The crew on the ships. (MOD Idea)
 

It would be great to make a mod that would allow the crew to actually be seen on the ships. (Merchant ships, tankers, etc ..)

Is it even possible?
What do you think? :Kaleun_Salivating:

Yes, it is possible.

But no one tried to do this?

I think it would be great for immersion, see a bit of life on the ocean.. I miss that in this outstanding game..

It's been done on a few Ships in the past.
NCA_Tuscaloosa and NTRW in GWX are 2 that I'm sure of.

NTRW still contains the AN1 node on the bridge. The eqp file has the AN1 node set to NULL.

Tuscaloosa had some problem so the animations were removed.

One of the big reasons they are not there is lack of good animations.

I am not expert in this area and I know it's a lots of work, but I think if a good 3D animators and people who know how to program, tried together, they would definitely succeed.

I think that such mod, can contribute a lot, especially bring so much realism in the game, maybe people are not aware of how much ..

... Be able to see with the periscope, people who stand or even walk on the deck of a ship is irreplaceable feeling.

No programming needed.
You simply add a node that you'd attach an animation to.
NTRW was pre-SH4 so the node was named AN1
SH4 uses P01 and such.

The actual animations are the harder job.
VERY few new animations have ever been done for SH3.
Even though there are very detailed threads on how to do them.

S3D will import them once created.

If you have the Survivors mod installed?
Your seeing about the most animations ever done for SH3 in use in Lord knows how many installs of SH3.

Is it creating animation essentially demanding? And does SH3 engine allows using the same animations for different ships?

Can animation created for Merchant be used on Tanker ships or Passenger ships etc..?

You can use existing animations in SH3 but most just are not what you want.

Those can be modified if you take the time.

No one has done it though.

Back in the early days? Systems could not handle the extra over head.
Now they can but no one bothers to do the work.

I am aware of that fact, that no one bothers to do such thing, even though they
are pretty much keen for thousands of other "eye candy" mods.

I don`t know nothing about 3d animation and moding, shame...

Most people are 'keen' to download what others have done.
Nothing wrong with that at all.

Most people that can do this kind of mod have moved on to other Games or projects.
Or quit modding completely.
Nothing wrong with that also.

I stopped doing SH3 animations to work on the SH4 animations.
The main reason behind that was to export the SH4 animations to use in SH3.
It's still an active project of mine.

What is your goal with SH 4 animations anyway. Any specific idea?

It would be extra immersion to see nicely animated sailors walking around the decks of merchant ships while planning an attack. On the other hand, when the torpedo hits and the ship is in flames and listing heavily to one side, and those same animated merchant sailors are casually walking through the flames as if nothing happened - that would be worse for immersion.

Does this mean, in theory, that you could take the animated crew member models from the SH4 'U-boat Missions' expansion, re-skin them and put them into SH3?

The most dated graphics in SH3 are the U-boat crew models. Replacing them with SH4 models would be amazing!

http://greatgamer.ru/images/screensh...issions_11.jpg

http://www.mobygames.com/images/shot...ns-windows.jpg

There's a whole big thread about changing the crew 3D models.
:haha:
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=176928

Of course, that would be bad, but it would mean that the MOD is not good, and not completed.
My idea was not, people walking on deck like robots ... of course I expected some kind of behavioral change (at least vanishing).
I know it's hard to do, at least to me. But it will be great.

Silent Hunter 3 is better game than Silent Hunter 5, The game should use great potential that she have.

Don`t you think so?