USF Confederacy in 3D | Blender

[Martes]

1 hour ago, 3DShipWright said:

Not sure if this will make sense, but what is missing is the ability to solidify while locking a specific axis.

 

I am not sure if it would help, but while I was working on the Indy, I had a specific problem rotating the gunport lids and found (hell if I remember how I did that) a way to put a rotated local axis into the object, align it with the edge of the gunport, and then rotate the lid about this axis.

 

For the Indy, by the way, I tried to produce the outer shell using Lattice, of all things, and then make manual corrections, but that proved to be in some way even less convenient than just do it by hand from scratch. But then I don't have to cut the resulting model to individual planks.

[3DShipWright]

Well, it's been 1 month to the day since I started Confederacy.

• Framing 90% Complete 
• Outer planking of the main hull complete!
• Starting the Quarter Board and Quarter Piece.

 

 

 

 

[3DShipWright]

I've got the general 'stencil meshes' for the upper/lower counters in place. A couple errors to be sure, but by and large a vast improvement over the original version I did, for which I basically said "screw it" and just randomly shaped the mesh until it was smooth. All the pretty decoration and textures will come later, but you gotta build a house (or an 18th Century frigate) on a sturdy foundation... something I didn't do the first time around...

 

Here's two comparative shots just for fun:

 

New Version (so far):

 

Old Version:

[3DShipWright]

A few current screen captures:

 

[3DShipWright]

Main head rails, cheeks, bolster plates, and the beakneck bulkhead (love saying that, lol) in place.

 

[Montaigne]

20 minutes ago, 3DShipWright said:

beakneck bulkhead

I’d challenge anyone to say that ten times in a row without slipping lol

 

Progress looking good!

[3DShipWright]

Roundhouses, bollards, taffrail in place. Quarter Pieces fixed.

 

[Martes]

These two stern lights (windows) were usually dummy, the framing there is purely decorative with no glass:

 

[3DShipWright]

@Martes - Interesting... So there's no glass in any of them yet, but are you saying the outer ones are essentially 'open air' windows, or that the framing has a solid wood sheet behind it (as seen on the Black Pearl in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies)?

[Martes]

5 hours ago, 3DShipWright said:

a solid wood sheet behind it

that is.

I am not sure if those windows overlap with the ship framing (on some French ships they do), but quarter galleries usually did not have open windows to the stern.

 

Diana

Trincomalee

L'Africaine - note how the dotted contour of the frame crosses the second window and the position of the door inside.

 

There were different manners of decorating the places where those windows would be, from putting dummy window frames or wooden blinds to various decorations there, but since the plan shows framed window, so it should be.

Edited April 28, 2023 by Martes

[3DShipWright]

@Martes - Ah! i see what you're saying now. So I'm not actually sure how that would've been on the confederacy.

 

On the one hand, there was no door to the quarter galleries on Confederacy, just a carve out that went all the way back (very weird, but I verified it. Also confirmed this design feature with other MSW kit builders). Anyway, there was no overlap in the framing which would require those windows to be fake so it could very well have been real glass. The USS constitution is actual glass, and accommodates a seat of ease. That said, it has a much boxier hull, whereas Confederacy looks more like the plan of L'Africane listed above.

 

 

On the other hand, Confederacy also had near floor-to ceiling windows across the stern (Colonial Palladian Architecture style, a precursor to the federalist style of 1785) which would be tricky to fit a seat of ease.

 

So short answer is I don't know lol

[Martes]

6 minutes ago, 3DShipWright said:

On the one hand, there was no door to the quarter galleries on Confederacy, just a carve out that went all the way back (very weird, but I verified it. Also confirmed this design feature with other MSW kit builders).

It is very, very unlikely. I am not aware any ship at that time would be built like that - this renders the gallery unusable, after all.

Edited April 28, 2023 by Martes

[Martes]

Fitting the lines and the stern on the original plan (low-res as it is):

 

you can see that the last line replicates the frame of the transom and all the way up to the taffrail.

This line is not vertical if viewed from the side, but represents the aftermost edge of the hull framing.

 

I marked the tentative positions of the door and the seat of ease in blue, with green marking the level of the deck. The window, as you can see, is clearly crossed by the hull and thus is definitely dummy, French style.

[Martes]

It is also probable, that parts of the side windows would be shut as on Trincomalee above, to provide some privacy to the galleries

And the same with the stern windows, as maybe they would have moved the usual settee from the stern to enjoy the view, but there is still the box of the rudderhead to fit in the center.

 

On a side note, what is quite peculiar, that the her hull lines look neither British, nor French. They appear to be strongly influenced by F. H. af Chapman's "Architectura Navalis Mercatoria" and his "Treatise on shipbuilding". Technically this is entirely possible (the books were published in 1768 and 1775), but very interesting nevertheless as to the why and how was this style chosen, being quite the cutting edge of ship design at the time.

