Help absolute beginner with sub interior creation

[Pistitom]

Hey guys, since there's no ,or very little chance of a modern day submarine game SH5 style, I started wondering about creating new interiors for these awesome cold war/modern day submarine mods. Played through SH3, SH5, so want to try sg. new ( DW proved to be too much of a challenge )
So, I've never done anything related to 3D modelling nor textures, mip-map, render etc, and other alien things, so, need a little help here...with the basics, some tutorials, video, or pdf, etc...
I guess 3ds max (or sg. else ) and photoshop are necessary ?
thank You all in advance for any info, help on this.
This will be the rabbit's hole for me.
cheers

[Snarf]

Wings 3d is free (3d modeling), Gimp 2 (photoshop) is free also. If you have pictures of the interiors you can put the picture into wings 3d and start building all the bits to the picture, but it needs to be a direct view of what you want to build. I am building a useable in game Phalanx CIWS from scratch using said method. An interior will take a rediculous amount of time, but it certainly is doable. BTW you just have to start, immersion and youtube videos are the best way to learn this 3d software, once you start getting a feel for how the commands work it will start getting easier. The texture files are created with Wings 3d, then you add your patterns and colors to that file with Gimp. You will also need Silent 3ditor to import the model into a .dat file, and create your .sim .zon and .cam files.

[Pistitom]

Thank You, I'll try this wings 3d, looks a bit easier than 3dsmax. As for the pictures, well, 100% historical accuracy is obviously out of the question, but I'm curious as to how far I can get with this. After seeing all those mods, it seems nothing is impossible. Anyway, I'll have to start with the basics...I don't want to put some two dimensional panels together and call it a command center, so there's lot of studying ahead :-)
Thank You again
cheers

[Pistitom]

the very first thing....should've chosen sg. easier...
Skipjack1.jpg

[Pistitom]

Guys, I can't get around the torpedo tubes, I'm trying to do a Borei class, just to learn the wings 3d ( I stopped the Skipjack, as there already is one, and I started completely wrong the whole thing-as seen on the screenshot :-)))My hope s this Borei class, it seems I can build a fair 3d model, but the torpedo tubes and doors give me the headache. I can't figure out how to do them properly. I hope this is not some kind of industrial secret ,and the experts can lend me a helping hand. I plan to give this model to the subsim community ( I haven't given anything yet) so, I want it to be really good. Any help is appreciated. Thanks

sounds good. i am working on an interior for the Los Angeles SSN. ps what about your borei? i can show you how to do this with milkshape.

[Pistitom]

Well, my ultimate goal was a full exterior-interior all in one model , but for now I'd be happy with just the exterior. The problem is I couldn't figure out the intersection and combination of the tubes and the hole in the hull. If I just cut a simple circle shaped hole in the hull, it's diameter won't be the same as the torpedo's , obviously, since it's not vertical, thus distorted. I couldn't figure out the way to connect the tube properly with the hole. I found some boolean loop-draw kind of tutorials on intersection of planes, etc, but I can't do it properly, it gets an ugly mess...:-D.
I use Wings 3d by the way.
thx for the quickest reply in forum history

hmm i use two ways to do so. the old one is to put the model to front view so i can see the bow directly, then i add a cylinder or whatever form of the tube door you want, position it in x and z axis and move every vertice towards the bow, until it is positioned upon the surface. then i select the two neighbouring verices of the bow shape and an edge vertice of the tubedoor and create a new triangle. when it is done, i smooth the surface by unwelding the tube and the bow, this creates two objects and the penetrated bow schabe will need furter correction of the edges around the hole. or i simply add the boolean plugin in milkshape, create my 3-dimensinal tube and make it cut into the bow in the desired position, then i make a boolean operation that automatically cuts the hole which i just need to clean from surplus vertices afterwards.do not know how boolean is done in wings3d, but method one should work...
see

https://imageshack.com/a/utnz/1

[Pistitom]

I'm afraid my problem is a lot simpler than that...I can't get to cut a proper hole in the body of the sub, without it being ugly, and I don't know if that's ok...? I I could cut the hole, and weld the tube and body ( Hell, I'm not even sure if that's the correct way to do it...? or combine the two? I really am a beginner...

[Pistitom]

Well, I think I just found what I was looking for....

http://www.wings3d.com/paulthepuzzles/aabridgeweld.html

jap thats it.however i cant get used to wings... nice model btw

[Pistitom]

thanks, it's a long way from being finished....but I still have tons of questions...Let me just list the here, I beg for forgiveness, if these are already answered somewhere on the forum, it's just more simple for me this way...:-)
How many polygons should a sub model have ? Or it depends solely pc performance? ( for eg. SH 5 , You have interior+ exterior, how many polygons are there? )
Should I create the external model proportionate to real life? I mean 175 meters should be 175 wings3d units from the start, or I can just size up the hole model when I'm finished ? ( Why do I have the feeling this is a stupid question ? :-))
OK, that's just for now, but I'll be back..
Thank You very much for Your help, don't go too far

a good model can have 60.000 +

see eg my Whiskey V WIP :

i usually do my models in original size, 1unit=1 meter, and then scale it down by 10 times to match the games engine units, so ingame models are ten times smaller than in original life.

[Pistitom]

Holy cr*p I must've been doing sg. wrong....only after 2 smoothing operations does my sub begin to look the way I want it , but then it has 168.256 polygons... By the way...This triangulation thing...can't understand why that is better, ( I see all these models -including Yours- and all of them have these triangled faces... Ok, I don't think You want to start an online 3d course for beginners, so I promise to hold back a bit on all these questions :-D ....
Nevertheless ,thx for Your time and help

lol guess well keep in touch. stay away from automatic smoothing anyways, its crap