OFFICERS’ COUNTRY
Edit: UPDATED 6/11/10
I’ve always wanted to model the interior of a submarine but the lack of time and motivation has always prevented me. Recently, I was inspired by the excellent work done by Ducimus and Vickers03 in merging the uboat RR with the US subs for TMO 1.8. I started messing around with their work with the intentions of only tweaking a couple of areas. Well….one thing led to another and I ended up making a new interior from scratch.
This project is a learning process. There are many areas that are unfamiliar territory for me. Therefore I am going to need all the help I can get. That is the reason for this work-in-progress thread; to collect as much feedback and technical data as possible to aid the creation process. The success/completion of this mod greatly depends on this.
If anyone has any photos/drawings or technical information regarding the Officer’s Quarters compartment on a Gato, Balao or
Tench class submarine please do not hesitate to share.
Note: Due to all the work done by Ducimus, Vickers03 and the community in general, this interior will be built upon the latest version of TMO.
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About the Interior:
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The goal is to create the entire Officers’ Quarters compartment a.k.a. Officers’ Country. Due to the lack of a definitive source, all interior geometry is based on various sources of the Balao submarine interior.
My primary source is the
USS Ling since I have physical access to her. I have personally visited the Ling on many occasions and was able to take a good amount of photos to help.
USS Ling:
http://www.njnm.com/
My other two secondary sources are the
USS Pampanito and
USS Cod. Both subs have been restored and are in excellent
condition. The Pampanito has a very complete high quality virtual tour of the interior and has proven very useful to the
project.
USS Pampanito:
http://www.maritime.org/tour/ct.php?pano=fl <--Virtual Tour
USS Cod:
http://www.usscod.org/tour.html
http://www.pbase.com/pixelpusher2/cod&page=all
http://peanutbutterandpickles.blogsp...24-part-2.html
Thanks to Nuc who provided the links, I am using a slightly modified version of
SS 381’s blueprints for the layout and scale.
During my research I found that there are many variations between the officers’ quarters compartments even though they are all in the same class (Balao). The different configurations depended on manufacturer and construction date. Couple this with the fact that many of the subs on display today have undergone several modifications/restorations since WWII which make it hard to ascertain what is “original” and what is “new”.
Due to the above, I am not modeling the interior to specifically match any one source. I have decided to use “a little bit of each” to create something in the “likeness” of the real thing.
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Performance:
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A beautiful interior does no good if it makes the game lag. I was told that sh4 is not optimized like sh5 to have fully rendered interiors so we have to be very careful not to go overboard with complex geometry. Things get even more taxing once we throw in animations, clickable objects and extra textures to the mix. Even sh5 uses low polys in many areas; it’s the lightmap/shadows that help hide this and make everything look more realistic.
I want to point out that I am being very conscious about performance while modeling the interior. I am using low polys
wherever possible and only saving the higher polys for areas where the player’s most attention would be. I have set a quota on the amount of triangles/faces for the interior based on my observations of what the developers used for the existing compartments. Some compromises have to be made in the eye candy department, especially if I or anyone else plans on adding additional compartments in the future.
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Compartment Layout:
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Most rooms will be fully rendered with some exceptions undecided as of yet. To help with performance, some of the undecided rooms may end up not being modeled at all or with some very simple geometry just in case the player wanders in.
• Captain’s Stateroom –Full Detail
• Chief Petty Officers Stateroom -undecided
• Junior Officers Stateroom #1 -undecided
• Junior Officers Stateroom #2 -undecided
• Wardroom –Full Detail
• Yeoman’s Office –Full Detail
• Officer’s Galley/Pantry –Full Detail
• Store Room -Not Modeled
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Renders:
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Note the following renders are a work-in-progress; there is a lot of work to be done yet.
Captain's State Room 6/11/10
Comparison #1
Comparison #2
Comparison #3
Misc. Renders:
More renders comming soon....