Martes

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.

The Elephant-style razee. In addition to blackening the guns, I completely removed the solid bulwark from the forecastle, replacing it with netting structure. Now she looks a bit more like an oversized frigate. A little bit.

Much better! Hanging tails of the sitting captain could probably use some work, but the ensemble is already sufficient in conveying recognizable shapes. So the sculptor can do it right after all, if pressured enough

The "long" razee frigate with the same corrections applied:

The 74-razee frigate with correctly sized gunports and darkened guns:

I think many quite underestimate the state of the market of miniature figures. And those things do set certain expectations. (wargaming enthusiasts can discern specific regiments by eye at this scale and manufacturers know this) This means there is a certain industry standard. Just a couple of examples from image search - in 1/58 (28mm) scale:

Another shot from the sailing test, a very dynamic one:

@Kevin, it's the sculptor's hide we are after, not Chris. And that he has taken the money without doing a minimally plausible work by his own - let alone market - standards makes it only worse. I really doubt such "professionals" should be encouraged.

Absolutely unique views of ships that survived into the 20-th century and got on film. Hindustan: Implacable: The sinking of Implacable - note her behavior on open water: Conway ex-Nile: Worcester: Victory in 1925:

There are a lot of figures of comparable sizes that take all the details and forms into account. Type "Napoleonic officer 1:64" into google images. There are correctly styled naval figures, and you won't believe what people do with hussar uniforms Even Hornblower figurine made by the same author is all right. But Hornblower stands straight, and this pose is more complex. The problem here is not seams or buttons (although if the sculptor did know about them, it would really help), but loss of overall shape. I am guessing that the author tried to emulate the cloth when changing the pose of the character the cloth behaved incorrectly due to error in rigidity parameters. From technical standpoint it is a bug, and it is (probably) not very difficult to fix.

A quick in-game test of the new style. Additionally to darkening the guns, I corrected the gunport sizes and extended the artificial shadow to front forecastle ports.

That's "flap" and "breeches" in this case. And their shoes are somewhat too modern. The coats are double-breasted with epaulettes, that puts the timeframe around after 1805, so most likely they should wear half-boots with long trousers, but if we suppose very high-end dress ensemble, the shoes looked differently then and had higher heels and much more prominent buckles. The question is how real you want to make it.

And the tails being separated also adds to both rigidness of the structure and elegance of the silhouette. Note that this horizontal seam is usually almost invisible because it's mostly concealed by pocket flaps.

Maybe I am a bit late here, but the coat definitely appears very ill-fitted from behind: The material appears too thin, following all the body shapes inside (which it shouldn't, broadcloth tends to keep it's own form), and there is no trace of tailoring. The thing is that the back of the coat is composed of several parts with quite rigid seams that ensure that the depicted problem does not happen. References: https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-71256 https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-71336 https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-71607 https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-71431