New ships

[gap]

Hi Alex, I am currently reviewing the units you have added to the game and I must say that I am impressed by the quality of your models!

I have a couple of questions/remarks regarding two vessels contained in you ship pack #2, if you don't mind.


Supply ship: as I understand from the file name you chose (AE), this model is supposed to represent an ammunition ship. To the best of my knowledge, most WWII belligerents used a wide array of requisitioned merchant vessels for shipping their explosive ordnance, but only the USA had ships specialized for this role and commissioned in their navy. US ammunition ships of WWII were:

• USS Pyro (AE-1) and USS Nitro (AE-2) (sister ships, no class name);
  
  
• Lassen-class (modified Type C2, C2-T and C2-N) - USS Lassen (AE-3), USS Mount Baker (AE-4), USS Rainier (AE-5), USS Shasta (AE-6), USS Mauna Loa (AE-8), USS Mazama (AE-9)
  
  
• USS Sangay (AE-10)
  
  
• Mount Hood-class (modified Type C2-S-AJ1) - USS Mount Hood (AE-11), USS Wrangell (AE-12), USS Akutan (AE-13), USS Firedrake (AE-14), USS Vesuvius (AE-15), USS Mount Katmai (AE-16), USS Great Sitkin (AE-17), USS Paricutin (AE-18), USS Diamond Head (AE-19)

None of these ships bears any remarkable similarity with your model. From the look of it, your supply ship looks more like a navalised collier, probably not the best choice for carrying ammunition in crates, so my question is, was your ship modelled after any real vessel, or it is an entirely fictional design?


Richmers: going by name and funnel colors, it is easy to conclude that your model is supposed to represent one of the cargo-passenger ships operated by the German steamship company Richmers Reederei, whose vessels were (and still are) named after members of the Richmers family. Compared with Richmer's wartime fleet, your excellent model displays a close resemblance with the following ships: Sophie Rickmers (1920), R.C. Rickmers (1921), Bertram Rickmers (1923) and Claus Rickmers (1924). Despite their difference in linear dimensions and tonnage (the largest half-sister, Sophie Rickmers, had a tonnage of 7033 grt and she measured 134.5 m lbp versus 4188 grt and 112.1 m of Bertram Rickmers, the smallest ship in the quartet), all these vessels shared similar designs and they all were built by the same shipyard, Norddeutsche Werft of Wesermünde. As above, my question is: is your model supposed to represent one of them in particular, or it is a mix of the four of them?

[Alex.B]

Originally Posted by gap

Supply ship: as I understand from the file name you chose (AE)

For the most part, my fantasy + a small part of the ships USS Pyro (AE-1), USS Nitro (AE-2).

Originally Posted by gap

Richmers:

R.C. RICKMERS

Originally Posted by Mister_M

Do you mean "not historically accurate"?.

Pay no attention, this is a joke.

[gap]

Originally Posted by Alex.B

For the most part, my fantasy + a small part of the ships USS Pyro (AE-1), USS Nitro (AE-2).


R.C. RICKMERS

Thank you very much for tour answers Alex!

Out of curiosity, do you have any C2 cargo ship in the making? Stock SHIII features a C2 model. If memory serves SH5 does as well. Starting from a C2 hull to get decent Lassen-class and Mount Hood-class models should be relatively easy ...yes I know "relatively easy" is still a lot of work

EDIT: sorry, I have just realized that you have already ported SH5's C2-S-B1 to SHIII

[gap]

@ Alex.B

Yesterday I had a closer look into your beautiful C1 model, and that inspired me to do a little research. I hope you don't mind if I share my findings here.

The following website has the full list of C1 ships:

http://shipbuildinghistory.com/merch...cargoships.htm

211 vessels of the C1-M-AV1 subtype were completed starting from August 1944. Of these, only 77 were delivered before May 1945, the majority of which (52) being meant as dry cargo ships for the US Navy (hull code AK) and collectively designed as the Alamosa-class. The remaining vessels (25) were retained by the USMC and, I guess, they were operated through various US shipping companies.

Unfortunately I didn't find much information about external appearance and wartime careers of the latter, but Wikipedia has short articles on every single Alamosa-class ship with specifications, service histories and pictures. Here is the index with links to the individual articles:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catego...ss_cargo_ships


In short: 29 Alamosa's were commissioned before the German capitulation, but all of them were attached to the Pacific Fleet, so they were rarely seen in the Atlantic.

Their standard armament was composed of 1 x 3"/50 caliber gun plus 6 x 20 mm/70 Oerlikon AA cannons. For what I can see from pictures, the 3in gun was on a shield mount, fitted on a circular platform at ship's stern. The AA guns were also fitted on circular platforms and they were arranged in pairs: two at the aft end of the superstructure abaft the funnel, two on the flying bridge and two at the aft end of the forecastle.

Besides that, another visual difference from your model was the presence of four 1942 Navy balsa life rafts in two pairs, one by each mast.

