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

[Martes]

And shifting the rig from normal state:

 

 

To storm-riding:

 

 

 

Topgallant masts lashed to the port side of the masts proper, topmasts lowered, main yards on deck, topsail yards on tops, flying jibboom stricken.

I will, in all probability, add staysails and maybe even studding sails at some point.

[Aidedecamp]

Are you importing the models in a new engine? Unity Engine? The UI in one of the images and the grass texture of the terrain look familiar  

[Martes]

Experimenting with it, yes.
I thought to try to implement things absent in the old game - and those I would really want added - like anchors, towing, boats, tricky sail maneuvering, if I ever get to it. The general idea is to recreate the old functionality with various additions, but that's too broad to consider it seriously at the moment.

[Martes]

Towing test!

 

 

[Martes]

Spring cable, a technique used to rotate the ship around in place:

 

 

 

[Martes]

The frigate range as it is now. It's all the ships I already posted, but I've been gradually polishing them to a single standard.

 

 

 

Edited April 13, 2021 by Martes

[Martes]

And ships of the line. The Cambridge and the Christian VII are in the middle of a rebuild, hence the black deck and missing forecastle ports.

 

 

 

 

Edited April 13, 2021 by Martes

[Martes]

 

Vernon, with Albion in the background

 

 

View on Pique around Vernon's stern

Both ships are slightly updated, and I liked the view angles enough to post them.

[Martes]

Finished rebuilding the L'Egyptienne.

 

 

 

Well, not exactly It was a long attempt to make a British frigate if they did build on her lines (on the occasion they didn't, as it was considered too expensive, but the project was considered for some time). I used the NMM plans with a British style stern (as it was actually fitted to her) and slightly straightened the gundeck forward, enclosing the forecastle and adding bridle ports with a late-war head.

 

More or less the changes are similar to the process that most French frigates were subjected to under Large Repair or if a copy was ordered to be built.

 

With very special thanks to @G. Delacroix

 

Edited April 28, 2021 by Martes

[Martes]

L'Egyptienne under sail:

 

 

 

[Martes]

One of the advantages of not having to cut the gunports is the ability to rearrange them relatively easily.

 

So the I made a slightly different texture to the Albion:

 

 

 

To make them look like the Princess Royal or razeed Queens. Underneath it is, for now, the same model, but it would be impossible to tell unless looking at the underwater section

 

 

Hopefully, it will do for now. The hull shapes became so complex the pauses between finishing the ships are now much longer.

Edited July 22, 2021 by Martes

[Martes]

Shifted the stripes on both skins slightly higher forward (turned out they were out of sync with the plans for some reason):

 

Edited July 22, 2021 by Martes

[Martes]

A little sense of operational perspective:

 

 

 

My current testing scenario, depicting a harbor blockade. The three little ships around the center are bomb vessels moving to position (top image) and bombarding the fort (bottom), with other ships positioned around.

Edited July 27, 2021 by Martes

[Martes]

Some random views on frigates.

The camera in the game is extremely tricky, but it's possible to get good angles, especially when not juggling controls

 

 

 

 

 

[Martes]

Finally finished the rebuild of the Cambridge.

You know my love for Hohlenberg's designs

 

 

Model with and without wireframe

 

 

 

Colossus, Cambridge and Albion - almost a century of evolution

Edited October 7, 2021 by Martes

[Martes]

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 6, 2021 by Martes

[Malazan]

These look really good, you should check out the upcoming Skull and Bones from Ubisoft

[Martes]

37 minutes ago, Malazan said:

These look really good, you should check out the upcoming Skull and Bones from Ubisoft

 

That's as far from historical reconstruction as one can only imagine.

[Malazan]

LOL sorry, I should have read closer about the Historical Accuracy. I thought maybe you just like playing PC games dealing with the Age of Sail. Not many real good ones out there.

[Martes]

I looked at the gameplay trailer, and that "rig sails for speed" command knocked me out, literally. And sinking ships, again. Hell, wooden ships sank in combat so rarely, nobody really remembers when and if it happened. They could burn, they rarely exploded, usually they were captured, but to sink one was while not impossible, but extremely difficult.

 

And the square rig is so fascinating system, it's just a pity modern games use it as a graphical representation of a screw engine, not even understanding it was a thrust-vector. And I can go on and on about this. All the concepts of age of sail combat are different from what we know from later.

[Malazan]

There is also a new one called Ultimate Admiral: Age of Sail

 

It incorporates land and naval battles from the Napoleonic era

[Martes]

I know. A spinoff of Naval Action. It's positioned as a remake of AOS2, but inherits the worst parts as well - and adds very limited editability. Horrible controls, no scenario editor, same problem with damage and maneuvering as with everybody else. Calculates wind better, has land combat, but otherwise... Ships can't even tow a boat.

 

Anyway, with all my woes with modern naval games, I am quite content with this old engine and what I did with it, and when it won't be enough, I know which way to approach this subject in Unity. This thread here is to show off the ships

Edited October 7, 2021 by Martes

[Martes]

Let's say I felt a need for a distinct adversary craft.

 

[Martes]

One of the units that was very needed, but eluded me for some time was a sloop. Small ships should be relatively frequent, but somehow I haven't got around to making one for a long time. I looked at the Bonne Citoyenne and Fylla, then I thought I needed something that can (at least potentially) be made in both open and quarterdecked variant and turned my attention to Cyrene, but still somehow held off.

