CDR_Ret

Hello all, I am new to this forum, but not to model building. Building aircraft card models for many years, started also scratch building of aircraft and missile boats at a scale of 1-100, and planning to advance to bigger and mor challenging warships.

I can't tell you how happy I am, to have reached this point. The Nachtigall is not done, there is a lot do do until she is finished, but adding the subassemblies to the underside and remove the masks from the canopy was a major step.

The canopy had some staining on the glass, where I'm not sure, where they came from. Luckily,  could rub them carefully away with a cut toothpick. The framing needs to be decaled with rivets, the black color is only the base level.

I hope the landing gear holds up, as the Arado is a really heavy bird with all the heavy resin bits inside and the heavy nose weight as well.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Cheers Rob

And we have a winner! Bear in mind this is a preview of the color theme only... The actual texturing will take months and will look much, much better  
To give you all an idea - I haven't even UV unwrapped everything yet. I just wanted a break from modelling. Still, not in bad shape for the 3 month mark.
 

 

While researching flags for the Cerberus, I came across this article which outlines two flags used for Victoria's navy prior to 1870, and probably flown on the HMCSS Victoria. Thought you might be interested.
 
https://prov.vic.gov.au/explore-collection/provenance-journal/provenance-2012/crown-and-kangaroo-victorian-flags
 
Steven

Thank you for the warm welcome.
I will probably disappoint many people, but I can't share photos of my ship modeling work yet, but technologies that might be useful for building a ship can be seen on the channel.  I think that after a while, I will take up building, very much want to collect a battleship "Tsesarevich" in scale 1/350.

Option B: A slightly more muted color scheme, visually similar to to that of the Continental Army's officer's uniform.
 

A preliminary color concept for confederacy.... A bit 'out there' but it conforms to all historical correspondence as to her appearance.
 

Thanks! I think that Latin American maritime history (maybe outside of Chile and to some extent Argentina and Brazil) has been really underexplored. Eventually I'd like to learn more about the coastal fishing industry's history, but for now that will have to wait.

Hi Grant, please see my PM.  HMCSS Victoria also made extensive use of chain in the rigging but unfortunately, the Rigging Warrant mostly lists the chain as "equivalent to" the listed hemp rope - but no rope size is given; for example for the lower yard slings.   However, there are a few listings: for example, the Tye chain for the fore topgallant yard is listed as 17ft of 5/16 inch , and the topsail sheets and tye chain are listed as 9/16 inch.  However, I can only assume the chain size is the wire size (thickness of the rod used to form the link).  However, please note these sizes are specific for the rigging strength required in this vessel and may have differed to that required in your vessel of interest?  I cannot be more specific about other chain rigging at the moment as I am away on holidays with no access to my reference library, but I do have a copy of the Rigging Warrant on my Laptop.
 
From another document I had access to via a private message I had sent on this forum, I can provide: Middendorf, 'Bemastung und Takelung der Schiffe', 1903, page 401, states that chains running over blocks should be short-link chains.  Brady, ‘The Kedge Anchor’, pages 310/311, confirms this in listing short-link chain for running rigging.  He also informs that ⅛” of iron in diameter is more than equal to an inch of hemp rope in circumference.   According to the Canadian Defence ‘Engineer Field Manual’, Volume 15, Chapter 4, page 62, chain is termed short-link when the length of a link is less than five times the diameter of the wire size and the links are normally oval shaped, giving a good strength to weight factor. 
 
Hope this helps you a little?
 
cheers
 
Pat

Pat, 
Thanks for taking the time to reply.
Your reply adds to and/or confirms what little information I have managed to acquire.
The link Highwayman provided has some useful content, unfortunately the format (manually scanned) makes it difficult for me to work with. Persistence is required.
Thanks for interrupting your holiday to reply.
Regards,
Grant.
 

Unless a I've forgotten my physics (possible) plenty of specific impulse, not enough thrust....

I lived on the top of a hill, and we (the other 14 kids in the neighborhood and I) rolled or slid everything we could come up with down that hill.
 
We made our own "go carts" out of scrap wood and whatever wheels we could find.
 
