Martes

As I understand it, Hunt meant he did not have any specific information about the figurehead apart from the original plans. The original figurehead of the Surprise/Unite was, by the way, a decorated shield covered by Phrygian cap, not a human figure, and it is unknown if the figurehead was ever replaced in British service. Your very basic option is white, as most sculptures were made to imitate marble, and this is relatively in line with architectural style of American country mansions. It is possible to use gold/yellow paint for small details, but generally, most of depictions of American ships show white where the British or the French put gold. Most, but not all, and the second option is yellow/gold: The third option is painting them live colors, imitating skin and clothing. It is also not unknown of, at least a model of New Orleans (the lake battleship) features the stern decorated in precisely that style. And for one of the big frigates (either Constitution or the President) as well:

I am not sure those sculptures ever had plating that could be replaced, but there are probably ways to grind a metal or glass (see below) into the paint to achieve similar effect. Most of the paints were made of mix of metallic or mineral powders, after all, and many were poisonous as hell. It's all question of a budget. Nate, I'm not saying it's impossible, just that it's expensive, but if they did invest into decorations, than, actually, why not. But to provide copper plating for sculptures and save on coppering the ship's bottom is a new low. Also, note that the current Rose/Surprise figurehead is not very historical and most of the existing evidence points that figureheads in late 18th century were either whitewashed (to resemble marble/ivory) or painted in live colours. It is possible, however, that greenish mould could produce similar effect on fading and salt-covered white paint. Geoff Hunt mentions in the book on the Surprise: And concerning paints in general:

The sculpture colouring is very good-looking, but I rather doubt it's realism. All the carvings were, obviously, made of wood, and usually would be painted either white (as the most accessible and cheap paint) or, if the captain had means to do so, gilded. At least in Britain this was done out of captain's pocket, not the Admiralty, and I think in the early US there would also be some budgeting problems to produce and provide the ship with very special paint intended only for part of the decorations.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PIQUE_1834_RMG_J5227.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PIQUE_1834_RMG_J5228.png

It is an existing game, called Age of Sail II: Privateer's Bounty. Released in 2000, or thereabouts. I just found the right converters and went as deep into the parameters editing as it was possible. I did some experiments in Unity, mostly to see how cablework can be implemented, but models do eat most of my time. Got too much used to 2.79 Besides, the workflow requires exporting the model to OBJ and then to special converter that creates the game model, so it ultimately does not matter. I tried newer Blenders for terrain generation (blenderGIS, and all that), but I haven't yet figured out a way to make this process (conversion of GIS data to game-specific format) convenient enough, so it's shelved for the moment, and it would be redundant if I ever switch to Unity. Why?

Also note the differences between the French configuration on the main plan https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tourterelle_(1795),_ex_French_Tourterelle_(1794)_RMG_J6363.png and the alterations done in British refit on the inboard plan https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tourterelle_(1795),_ex_French_(1794)_RMG_J6362.png and the differences between Tourtourelle and Unite/Surprise. https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-82858 Surprise had the forecastle barricade completely enclosed, the head was lighter and the bridle ports moved forward of the catheads. From my experience, the detailing of the positions of the bridle ports, cheek pieces and hawseholes on profile plans are in many cases quite inaccurate (to the extent that different shipyards could interpret the same plans differently), and do not always take the curvature of the hull forward into account, so that if you follow the plan exactly you can end up with very stretched and unnaturally looking result. It takes some trial and error to get it right.

Thanks, @Kestros1 Indeed it is much better, but it still ignores the planking, that that should look something like this (this plan is for a different ship, of course): The lines on the original plan are dashed, the planking thickness for each frame is in solid lines. Note, though, that especially on the rounding of the bow, the plank thickness is perpendicular to the surface, and thus in the transverse cut will appear significantly thicker (see this post where I explained it, for example). So your real outline, accounting for the thicker keel, should look something like this (note the waterline marks, the give a rough idea of the planking thickness in corresponding places, as well as the steps at the intersection of the frames and the keel): It is possible, Fusion 360 has some feature to automatically make an envelope of at least fixed thickness around a complex mesh that follows the frames (like Solidify operator in Blender) that make this process somewhat easier, but I haven't found any reliable way to do it except manually.

I am very much afraid it is little late, but hawseholes really ought to be closer to the centerline, and their cuts are parallel to the centerline, not perpendicular to the surface of the hull in the place of the cut. And by the way, why the sudden rectangular cut of the bow? It was round on those ships.

