Age of Sail 2 - 3d ship models for PC wargame

[3DShipWright]

Excellent work, as always Martes.

 

Seeing your ships together in the game makes me yearn for a AAA developer to make a game like this using modern techniques and graphics - and, here's the kicker, make it well! I spent a couple hours this morning re-playing AC Black Flag, and it made me cringe at the direction both Naval Action and the upcoming Skull and Bones have taken...

 

But I digress... keep up the good work.

[Martes]

Thanks!

 

Oh, I can rant for hours how they ruined the Ultimate Admiral: Age of Sail (which was the closest in concept), and why it is bad, but it won't help.

 

Drop the AAA, I really need one or two people familiar enough with Unity and with some time on their hands to make it into something working (sigh). It would still look good and feel real. Even simple anti-aliasing with 1080p resolution, as on the last screenshots, does wonders.

[Jsk]

Great job, Martes!

 

I think we've traveled parallel paths in regards to sail simulators. I got started in 3d modeling long ago making models for the proprietary but mod-friendly Virtual Sailor--version 2 if I remember correctly. I eventually got tired of being limited by a closed system and started looking for alternatives. Every sim system seems to come up short on capabilities or it veers off into fantasy in the search for marketability. Most recently, though, I've been tinkering with the open source fight simulator FlightGear but with boats. (I call it FloatGear.) So far I've imported some of my old models into the simulator with various levels of success and various features. Granted, there's a steep learning curve and I've barely scratched the surface--the challenge is really in the scripting and programming realm rather than the modeling.

 

I consider everything I've done so far simply to be proof-of-concept stuff but I'm convinced Flightgear can be a decent sailing simulator. 'Real Life TM' has temporarily derailed me from working on it for the past couple of months but I do intend to get back to it. Most recently I was working on implementing waves in the simulator.

 

Anyway... You might consider looking into it.

 

I posted a couple in-sim screenshots when I joined MSW:

 

[Martes]

@Jsk, I know of Virtual Sailor (and it's successor Vehicle Simulator), but in a sense I think all those projects are a dead end.

 

A couple of years ago I did experiment a little with Unity - check these posts and several down:

 

https://modelshipworld.com/topic/20250-age-of-sail-2-3d-ship-models-for-pc-wargame/?do=findComment&comment=745551

 

https://modelshipworld.com/topic/20250-age-of-sail-2-3d-ship-models-for-pc-wargame/?do=findComment&comment=746608

 

And it's much more convenient. Ceto, the ocean and floating system, is open source, GIS import is almost native, lots of things there are done already and quite easy to integrate, the scripting concepts are relatively simple, I lack only one thing - time. It's kind of either models or coding.

 

As I said sometimes, what interests me besides the tactical layer, is a ship as a mechanical system, not a representation as a single object. And that means flexible multi-part rigging, cables, boats, anchors, etc.

 

By the way, if you haven't already, take a look at the Painted Ocean:
https://thapen.itch.io/painted-ocean

Edited November 19, 2023 by Martes

[Jsk]

Oh, I agree in regards to looking at ships and boats as machines with various systems.

 

Painted Ocean looks cool. But.. ah, Windows only. I haven't run microsoft stuff for 10 years or so. I'm pretty wedded to open source these days.

 

--jeff

[3DShipWright]

So setting aside programs, platforms, or OS for a second, making a true nautical simulation of a sail-powered ship would require a fundamentally different approach within any gaming engine, and here's why.

 

Normally in a game/simulation, the hero character (a vehicle/vessel in this case) is setup to move through the world and actively interact with the environment. In the case of flight simulator, for example, the player controls the throttle, and once airborne can control the drection of travel in three dimensions. The same can be said of driving simulators in two dimensions (plus rise and fall of the terrain). Yes, physics impose rules - you can crash a car or stall an airplane - but it is still the player who is fundamentally in control of the vehicle.