Edited April 29, 2023 by Martes

[3DShipWright]

On 4/29/2023 at 12:28 AM, Martes said:

On a side note, what is quite peculiar, that the her hull lines look neither British, nor French. They appear to be strongly influenced by F. H. af Chapman's "Architectura Navalis Mercatoria" and his "Treatise on shipbuilding". Technically this is entirely possible (the books were published in 1768 and 1775), but very interesting nevertheless as to the why and how was this style chosen, being quite the cutting edge of ship design at the time.

 

Inviting @wernerweiss and @WalrusGuy as other current Confederacy builders if they'd like to weigh in.

 

So yes, American frigates, specifically the Confederacy - were/was quite different than anything else out there at the time. The 'why' these choices were made is actually kind of ironic. But in historical context, they make perfect sense.

 

A few years back, @mtaylorshared an excellent link to letters of correspondence between Confederacy's shipwright and the Continental Congress that shed light on her design and build. For the life of me, I can't seem to find his post again, so I'm paraphrasing from memory here as well as some inferences I drew from the text:

 

1. Most 'American' (I'm using quotes because the notion of America as a country was in dispute at the time lol) shipwrights were trained in service of the Royal Navy, but when war broke out, they were cut off from the design resources and structure of the British Admiralty. This was both good and bad. On one hand, they were free to break status quo and experiment with more modern techniques, such as Chapman's works, but also the Swiss mathematicians, Bernoulli and Euler.

 

2. America had superior lumber (specifically species of live oak and other greenwoods), but inferior or simply less availability to copper. In 1781 the American Navy finally followed suit of the English and mandated that all military vessels be lined with copper. However, that's not to suggest they didn't understand it's importance well before that, and my guess is confederacy was intended to be sheathed.

 

3. Confederacy can best be described as an overly ambitious project and an un-realized dream. At a time when the American Navy had a grand total of 6 warships and a handful of repurposed sloops, the Confederacy was to be the Flagship of the new nation. She was ornate, featured dozens of hand-sculpted carvings, and was stylized in an Italian sub-set of Neo-classical architecture, known as Palladian style.

 

4. BUT - not only did she repeatedly run out of funding, when the build inevitably ran over schedule, she was rushed out to sea. So instead of a copper hull, she got one of white oak, poorly painted white. In the cold waters of the North Atlantic, white-bottom hulls could stave off large quantities of marine growth. However, a single trip to the Caribbean, the pesky teledo worm had bored enough holes in her hull that wood rot consumed her greenwood framing within a few months.  Finally, instead of 38 large caliber guns and several carronades, she left port with 28, comprised solely of 12pdrs and 6 prds.

 

As I promised my build of her would be as close to historically accurate as possible, I intend to show her [paraphrased]

 

"Prepped for copper but hastily white-washed below the wale, black wale and top-section, red internal planks, a hull above the wale of 'natural ochre', trims of red, white and blue, and carvings of natural wood." That's a surprising amount of color, and means the typical yellow, black and red as seen on the MSW kit is not actually correct, but to be fair, I don't know if those letters were publicly available when they came out with the kit.

[wernerweiss]

Hello 3DShipwright,

Thank you very much for your invitation,  I am deeply impressed by your work. 

As a builder of the MSW kit I am highly interested in your project and look forward to your progress.

 

Best regards 

 

Werner  

[3DShipWright]

Hey Everyone,

 

So it's been a while since I last updated, and I'm pleased to announce the project is progressing, albeit at what feels like a snail's pace. Still, here some of the more noticeable additions/developments:

• Knightheads modelled and placed
• Beakneck doors modelled and placed
• Bobstay separated into its own piece
• Covers placed atop the roundhouses
• Seats of ease modelled and placed inside the roundhouses
• Internal Planking completed from the top of the quarterdeck down through the waterway on the gun deck
• Breastrail modelled and placed on the aft quarterdeck behind the main mast
• 'Confederacy' Name displayed across the upper counter at the stern (The U.S. eventually followed suit of the British practice of not attaching, painting, or otherwise displaying a man-o'war's name on its hull, but not until 1785)
• Channels modelled and placed
• Glass added to windows
• Paneling placed behind window framing on the 'false windows'
• Catheads added with sheaves
• Headtimbers placed using Bezier curves (minor adjustments required)

And now for the screenshots:

[3DShipWright]

A preliminary color concept for confederacy.... A bit 'out there' but it conforms to all historical correspondence as to her appearance.

 

[3DShipWright]

Option B: A slightly more muted color scheme, visually similar to to that of the Continental Army's officer's uniform.

 

[wernerweiss]

2 hours ago, 3DShipWright said:

Option B: A slightly more muted color scheme, visually similar to to that of the Continental Army's officer's uniform.