One just used the wheels and axles from a wagon. The wheel base was very narrow and it had a tenancy to flip and roll, so it had a seat belt, high seat back and crash bar. The front axle was on a board that pivoted on a bolt for steering. We rigged a steering wheel that worked like the steering drum on a ship's wheel. However we initially rigged it backwards so when we turned the wheel to the right the cart turned to the left. Most of us got used to it, but there were a couple of kids that never learned to steer. So I re-rigged it to work right. It had "brake" that was a board that hinged on a large nail. The top end was the handle and the bottom dragged on the pavement. Pull up on the handle to jam the other end into the road surface. It worked to hold the cart in place on the hill, but there was no way it would stop or slow down much if the cart was rolling.
 
A later version used four foot long 2x6s for the axles, with the wheels at the end. The front axle hinged on a bolt for steering, and we just pulled on a rope that connected to the ends of the steering axle. This was much stabler and would not flip or roll, no matter how hard we tried - and we did. However, one time when I tried to do a 180 spin at speed the front axle swung all the way until a wheel jammed into the long 2x8 that was the cart frame. That put the two front wheels more or less in line with the cart body, giving only a triangular footprint on the road, and really putting on the brakes! The cart stopped suddenly and tried to flip, launching me over the front. Fortunately I was wearing a high school football helmet that belonged to one of the kid's older brother. Unfortunately, the helmet broke when I hit the pavement, but I came out of it without a scratch on my head. Then we had to explain how I managed to break the helmet!
 
****
 
When we got a good snow we raced our sleds down the hill in the street. We also sledded down the hill in the lawns, slaloming between tree trunks. The driveways to the houses made natural "ski jumps" and we built up snow ramps to make them even higher. Half the time we parted company with the sleds in the air.

Living in constant fear is corrosive.
 
Since we're all telling dodgy hill stories, here's my variant. I grew up in one of the Great Lakes snow belt zones, where 2-3 feet of snow was a pretty normal ground cover. We lived in a farmhouse atop a large hill, with a steep wooded dropoff behind the house. So one winter some friends and I built an Olympic-inspired luge run down that hill by packing down the snow into a tight, smooth chute that wound its way in sharp curves between the trees all the way to the bottom. Then we hooked up a hose and iced down that sucker. We must have engineered it well because it's a wonder no one flew out of the chute and cracked themselves open on a tree; that thing was fast!

Is there a simple way to add realistic crew in these renders? The main thing that indicates your image is artificial is the absence of any hands visible on deck, or at least at the wheel. Galilee had only eight assigned crewmembers (plus the five scientific expedition members), and all the photos of the ship at sea always had at least a few humans visible topside.
 
Terry

Hey Everyone,
 
I will be posting a major update to Rose shortly, hopefully one of the 2 or 3 final updates before I can stamp the word 'FINISHED' on the thread. That said, as I can't put Rose on a shelf in my bedroom or home office, I'd envisioned doing a series of epic renders with her, rife with special effects and postprocessing... which brings me to my question for the community:
 
Would any 3D Artist out there be interested in doing a compilation collaboration - gotta love the alliteration - with me on a naval battle, perhaps; effectively a modern take on those classical maritime paintings I'd venture to say we all love?
 
It will be a while, granted, but I wanted to put a feeler out there to see if anyone else would be interested...
 
Thx,
-Nate

This is just jaw-dropping.  I recently downloaded blender and just started learning it.  Still very much in the phase of making simple cubes or spheres and learning how to view them and move them.  I cannot imagine the time taken to learn blender well enough to create a model like this, let alone the time to actually create the model.  I guess it brings to mind the old joke...how do you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time.
 
Thanks for sharing.
 

@Martes - Yep, agree with everything you just said, a couple things:
 
The height of the copper plating isn't really something I can fix at this point sadly. I mean - I could of course, but it's unnecessary work given my final renders will have the ship in water. I hate to use that as an excuse, but technically speaking, Rose is already rife with problems, so I want to spend more of the remaining time on this project honing my lighting, compositing, and visual effects abilities. I have, however, sunk her down to the appropriate level in final renders.

 
2. The rings will be removed. When I previously said I saw these on historical plans, I now believe I was confusing modern-era dry-dock mounts with 18th century deck scuppers, which wouldn't be at that level on a small brig, if at all.
 