 

In a sailing simulation, the controls would need to be reactionary. you would start with an environmental factor, wind, and a given compass heading between 1 and 360 degrees. Then you would assign a maximum speed that a vessel could reach if all 'critera' are met. The nuances of all these 'criteria'  are where this gets unbelievably complicated, and is why I believe that no studio has gotten it right.

 

But lets say we were so inclined to be the first. The simplest scenario would be a single square-sail vessel and a yard that auto trims and a wind at a constant strength/direction. (like a viking longship).

 

The movement logic would be something like:

Actual speed = max speed [12 knots] * (1 - (vessel rotation [z-axis] / max crosswind component [wind rotation, z-axis +/- 90 deg]))

 

And that is the simplest relationship I can think of.

 

It all makes my head hurt lol.

Edited November 19, 2023 by 3DShipWright

[Martes]

There are several sufficiently plausible movement models that - most importantly - do not involve calculation of all the forces acting on the ship, and still produce plausible effect. And require very little computational resources compared to raytracing the wind on the sails. :)

[mtaylor]

Way back in the day, I took a hard look at Doom and Red Baron and tried to figure how to.... First person shooter wasn't all that hard but the coding was something else.  Even got a hold of the code for Galgothia, (if I remember the title right). Basically another 1st person shooter but with different few points.   You guys are way beyond that with full 3d or as close as one can get.   One that really hit me hard was a flight simulator from an aircraft company.  The amount of computer power was maddeningly huge.   

 

I admire what you guys are trying to do and hope you have success.  Soooo much more complex and realistic compared to back then.    I doft my hat and hope you have success in your efforts.  

[Martes]

Small corrections to the corvette and bomb vessel models - raised the beakhead rails angle and the bulwarks a little and made properly visible mortar muzzles.

 

Edited December 2, 2023 by Martes

[Martes]

It took several additional iterations to get the head rails angles right and in the same style as other models, and finally the small ships are ready:

 

The bomb vessel

 

 

And the corvette

 

At the same time, I changed the shading of the upper deck gunports on the two-decker razee:

 

and shifted the first armed gun port on the frigate variant slightly forward:

 

The last one was a difficult decision, since some ships had the port shifted from it's original position on the 74 and some hadn't. But it just looks better.

Edited December 6, 2023 by Martes

[Martes]

Now that I have a razee-74 short, I did a razee-74 stretch:

 

 

The 180 ft hull fitted with Symonds-style elliptical stern with classic quarter galleries and elegantly raked aft, based on the plans of the Warspite rebuild of 1840.

 

The texture is not completely finalized and polished at places (you will probably notice that some details are still missing or not completely fitted), but the model already conveys the appearance of the ship.

 

 

Edited December 14, 2023 by Martes

[Martes]

The Warspite is complete:

 

 

And sails:

 

 

 

[Martes]

Some stills from running a rather silly gunnery run - just shooting up some boats - with the Hyperion. Hopefully they might convey the ship's dynamic:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 21, 2023 by Martes

[Martes]

And some more in same setting, in company with the Belle Poule:

 

 

 

 

 

[3DShipWright]

Cool stuff! I especially like the details of the relief carvings on the back.

 

I was also thinking: The lighting trick you used on the cannons (fresnel) could also be used elsewhere to simulate depth. For instance, you could use a two-tone yellow on the reliefs and counter rails, a white diagonal streak on the windows to simulate glare, etc. I can't say for certain it would come out, but just curious if you've tried anything like that?

 

Best,

-Nate

[Martes]

On 12/22/2023 at 5:09 PM, 3DShipWright said:

just curious if you've tried anything like that

 

Most of the stern decorations are, in fact, renderings of 3d objects, including counter rails and window frames, and others are taken either from photos or plans and recolored. The only curves I draw by hand are the boundaries of the sternboard and the taffrail.

