Martes

A bit ironically, I must thank you for reminding me of the Kresta, at least the Kresta-2. Initially I thought I won't need two relatively similar ships, having already converted the Kara to a primary air-defense cruiser. Historically, in the USSR, the Kresta-2 (1134A) came before the Kara (1134B), and Kara contained all kinds of additional systems and improvements. But I am painting Britain, and a very special version of Britain at that, and the British logic dictates that having built several ships of the 1134B project, the Admiralty becomes acutely aware of the involved expenses and requires a smaller, more compact and economical variant, which cuts the close-range air defense and the towed array (because those are moved to the specialized ASW frigates) and results in smaller hull with much smaller crew. This closely mirrors the story of Bristol and Type 42 destroyers in real world, so in our version of Britain the Kresta-2, sorry, the Type 86 Air Defense Cruiser, will be built after the Type 84, and carry the same electronics, missiles, etc., sans the removed capabilities. I can imagine the discussions in stuffy London offices quite vividly, in that Sir Humphrey's drawl - "We are building modern and spacious frigates, whatever we need those enormous cruisers for? Can't we have something... smaller? Oh, and you can put the radar on the funnel and cut the length, why on earth haven't you said so before?"

The remaining aircraft from the carrier complement - P-42 AEW And the attack/electronic warfare aircraft based on Soviet Ko-45 project, which is remarkably reminiscent of one of the real planes planned for CVA-01, which makes the whole thing even more funny:

That's nearly not all. The game, you see, is also prone to alternative reality (which considerably eases my conscience), and it includes a projected Soviet conventional carrier - the Project 1160, full with specialized aircraft, which are also based on unrealized projects. So, in our Britain that's what we have for CVA-01, which (for now) carries the Mig-23A (localized as Hawker-Siddeley Harpy), and P-42 (localized as Hawker-Siddeley Darter) anti-submarine plane (there is an AEW version, I just didn't finish repainting her yet), a specialized attack aircraft that is somewhat close to HS.125 (also not yet finished) in military configuration, and Ka-27, which now bears the name of Westland Kingfisher. And P-42 (localized as Hawker-Siddeley Darter) anti-submarine plane

Disclaimer This is not something serious, I just found another computer game to tinker with. The models are not mine - it is very difficult to change the models except replacing parts like radars or turrets (while it's technically possible to edit the meshes, it requires enormous amount of effort so I won't do that for now certainly), but at least I can repaint them and change various settings, so it is more akin to plastic modelling with decals and paint. The game in question is called Sea Power, it had been recently released as Early Access and it allows to play with various Cold War scenarios. The number of the models the game is released with is relatively limited, and there are no British ships yet. But I wanted some. It took some time, but I finally figured out how to force the game to load textures from external files, so lo and behold, the Royal Navy of Socialist Britain. The British design school of the 70-80's is, in fact, closer to Soviet than US, and simply repainting the Kara (1134b) gives a quite close impression of actually projected circa 1985 Type 43 destroyer. And that gave me a start. Imagine a Britain that ended up in the Warsaw Pact, apply the Russian reversal (in Soviet Britain the Navy economizes on you), and use Soviet projects as base, because there are no other models in the game. So 1134b becomes Type 84 cruiser (as follow up for Type 82 Bristol), 1155 (Udaloy) - Type 24 frigate, and Kiev replaces Invincible on steroids. Harrier is still there (but uses Soviet weapons), but instead of Sea Kings there are now Ka-27s. I used indexes that do not intersect with real ships in order to incorporate them later, when they, as the authors promise, will be released. In short, it's something between a dream and a nightmare for a British admiral - you get what you want, under certain conditions. Alas, it's all so niche I can't expect anybody to understand the enormous amount of joy I get from this, but I do want to share at least the visual part. Don't judge too harshly.

@Robska, that's Solidify Modifier in Blender: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/modeling/modifiers/generate/solidify.html https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/modeling/meshes/editing/face/solidify_faces.html

NURBS to OBJ sometimes produces strange artifacts, especially during triangulation. Note that the quads you see in Blender are actually pairs of invisible triangles, that may (or may not) change when you rotate the model. This can cause visual artifacts when the quads are relatively large, because Blender has an annoying habit to triangulate the quads the wrong way each time.

Extremely sleek and elegant hull form, even accounting for a very deep flat tuck. In a design sense she is a small carrack?

Which will look more or less like this. It's still not easy to fully appreciate Ancien Regime style French carving design in what can amount to pixel-art, but the stern ensemble looks (almost) continuous now.

A couple of new shots of La Salamandre after a long pause. Still a lot of polishing and colour correction remains for the stern, and I am seriously thinking about increasing the resolution of the side texture to make the quarter badges sharper.

Frigates and a bomb vessel:

Some more assorted shots. Warspite, Cambridge, other ships in the background.

Cambridge, darker guns and corrected gunports:

I may be mistaken, the superimposition is very rough, but: With a difference of .7m it seems that you can get the Christiania tumblehome without cutting the original upper works, just extending the sides under the gun deck either by over planking or changing the frame shape.

Liffey, again

Oh, yes, the hull is decidedly French in style, and it would be very interesting to see how you are going to change the bulkheads.