3. Finally, I will be replacing the union jack with a real Royal Navy flag from the time. The challenge is finding or color grading a texture to match the sail cloth material. Again, I can do this, but I want to finish up the rigging 1st.
 
-Nate

It is indeed a nice touch
 

It does, however, add to the list of anachronistic features that could not have been present at the end of 18th century, like the netting around the guns and the dockyard support rings.
 
As I wrote sometimes ago, the waterline should be higher. It does depend on the stage of the cruise, of course, but the ship does ride too high both to be stable and to have sufficient weapons and supplies on board in your representation. It is not unknown that empty water casks would be filled with seawater to preserve the trim of the ship in some cases. It should be somewhere around XI mark forward. The coppering may reach the waterline, or be a little bit lower.
 
And the gunports and oar ports. While they are usually left open, it should technically be possible to safely shut them with board lids, and for that they need to have sills, like a door:
 

@Maddog Shipyards - Excellent question re: UV unwrapping... So I'll give you a few different answers/things to consider.
 
The whole 'low-poly' concept for real-time applications (i.e. Unity, Unreal, etc.) is widely misunderstood. Keeping a low poly count is mainly important for models used in particle systems like trees/vegitation, or not letting it get to a crazy-high number in models that are complex by nature such as people and animals. Just FYI - buildings, unless you're re-creating a gothic cathedral, should be easy to keep low. Having said that, there is an argument to be made that a game that takes place on the ocean would need all environment models (i.e. boats and ships) to be low-poly because the ocean itself has to be fairly complex geometry in order to look good. Luckily, there's a very convincing work-around: The trick is to layer 2 ocean modifiers on top of each other. The first is a large scale, low-poly plane that will act as the underlying 'waves' or 'swells'. The second is a small-scale, super high-poly ocean modifier that mimics the ripples. Both are baked into a displacement map, but only the large scale displacement is used to displace geometry while the high poly is simply a bump map. The results look like this, and surprisingly - the entire ocean has far less polys than the ship itself:  The 'professional' 3D workflow used by major studios is modelling -> re-topology -> UV unwrapping/texturing -> 3D rigging (not to be confused with rigging on a ship) -> animation (or baked animations - which Blender calls 'actions' - for use in video games). Professional studios have teams of people whos full-time jobs it is to do a specific step in the above workflow. Ergo, as an individual artist, I actually find it easiest to use this rule of thumb: UV unwrapping/texturing should be done in a way that prevents duplicating work. Therefore, I will hold off at least until I'm satisfied that a particular portion is finished from a modelling perspective. However there are two scerarios where you want to texture earlier in the process. they are: Things I'm going to reuse multiple times. (Example: anchors, barrels, bollards, cannons, cleats, columns, deadeyes, grates, lanterns, staircases... you get the idea) Anything that requires an array modifier. (Example: chain links and rope segments... plus maybe a couple little things I'm missing) Hope this helps,
-Nate

Hi thank you all for your kind welcome (names Pam by the way) and I'm expat-ing from the UK to Spain (have been here now for more than 20 years so think I'm settled!)

Most browsers have a feature to translate text to the user's default language. Looks pretty clear to me. Nice job on Bismark!
 
Terry

Thank you Maddog!
 
So years ago, one of my 3D mentors once told me, "At the end of the day, there is no substitute for actual geometry."
 
Weighing in at 6,076,131 vertices and 6,085,643 polys, Rose (a fictional brig - named after the original HMS Rose replica, titled HMS Surprise for the Master and Commander film) is proof of that idea. Even so, I think I would amend that to say, "There is no substitute for actual geometry... where it counts."
 
As to figuring out precisely where that is, well, there in lies the rub, as they say.
 
Best,
-Nate

Good lord the level of detail here is unbelievable. Out of curiosity what is your poly count? You are incredibly talented with blender!

Most browsers have a feature to translate text to the user's default language. Looks pretty clear to me. Nice job on Bismark!
 
Terry

Most browsers have a feature to translate text to the user's default language. Looks pretty clear to me. Nice job on Bismark!
 
Terry