Finally, most pictures that I have seen show Alamosa-class ships hulls with solid grey paint, probably Measure 14 Ocean Gray System, nonetheless dazzle camouflage schemes are documented as well. The patterns used were Measure 32, Design 10F and Measure 33, Design 6Ao. The following link has high resolution drawings illustrating the above patterns:

https://www.history.navy.mil/content...amosa&ts=false

On the exact shades of color specified by the measures above, I suggest you to check the following Wikipedia article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_...ouflage_paints

This is all the information I have gathered so far. I hope it will help you with any possible future development of your amazing models

[Mister_M]

Here is another C1 type :

https://uboat.net/allies/merchants/c...class=C-1+type

[gap]

Originally Posted by Mister_M

Here is another C1 type :

https://uboat.net/allies/merchants/c...class=C-1+type

Yes, those are all C1-B steam cargo ships, the subtype with the largest dimensions in the C1 family. If there is enough interest I could do a little research like the one I did for the C1-M-AV1 but, for a start, do we have any plan of their basic design, preferably with hull lines?

[Tigerzhunters]

Hey alex Any idea How you can Import the 3d Meanwhile I always Got this problems



yea i Get thats from sketchup Credit for him [forgor the names]

[iambecomelife]

Originally Posted by Tigerzhunters

Hey alex Any idea How you can Import the 3d Meanwhile I always Got this problems



yea i Get thats from sketchup Credit for him [forgor the names]

Every single part of a ship must be texture mapped if you want to import via Silent 3d editor. That message is because at least one face in the model has not been texture mapped/skinned. You will need to select the un-textured face in Wings3d and then:

1) Right click UV Mapping

2) In the pop-up window, choose segment by projection (or segment by feature detection)

3) Then select continue ->unfolding.

This tells wings3d to texture the face.

[gap]

Originally Posted by iambecomelife

Every single part of a ship must be texture mapped if you want to import via Silent 3d editor. That message is because at least one face in the model has not been texture mapped/skinned. You will need to select the un-textured face in Wings3d and then:

1) Right click UV Mapping

2) In the pop-up window, choose segment by projection (or segment by feature detection)

3) Then select continue ->unfolding.

This tells wings3d to texture the face.

@ Tigerzhunters

Sometimes spotting all the triangles which are missing UV-coordinates can be a hard task. With that in mind, I will add the following point at the beginning of iambecomelife mini-tutorial:

0) In face-selection mode, click on the menu 'Select' => 'By' => 'UV-Mapped Faces' and then again 'Select' => 'Inverse' or Ctrl Shift I (shortcut).

On a partly unrelated note, from your last post I gather that you are trying to import a Sketchup model in game. Unfortunately the Sketchup file format is not fully compatible with the wavefront (obj) standard that most games, including Silent Hunter, rely on. Indeed there are several options for converting from one format to the other, but so far there are no perfect conversion methods. Many times you end up facing corrupted UV-maps, inverted or wrong normals, duplicated or missing faces, isolated vertices, etc. The more complex the object you are trying to convert, the higher the chance of this happening. Fixing those errors and getting a good quality model might get longer than rebuilding the model from scratch.
To learn 3D modelling in Wings3d is not too difficult. Probably it is no more complicated than trying to fix bugged geometries, but for sure it is more rewarding. All in all, if you find any sketchup model that you think might fit in game, my suggestion is not import it directly, but to us it as 3D template for your own work of art

[Tigerzhunters]

Originally Posted by iambecomelife

Every single part of a ship must be texture mapped if you want to import via Silent 3d editor. That message is because at least one face in the model has not been texture mapped/skinned. You will need to select the un-textured face in Wings3d and then:

1) Right click UV Mapping

2) In the pop-up window, choose segment by projection (or segment by feature detection)

3) Then select continue ->unfolding.

This tells wings3d to texture the face.

Woah thx it work But now it like This Just half of him?



So i try for Bretagne Turret so if this work im gonna make this playable for uboat or Ai ship

[Tigerzhunters]

NVM when im try again Its only Mesh 1/24

[Tigerzhunters]

Segmen Wasnt Appear its only Mesh 1/2/3/4/5/6/27

[Tigerzhunters]

Any idea why it like this?



It the wing 3ds After Uv remap



But why its like perforated

[VonDos]

Originally Posted by Tigerzhunters

Any idea why it like this?



It the wing 3ds After Uv remap



But why its like perforated

Reversed normal, i guess...

Best regards,
Vd

[gap]

Originally Posted by VonDos

Reversed normal, i guess...

Best regards,
Vd

Yep

Issues like this do illustrate the point I expressed at post #235 in this thread.

In theory, fixing reversed normals is a relatively easy task. In Wings3D:

• switch to body selection mode;
• select the object which needs to be fixed;
• right click and choose 'separate' from the context menu;
• press the space bar to unselect all;
• still in body selection mode select manually all the sub-objects which display reversed normals;
• right click and choose 'invert' from the context menu;
• select all the previously separated sub-objects;
• right click and choose 'combine' from the context menu.

The problem is that, depending on its complexity, a converted sketchup model can have several tens of small objects with reversed normals.

To make it worse, some geometries might have some triangles facing the correct direction and others reversed. In order to fix the latter without messing up the "correct" faces, one should separate them from the rest of the object by splitting their edges, invert them, and then re-weld them, a task which can't be easily performed in Wings3d.

To make the nightmare even worse, reversed faces is only one of the problems that you might have to address before you can import a semi-decent Sketchup model in game

Is it worth it? My general answer is nope, but that might depend on the model. @ Tigerzhunters if you upload somewhere your converted obj files
or if you point me to the original Sketchup model that you are working on, I might tell you more