It's a very common error, everybody falls for it at some point. Planking may appear something thin and negligible, but in fact it adds a very substantial volume to the outside form of the ship. Also note that it's the thickness is not uniform, and the planking is thicker towards the wales. Figures in the great cabin is a very nice touch. Will the top cabin be removable to manipulate them?

Does the model include the planking or not? The front view makes the hull appear as if it includes the planking. The stern view shows the hull as if it follows the frame lines. By the way, there is a good quality set of plans of her sistership Tourterelle on wikipedia: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:MediaSearch&fulltext=Search&search=tourterelle+rmg It shows the French configuration, but it may be of assistance. I suppose the extremely wide keel is for the plastic endurance, but those small frigates never had the poop cabin aft even in French configuration, and the deck should not be flat, but slightly curved towards the centerline.

The AOTS book contains the frame thickness in cross-section views (p. 62 and forward)

Also, boolean can come in conflict with mirror, especially if both objects have mirror before boolean is applied, and generate mirrored geometry inside the mesh.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:'Pelican'_(1777)_RMG_J7944.png

Yes, just submerge her to X or XI, and it will look all right. By the way, get rid of those marks as well, they were invented late 19-th century and weren't nearly present in the age of sail.

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:

That's absolutely pixel-induced illusion. And I am quite proud it's so convincing

Nate, First of all, thanks, I am very glad you like them Remember, I deal with a very specific game, which is extremely old and imposing a number of not very obvious restrictions, so everything I do is somehow directed to circumvent those restrictions and still get aesthetically pleasing result. The rule is 1 object -> 1 material -> 1 texture. Multiple objects can share a material (and the texture), but an object cannot contain more than one and a material cannot reference more than one texture. The game can substitute the textures under certain conditions at runtime (config file sets the paint schemes for different navies and damage textures). Also, I have to be very careful with order in which the objects are processed during export. This order is used by the game engine (which is OLD and based on DirectDraw, not even Direct3D) to determine which object will obscure all the others if it is visible. If I place the deck after the hull, for example, it will poke through when rendered. This imposes a limit on the number of objects, their placement and the number and structure of the textures. Obviously, there are no normal maps or anything like it. Everything is just drawn as is, including shadow to give the hull a bit of volume. But then, when you look at a ship from any distance, you won't see any planking details or anything like that under the thick layers of paint that usually covers the hull. I more or less used the Unicorn for the paint basic scheme And to make any modification relatively easy, the I mostly use "project from view (bounds)" on the hull and the stern, since that allows to move the vertices around as much as I want and quickly reapply the texture (which is, essentially, a painted side or stern view of the ship) afterwards - as long as the limits of the bounding rectangle remain the same. What I am not sure is if any of those tricks can be useful for more modern environment, but they definitely work for me.

I found that while I really like the black paint for the flush-decked long 74, an absence of a regular, two-striped variant greatly disturbs my sense of order. So I made an appropriate skin to mend this:

A close-up on both variants of cut-down 74.

Fixed the mast placement in config file:

Traditional post-launch sailing test:

To emphasize the sense of scale: 74-razee, Egyptienne, Liffey, Belle Poule. Keep in mind that Liffey was considered large for a frigate, and was already carrying 24pdr battery. Belle Poule is admittedly small (although, again, for her time she was also relatively large and several similar ships were rearmed with 18pdr guns against original 12pdrs in British service), and what I miss here is the "standard" 38 (18pdr) - that would be the Virginie when I finally get around to rebuild her. And don't let the decorations and raised heads fool you - all of them are still French hull forms.

Colossus, being built to the lines of the Courageux of 1753, is also sufficiently French in that regard. They are both relatively sharp at the entry (quite unlike the absolutely French ships by Forfait, but we'll leave that at the moment), but the difference is in absolute values, of course. She's simply narrower at 43' 8" against 48" breadth of the 74 (and the razee), with only 2.5 feet difference in length and that shows. After all, she was built for 24-pounders and speed, not 32/36 pounders and standing in the line of battle.

Curiously, Lambert (Last Sailing Battlefleet) mentions that certain group from Rochefort seems to have succeeded to assemble necessary funds to keep her, but then the Admiralty got cold feet about returning her to France and said she won't survive being towed cross-channel. Well, she didn't, explosive charges made sure of it.

One of the things that constantly amuse me is when somebody compares L'Egyptienne to a 74-razee. Yes, they are (more or less) of the same length. But you can't mistake one for another (and not because of the stern): L'Egyptienne (top right, bottom left) is much slimmer, her hull long and narrow, compared to the round bulk of the cut down 74-gun ship.