a hybrid thing that is being worked on, but I've not used it yet.

Can't wait to see it rendered. I've been looking on SolidWorks' web site and I think they have some pretty good rendering capabilities with the app.

Thanks again Devin, that would be great.

Tea, Thank you.
Yeah, I thought I read that the Blender devs were working on it for a future release, it's hard to keep track sometimes, it seems something new is always in the works.
About the SW renderers, they are not quite up to par with most of the others, so don't expect too much, what little ray tracing it does have is pretty lame, but I'll get a render or two soon.

Dean

Dean,

Nothing in the book on the structures, unfortunately. One thing that is in there that is of interest, though, is the mention that of the four Milwaukee class boats, all of them had one Eads type turret forward and Ericsson type aft, except for Chickasaw, who had two Ericsson type turrets (the one you have aft on your model, with the raised pivot point on the top).

-Devin

_________________
We like our history sanitized and theme-parked and self-congratulatory, not bloody and angry and unflattering. - Jonathan Yardley

Thanks Devin, that definitely helps the quest, I just thought is was the same as the rest, just the one Ericsson's turret, good find... and added to the to-do list.

Here's a link to a good story on the battle history of the Chickasaw named "That Damned Black Hulk:The U.S.S. Chickasaw", it was a tough and feared ship in it's day.
http://www.cincinnaticwrt.org/data/ccwrt_history/talks_text/pockras_chickasaw.html

Dean

I'm not sure where he got that information, probably from the builder's logs or some supply manifests. I'd forgotten how different the Eads and Ericsson turrets were until re-reading that section last night. Similar on the outside, but the inside was completely different.

I'll give that article you linked a read during lunch today.

_________________
We like our history sanitized and theme-parked and self-congratulatory, not bloody and angry and unflattering. - Jonathan Yardley

Devin, yeah, getting the hard facts isn't easy for this one, but thanks for your input, it's appreciated.

A little update, not much to show, I've added the rowboats and tweaked a few things. But what I'm still wondering about is the staircase up to the pilot house, in every other Milwaukee class ship photo, it shows the staircase going to the upper section, where in the photo I'm using as a reference, it goes in lower, hmm....

First river trial:


And the latest:


And while I'm at it, here's a couple links to a few of my other projects I'm working on.
http://s1195.photobucket.com/albums/aa3 ... dude/WIPs/
http://youtu.be/26yJ-Eyv9eM

Dean

That looks really cool! I would suggest to shrink the size of the waves by a few factors. Was that Blender or Solid works? Are you using an HDRI image or a sky preset?

I'm not sure what the bottom part of the Pilot house is on those ships. Does it serve as a vent, or is it just a structure to raise the helm up to increase visibility? One idea for the ladder - I have no idea if it's right or not, would be that the height that your staircase goes up to is just about the height of the turret. You may find that they hung a turret ladder off the pilot house and then got a set of stairs to go up to the bottom of the ladder. It's probable that during a battle, the 'regular' staircase got shot away by those darned pesky Rebs and they had to improvise something.

The Albemarle and the Neuse look pretty good. The only thing with them is that it looks like you've used a dark wood texture for the iron. It kind of works at that scale though.

Kind of off topic, but I see you did an A7V. I've done a Mark V

Owen

Dean,

Glad to be of help. I'm heading to the Mariner's Museum tonight for a couple of days of research, and I'll see if they have anything specific on the class that I haven't seen before.

I agree with Owen, I'd drop the scale of the waves a bit. Otherwise it looks fantastic. Very inspiring. I find myself looking at it and saying things like "how long would it take me to do a 1/200 scale waterline model of it? Really?"

-Devin

_________________
We like our history sanitized and theme-parked and self-congratulatory, not bloody and angry and unflattering. - Jonathan Yardley

Thanks again for your help and input guys...

