USS Tecumseh - Canonicus Class ACW Monitor

[tea monster]

Good, grief, THAT's what it was!

I thought it was a periscope too!

That answers what Monitor this is a picture of too!

[Roscoe]

That does look very good Owen... that's one of the main problem's doing the details on these monitors, not enough solid info or conflicting info to go on, not to mention how they changed over time.

Keep up the great work,
Dean

[Devin]

Good, grief, THAT's what it was!



I thought it was a periscope too!

That answers what Monitor this is a picture of too!

Ah, there's that photo. I have it in a book somewhere and couldn't locate it.

That paragraph that MCG posted from Old Steam Navy has always piqued my curiosity on two points:
1. He mentions the external compass mount, then goes to say that none of the combat monitors used the, but then doesn't say where the compass was actually mounted.
2. The detail about the hatch in the bottom of the pilot house having to line up with the corresponding opening in the turret roof for ingress and egress. If that is so, then the story of how the pilot got out of Tecumseh's pilot house is harder to believe, as her turret was turned to port for reloading when she sank (confirmed by wreck examination). This could still be true, of course, just a coincidence that she had her turret turned the correct way when she sank. This actually seems more plausible to me now after my visit to the Mariner's; I spoke with one of the conservators working in the turret and he said they're now starting to believe that in order for the hatches to be useable in Monitor's turret floor, her turret had to be turned to starboard.

[tea monster]

I've been studying the Pilot House diagrams and the blueprints and realised that there was a great big metal platform that travelled the width of the pilot house (marked in orange) and served as a strengthener for the house and as a base for the helm .

The hatch would have to be either fore or aft of the helm in that case. I've got a pic of where I am with the pilot house, which should show you what I mean. The green blob is going to be the hatch out of the Pilot House. It could just as easily been on the rear, but I'm assuming that things would generally be easier if the hatch was towards the bow as it won't disturb the Pilot if someone comes in or out of the chamber. The floor on other diagrams looks perforated, I've chosen a wood lattice as it looks nice and matches the 'non-skid' nature of the Turret floor, but it could easily have been a metal grate.

If you look at the diagram, the turret has to be turned to the the side for people to get out, otherwise the main fore-aft beam of the turret (indicated by red arrows) will block the hatch. Unless there is some other ironmongery or similar on the turret ceiling, it should be possible to exit the turret whether it is facing port or starboard, just not fore or aft.

Owen

[Roscoe]

That's a great pic of the pilot house, and I see you've got a good start on the interior, looking good...

Dean

[Devin]

Owen,

That makes perfect sense, and my Weehawken model also shows the same. Great detective work!

-Devin

[mcg]

Nice logic!

The caption on the French plan says "Note that at sea, the turret is turned in such a way as to point the cannons to starboard, as indicated... The lines [centerlines of the cannon bores, presumeably] penetrate the page."

[tea monster]

Just working on the Captain. I've started transfering the Redcoat model I was working on to a ACW Civil War Naval Officer. He just needs hair and some tweaking.

Got to apologize for the dead photo links. I used Photobucket till recently, when they changed their EULA to read that they could use and abuse any images you posted on their site without any say-so or copyright honoured to the user. Needless to say, I've quickly yanked down all my images there and I'll have to find some alternative hosting (or I could upload to the server here).

Owen

[Roscoe]

Your Captain looks great, I can really appreciate your work done on him, it's like a whole nother art in itself, not that I ever tried making one ... and he's going to look REALLY good commanding the Tecumseh.

Dean

[tea monster]

Thanks very much!

I've got the turret nearly done. I need to work on the mats a bit and I'm still working on the crew, which will come next.

[Roscoe]

Wow, that looks really good, it definitely gives you a real sense of scale.
I can just imagine how rough it must have been being inside one of those in battle. With incoming rounds bouncing off the turret, literally ringing your bell, the shock-wave and smoke from the cannons firing, then retracting, reloading, firing, again and again, it just amazes me.

Dean

[tea monster]

Yeah, I was wondering how many of them were deaf, or suffered concussions, or worse!

Been working on the Officer, took him into Z-Brush today. Don't worry about the hair, that is coming.

Owen

EDIT: 06/03/2020 - Fixed dead link.

[Roscoe]

He's really evolving into a excellent model/person, very very nice...

Have you played with Sculptris yet? really easy and neat little program for what it is, even for a newbie like me .

Dean

[tea monster]

Thanks.

I've heard it's an excellent program, and it has that thing where you can 'create' geometry on the fly, which is cool. I'm just used to ZB so I use that.

[tea monster]

Dosen't look like much progress, but the textures are done, the hull plating is done and I've up-graded the lifeboats.

All I've got to do is properly rig the boats and the anchors and ready to render!

[Roscoe]

She looks SWEET!!! I've been waiting for an update.

What did you end up using for the hull plating textures? Did you make your own or did you use something else?

Also wondering if you found another pic storage site besides Photobucket, I'm thinking of changing too.

Dean

[tea monster]

Cheers!

The hull plating took a few turns and winds on the way. I started out using a tiled texture originally, and it very nearly worked out, but when it went around the curves of the hull, it had some strange artifacts. At this point, I could have baked it off to a UV Map and done some adjusting in Photoshop, but I thought that getting all the curves right by hand would be a mess. I could take it all into Inkscape and re-trace it, but mehhh...

Then I actually put my 'real-3d' head on and tried to 'really' plate it. I got a rectangular plate, made it to scale for the hull plates, then applied an array modifier to 'extend' it across the length of the hull. Then I put the shrink-wrap modifier onto it so it stuck down to the hull. This nearly worked again, but when it went over the curve of the hull, it got very distorted as the shrinkwrap tried to bend the plates to fit over the multiple curves and angles of the hull-deck fillet. I could have re-plated the distorted bits and adjusted and fixed, but I had a sinking feeling that I would be still doing that till Christmas at least. The plan was, to the hit the competed shell with the solidify modifier, which would have given you actual hull plates. I really like the idea of this, and I might re-visit this method and try to refine it later (running a separate line of plates vertically along the sides of the hull to avoid distortion), but right now, I need to press on. I imagine that doing this sort of thing in an actual CAD app would be much easier

Eventually I UV Mapped it (which I kind of knew I'd wind up doing eventually). I separated the sides of the hull and the bottom and did a 'project from view' on each to get my UV map. Then it was off to Photoshop and create some hull panels. I created one line, and to make the others match, I just duplicated the layer with the line on it and moved it down a bit.

As to photo stuff, I've found that flikr and others all have the same thing. One of them (I think it's Picasa) openly state that "your stuff is ours" in the EULA. I'm trying out dotphoto at the minute, I'll see how it turns out.

EDIT: rather counter-intuitive and it for some reason it uploads most (not all) of my images as thumbnails. Sigh.

EDIT: Fixed dead links 06/03/2020

[tea monster]

I followed this tut by Jonathan Williamson on how to create chains and the Tecumseh can now be secured at anchor!

EDIT: Fixed dead links 06/03/2020

[Roscoe]

Very cool!!!
I should also thank you for the explanations on your work, really helpful info. Even though my sponge of a brain doesn't suck up as much as it used too , I either copy or bookmark these for future reference.

Cheers,
Dean

PS. Oh yeah, the chains look great...

[Devin]

Fantastic work, as always.