 

Ironically, I replaced the glass texture with solid fill at some point, though, because it looked better at this resolution and was easier to reproduce on the hull texture, which is even more compressed - the sterns are usually 256 x 128 pixels for frigates or 256 x 256 for two-deckers, and the frigate hulls until very recently were only 512 x 256. I shifted to 1024 x 256 on the new 74 and razee series and since the game handles them well, will be updating at least the larger frigates gradually, but it all takes time.

 

 

Edited January 5 by Martes

[Martes]

Thanks to Nate ( @3DShipWright ), who has generously provided me with a wonderful render of the ship's boat.

It allowed to update the boat texture, giving them much more realistic look:

 

 

 

Edited December 30, 2023 by Martes

[Martes]

Some shots of the Liffey under way. I made another, almost imperceptible correction to her head rails.

 

 

 

[Arstricos]

Hi! I absolutely love your work! I'm a 3D modeller and a big Age of Sail fan. I was wondering if you could tell me where you get your blueprints from? I've found a couple of websites with blueprints, but nothing I've found has had a big database with several blueprints.

Thanks! 

Again, absolutely love your work, most recently I modelled a Mercury and it was a blast.

[Martes]

18 hours ago, Arstricos said:

I was wondering if you could tell me where you get your blueprints from?

https://collections.rmg.co.uk

 

[Martes]

A situational shot, like many period images. Just for fun.

[Martes]

Reluctant as I am usually to post early images, allow me to present is my interpretation of the bomb vessel La Salamandre.

 

 

 

She's still very much work in progress, and many details will are subject to change.

 

The 998 (21 MG 32) model provided me with necessary justification of applying Napoleonic era style (which I, of course, intended to do anyway, but imagine my happiness when I discovered it was actually done by someone at that time!) and changes to the layout (flush decks, enclosed bow, solid bulwarks), and I intend to follow this model by replacing two fixed mortars with one rotating emplacement.

 

 

 

She also differs from the book plan set in being based on the original Coulomb plan rather than on reconstructed one, for the main reason that the original plan was aligned to the waterline and I thought it would be much easier to use it than to make the model on even keel and then rotate it.

 

My initial plan was to use rotated layout for the stern from the reconstructed set, but it turns out that - while it is certainly not the rule - in this particular case the decoration proposal for the ship fits the original plan very well, as if the designer was, in fact, familiar with the ship's plans and layout. This fit is even better than the reconstruction's, so I extended the purist approach and tried to apply the proposed stern design as is to the model. The difference is primarily in the height of the counters and arc of the taffrail. For the decorations (which are also far from finalized) I used elements from renderings of absolutely marvelous work by @Bernard Huc, with his kindest permission.

 

  

 

When ready, the model will, probably, have at least three variants. First is the travel configuration, which you can see here. An installed foremast, the bomb well covered with deck and boats. The bombardment configuration will feature visible mortar and have the foremast and the boats removed, and finally a sloop configuration will be similar to the travel, but will instead have a full battery deck with 9 armed port pairs. All that, though, is still a long way off.

 

Edited February 8 by Martes

[Martes]

A couple of screenshots underlining subtle differences between a "typical" French frigate and her "anglicized" version:

 

 

Edited February 15 by Martes

[3DShipWright]

Hey Martes!

 

So I can't speak to their effectiveness, but the smaller French vessels hold a special place in my heart. Viva le Corvette! Great work bud.

 

QQ: Is it possible for you to bring back some of the old texturing themes you did and mix them in with your newer ones? Just one man's opinion here, but I think some variance among the ships would go a long way towards the immersion factor. For example: if some ships could use yellow and black instead of the white stripe down the gun deck, that would be awesome.

 

Of course, if you have to use only one texture set, keep it as you have it  The white, black, and red with yellow at the headrails and stern is still my favorite.

 

Best,

-Nate

[Martes]

14 minutes ago, 3DShipWright said:

QQ: Is it possible for you to bring back some of the old texturing themes you did and mix them in with your newer ones? Just one man's opinion here, but I think some variance among the ships would go a long way towards the immersion factor. For example: if some ships could use yellow and black instead of the white stripe down the gun deck, that would be awesome.