Owen,
the water pic was rendered with SW's built in render-er (Photoworks), which does do ray tracing somewhat (read not too well), unlike the external one (Photoview 360). And the water is a .p2m file (SW material file) that was used for the floor with a sky preset. There's 4 preset water types in SW, 2D water, 3D calm, 3D slight wave (the one used) and 3D heavy wave, but the calm looked too flat to me, I'll keep trying.
Your right, seems like the lower section of the pilot house was like a stand for added visibility, got to see over all that smoke from the cannons , don't really know what the lower section was used for though, maybe to store the rum ? I attached a couple pics below that show the difference's with the stairs, and that reminds me, I need to add the ladders on the turrets too.
Ah, the Albemarle, yeah you got me, those are wood textures, couldn't find any metal one's that looked decent at the time, so I used those, and as you know, I'm still learning the whole texture thing. One question though, I just started using Gimp and I can't seem to find the high pass filter you mentioned earlier, any thoughts?
By the way, love the Mark V, just awesome...

Devin,
That would be great if the museum had some better info. And if your willing, I'd be interested in seeing some of your research pics when your done.
As for the 1/200 scale model, I know you would do it justice, just add it to your list, you know you want too .

OK, been playing with the coloring book again, now these screen shots are just preliminary, so be gentle, I just wanted to add some color for now. And the textures used haven't been changed from the earlier pic, I need to get my texture making ability up to par first before I'm happy with it, and add a few more details/tweaking.

First, here's what the still water looks like .


Now some color screen shots (they came out a little blurry)



Staircase photos. This is my reference pic.


And the USS Kickapoo.



Dean

With the water, is there a thing to either scale down the water, or scale down the ship? I've not played with Solidworks before, so I'm sorry I can't be more help on that front. There should be a settings panel somewhere that allows you to tweak stuff.

I had a look around and found these. I don't know if you've already seen them or not, but I'm hoping it helps out.

Photoworks rendering fine tuning
How to get a solidworks model into Blender (uses the old Blender, but a lot of the stuff is the same).

I remembered a free renderer called 'Kerkythea'. It's no longer being actively updated, but it's used by a lot of arch-vis guys. The big thing is that it has a lighting studio built into it. You export an Obj from your app of choice, then bring it into Kerkythea and set up lights and materials there. It might be a better alternative to importing to Blender and having to learn Blender inside and out. The materials tab on Kerkythea is a lot more straight-forward. Also, Kerkythea is really, really fast - and it has 'proper' Global Illumination and light set-ups. You may want to try it out. If you get on with it, there is a new renderer that they are making called 'Thea' that is charged for, but is very good.

I'm thinking that the generally, the textures are looking good. The deck plating needs that recurring spot removing, but generally, its pretty good. You need to bump up your water material and get some more realistic lighting onto the model and it will look miles better.

I'll have a look and see if I can find what it's called in GIMP. One thing you can do is to just use the clone brush and take a bit of one side of the plate and just paint over the bright spot. But I'll look into that for you.

**EDIT** Found it. It looks like a separate file, but you can download it and use it. It has the same functions as the PS one, but has a few other settings. There is an instruction page here.

Keep at it, it's looking good!

Owen

Part of the problem was I didn't spend much time tweaking stuff, as you can tell , I'll end up making my own scene and lighting once I'm happy with the textures. (like fixing that darn spot on the deck plates )
And thanks for the links, it's funny in that Photoworks link, that guy was saying almost the same thing I was about Photoworks. It's not that it's terrible, just that it really wasn't developed for very high grade renders, more to make decent looking pic's to show customers.
Keep the constructive criticism coming, I really appreciate it you've been a great help. I'm eager to get this done and start modeling something in Blender, now that should be a hoot.

Dean

LOL, yeah, it takes me ages to get materials right. I know you are just showing off the models at the moment. I'm just suggesting stuff for the 'final'. I haven't got any of the final materials on my monitor yet.

Owen

Hey Owen, no problem, your suggestions and others have helped me out a lot, so keep them coming, I'm all ears. I did a little work on the water and here's what I came up with, I think it looks pretty good, but let me know what you guys think.



Dean

It's so good to see renderings of another Civil War ironclad. Well done!

That's looking really good! The only things I would change are the size of the water might need to come down a bit. You've got some nice reflections going on there. Looks like you fixed the deck plates as well.

Owen