 

Marvellous, gorgeous, fantastic, amazing.......!

[3DShipWright]

And we have a winner! Bear in mind this is a preview of the color theme only... The actual texturing will take months and will look much, much better  

To give you all an idea - I haven't even UV unwrapped everything yet. I just wanted a break from modelling. Still, not in bad shape for the 3 month mark.

 

 

[3DShipWright]

A Proper Rudder!

 

[Bruma]

You are doing a tremendous job! 

As a blender user too, I'm well aware of the effort needed for complex projects such as this one. Thank you for sharing and inspiring us! 

I'm particularly interested in your uv techniques (still to be done) and your materials. Even now, they look quite good! 

 

 

 

[3DShipWright]

@Bruma - Thanks! Yeah, for a 'labor of love', this project certainly feels a lot more like a labor at times.

 

And I'm always excited to meet fellow blender users

[3DShipWright]

This is the first of about a dozen relief sculptures that outline Confederacy's stern. I will use two organic characters I modelled from scratch for a 3D anatomy class I'm taking online - one male, one female - to get all the sculptures added to the stern. I will then use their armatures to not only pose them properly, but to change their facial features and body types subtly, so that hopefully in the final product they will look as if each one was carved individually, and so they don't look like clones of one another (even if in fact they are).

 

Her hair is a different story. This will be the only time in this project that I use 3rd party models. I've decided to spend the $5-$10 bucks and buy a real-time hair pack from an online marketplace. 

 

 

Note: This one was very hastily posed, at this point I'm simply getting a feel for approx size as well as experimenting with how to get the cloth simulation to drape her skirt in a way that it looks like wood. Ironic, isn't it... cloth made to look like would that was sculpted to look like cloth?  

 

Anyway, here she is...

 

 

 

[3DShipWright]

Under the hood shot of the deck beam and framing. As it seems to be working well for this project, I once again modelled general shapes first, then gradually upped the detail and sophistication in subsequent passes and/or working sessions. About 50% done with the deck framing, at which point I'll move on to partitions, hanging knees (knee braces), and then the 'fixed' fittings.

 

[3DShipWright]

@Martes - moving our conversation to the build log as others may benefit from your advice as well.

 

Okay, so I've done a quick and dirty fix to the 1st problem area you pointed out. A couple things: I do think for this to work, I will have to do the section immediately aft as well. also, I did my best to move the camera angle so the sun illuminates the top of each strake so we can see what's happening from top to bottom as you look down the hull (not sure it'll come out in the compressed photos though).

 

Here's the before and after shots...

 

1. Before

2. After

 

I am getting a slight 'warp' in the wale because, technically speaking, the additional smoothing would have to be perpendicular to the normals (i.e. normal tangent) and not just global XYZ to be correct. Still, it's encouraging that this may be easier to do than I initially thought.

 

 

Thx,

-Nate

Edited August 5, 2023 by 3DShipWright

[3DShipWright]

Quick update:

• Starting to add ornamentation to the stern gallery, quarter galleries, and deck houses
• Color theme changed to a more 'classic' black and white theme, with patinaed (both copper and bronze) sculptures
• Rudder end cap completed
• Bolts finished on the gudgeon and pintle straps
• + much more not shown in this particular screenshot... addl updates to follow soon!

[Martes]

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.

Edited August 22, 2023 by Martes

[3DShipWright]

@Martes - Hard to see from one screenshot, but if you were to look really close at the texture, I even went so far as to try to mimic a thin layer of bronze/copper atop a wood carving. I do believe the gilding - likely bronze due to copper shortages in the Americas during the revolution - to be historically accurate. The 'patina' material refers to the oxidation of these metals and occurs faster on thin layers. To accomplish this in 3d, I mixed the normal maps of the wood grain smoothly with that of the bronze sculpture material at about a 30-70 percent ratio. I then sharply painted the corrosion (patina) to the cervices (I tried using geometry nodes to calculate where the actual cervices are procedurally, but that proved to be serious overkill). The albedo/diffuse maps only mix the bronze and patina materials, understandably.

 

As to the question of budget, yes there were funding issues during Confederacy's construction - lots of them! Yet Confederacy was built to impress; to be the unofficial 'flagship' of the American Navy at the time, and ironically, historical letters of correspondence will show that money was in fact wasted on her external beauty while neglecting important things like copper sheathing or even, you know, cannons.  

 

SCREENSHOT REFERENCE KEY:

 

1. Wood grain normal/bump map visible

2. Bronze normal/bump map visible (Note the chipping and denting effects)

3. Hand-painted patina effect. As an added bit of realism, the patina mapping also controls the metallic shader (Bronze is a ferrous metal, whereas rust and other environmental corrosions diminish these light-based properties)