 

Each model is done in three paint schemes - yellow, white and red-with-narrow-white stripe. Then it's just a question of the config file selected for the ship in database. I just like the white better than others, so they feature on the screenshots mostly.

 

What I didn't try is earlier variant, covering the upper bulwarks in blue or red with gold decals, but it seems a little bit too archaic.

Edited February 19 by Martes

[3DShipWright]

Very nice!

So forgive my ignorance but how is the game set up: do the models you import only appear once (example: USS Constitution), or are you essentially importing a class of ship from which the game will spawn multiple instances (example: a 44-gun Frigate)?

Just curious.

[Lieste]

2 hours ago, 3DShipWright said:

Hey Martes!

 

So I can't speak to their effectiveness, but the smaller French vessels hold a special place in my heart. Viva le Corvette! Great work bud.

 

QQ: Is it possible for you to bring back some of the old texturing themes you did and mix them in with your newer ones? Just one man's opinion here, but I think some variance among the ships would go a long way towards the immersion factor. For example: if some ships could use yellow and black instead of the white stripe down the gun deck, that would be awesome.

 

Of course, if you have to use only one texture set, keep it as you have it  The white, black, and red with yellow at the headrails and stern is still my favorite.

 

Best,

-Nate

Late ones got a considerable boost with 30 livre no1 or no2 guns (whether as full battery or just chase guns), 30 livre canon-obusier and carronades - later these to be planned for replacement by no3 and no4 guns. 22c obusier no2 on the larger types... while the 'older' styles were trying to be useful with 6 and 8 livre guns, or 18 livre carronades. (the very largest with 24 livre carronades in the main battery.

This makes the late period small vessels almost as useful in numbers as a fewer number of larger ships with the same number of guns - because they are often largely the same types, or are very close in performance to the marginally heavier pattern.

The ancien vaisseaux and batteaux were much weaker both in number and type of gun as the rating was reduced. Of course many of the new 'small sloops' were larger than the old heavy frigates... even though carrying fewer guns, but there is still a modest growth in direct firepower, and a significant improvement in the proportion which 'reaches'.

Edited February 19 by Lieste

[Martes]

43 minutes ago, 3DShipWright said:

So forgive my ignorance but how is the game set up: do the models you import only appear once (example: USS Constitution), or are you essentially importing a class of ship from which the game will spawn multiple instances (example: a 44-gun Frigate)?

 

You have a config file, that indicates the hull model, the textures (damage set,  colour per country, if you want it to by dynamic), the positions of masts, sails and flags. For Constitution that would be something like 44gfrigate_us.cfg

Then you have a database (usrships.cfg), where you set up named entries, that contain the ship's data, weapons, etc, and references the cfg file.

When constructing a scenario in the editor you insert an entry from a database. Of course, you can add/remove/copy/edit database entries.

[Martes]

@Lieste,

 

I had some thoughts if I can substitute the 6pdr (French) guns on Salamandre with 32-pounder carronades - after all the battery is relatively low, the ship framing is very heavy, but the basic establishment for a bomb vessel was 24-pounder carronades. And there should be something on the upper deck - 12-pounder carronades, maybe.

 

Do you have any information about how a French-built bomb ketch would behave under sail? Speeds, maneuverability? The book says Etna was quite handy, while the handling of most of the British ships of this class was very lamented.

Edited February 19 by Martes

[Lieste]

Unsure. Vesuve class bombard/gabarre Dore and Finisterre were originally designed for 16x24 livre caronades (26 pdr english, roughly) with 18 ports, converted to 8x 24 caronades and 2x12" mortars on the centreline, midships. Were flush decked. The earlier Salamandre really pre-dates widespread iron carronades in French service. Ketches to fit the bomb(s) in the bow would make it harder to 'push' the front end around. I think I would prefer the 'broadside' ship. No firm data on that though, just an impression of the balance looking off.

Edited February 19 by Lieste