 

Then I found a plan of a Russian corvette, the Spitzbergen of 1803:

And the more I looked at the plan, the more something rang very familiar in the shape of this hull. The lines looked like something I definitely saw already.

 

Endymion. No surprise here, the Speshny class was already in series, and highly regarded. But it definitely gave me an idea.

 

And since scaling the design up and down was something not unknown of, I thought I might just do the same.

So I took Endymion's hull, scaled it down, slightly squeezed from the sides, replaced the deck, fitted a different stern and adapted head, applied a new texture... and got a ready quarterdeck corvette. The differences between the resulting ship and the original draught of the Spitzbergen (straight rudder-post, inclined keel and slightly different shape of entry) are negligible enough and certainly a small price to pay for getting a new ship with so little effort 

 

 

And so, I got a neat little 110ft corvette, of sufficiently French lines and Regency finish to be able to represent a ship of this class in almost any European navy, fit for escort duty, surveying, gunboat diplomacy and exploration voyages. What else would I want?

 

A bomb vessel, of course! Well, I did have some sort of it, restoring a shabby model of a transport from game files and utilizing an unused gun caliber to make some sort of bomb vessel capability, but looking at conversion plans for Meteor (ex-sloop Star, a ship of very similar size):

 

I thought it perfectly possible to follow the scheme, and make a bomb vessel of my own:

 

 

 

Edited December 31, 2022 by Martes

[Martes]

Once again, I rebuilt the Colossus.

 

The model retains the round bow I borrowed from the Tremendous refit of 1810, and has greatly corrected the curves forward, where simply adding plank thickness to stations do not work (I already tested this on several frigates and newer ships and while considering to reapply it to the Colossus thought I'd bring her to standard - with more vertices for the hull and higher-resolution textures):

 

The photographs of a French 74-gun ship model by Mr. Augustine Pic were enormously helpful, as the model has cuts in the exact places that give the idea of plank thickness and difference between the outer shell and the frames (and since the Colossus/Carnatic/Ganges were a copy of Courageux of 1757, a ship very contemporary to the model, the resemblance is not completely coincidental)

 

  

  

  

So as a result I have another example of my favourite principle - a ship of French design of 1750, built for Louis XV, in British Napoleonic coat, serving George III and in certain sense - Louis XVIII.

 

Edited January 15, 2023 by Martes

[Martes]

A ready hull of a 74-gun ship, however, opens an attractive venue. It can be razeed. Moreover, it can be razeed in more than one way.

 

It is, of course, an amalgamation of designs - no ships of this class were actually cut down in this particular way, so I took the plans for razeeing the Elephant, with a fully covered upper deck, but I did not change the port configuration of the upper deck, as on earlier ships (Saturn and Majestic), and lower head, as consistent with most depictions of the Majestic.

 

 

There was, however, a very puzzling question about how to paint her.

 

Majestic is depicted as having:

 

- single wide stripe between decks

 

- single stripe over lower deck

 

- single stripe over upper deck

 

- stripes over both gun decks

 

of which two configurations are attributed to her during a one single engagement, and two others - during the other.

 

Owing to the quote of captain Hayes that she would be easily (?) mistaken for a large frigate, I ruled out the two-stripe configuration, and finally decided to keep the lower stripe bright, as was done on later medium-sized indiamen that were similar in hull configuration:

 

And there is the variant cut down to fully conventional frigate, but it is still under construction:

 

Edited January 15, 2023 by Martes

[Lieste]

The Stripe on her "upper deck" is likely what caused a confusion - as a Liner this would be her upper gun deck of 18s, as a frigate, by convention her upper/gun deck of 32s - and one of the artists not recognising the convention applied the line ship convention to a frigate - I agree with you and think the stripe should be on her 32pdr deck, rather than on her carronade bulwark.

[Martes]

The confusion indeed is enormous, but almost until the last moment I thought of the stripe going between the decks, as on the first picture, as a distinct possibility.

 

However, Gardiner quotes Hayes:

 

her appearance [is] so deceptious that any one would go down to her for a frigate, having much of the appearance of one of the American frigates; I hope more of the small 74-gun ships will be equipped in the same way, these seas requiring no other ships, it would be a great saving.

and adds:

"Judging by the draught, it is difficult to see much resemblance with an American frigate, although the rasees were said to carry a black-painted cloth to disguise their gangway ports."

 

and this effectively rules out anything but the lower stripe, since black cloth applied to anything else would look totally strange.

 

It is interesting, that despite the inconsistencies in paint schemes, all the artists that drew her from bow-on perspective, display a lower head, not built-up variant appearing on the plans. It looks better, undoubtedly, and I would likely have done it even without such confirmation, but it's still a nice detail.

 

Additionally, using the Elephant layout, with the covered upper deck, makes it possible, with adding the second stripe, adjusting the topsides texture, and adding guns to the spar-deck, to represent a standard 74 built without roundhouse, which I might do later.

Edited January 15, 2023 by Martes

[Martes]

In-game screenshots of the new ships:

 

 

 

 

Russian exploration sloops in polar waters

 

 

His Majesty's bomb vessels

 

 

The new Colossus as 74

 

 

And as a razee.

Edited January 19, 2023 by Martes

[Martes]

Finished yet another iteration of Cambridge - the same fix of the fore part, more or less, that was applied to most of the ships already, with various little adjustments to head rails and texture.

 

If more detailed testing will not reveal serious deficiencies, it will be possible to begin backporting the hull to make a new version of Christian VII... And possibly, something else.