[WIP] Ship Silhouettes - Modder's Resource

DanielCoffey · 06-03-20, 04:09 PM

SHIP SILHOUETTES

This Modder's Resource Pack is a collection of clean and complete Ship Silhouettes inspired by the vessels in the Fall of the Rising Sun Ultimate Mega Mod. It will hopefully also be a useful resource for owners of other Mods that add to the vanilla ships.

This is not an actual mod itself that you can install using JSGME. Rather it is intended to allow other modders (including FotRSU) to incorporate accurate silhouettes into their own mods. If you are using a mod that you think has incorrect or incomplete silhouettes, please ask the author to have a look at this mod in case any of the vessels are a direct match for theirs.

Each vessel in the game has a folder in Data\Sea\VesselName\ in which is a VesselName_sil.dds file. You will probably find that your favourite mods may or may not have one or more silhouettes at 90 degree, 45 degree and 0 degree offsets. The 45 degree and 0 degree silhouettes are often absent. My new silhouettes contain all three viewpoints.

All silhouettes are taken with an Orthogonal viewpoint rather than Perspective to show masts and rigging to best effect and to avoid perspective issues with funnels and bows.

Unless the silhouette states otherwise by the use of a "red aiming line", it is assumed the Top Of Mast point is to be used for all vessels. It is my intention that the very large majority of vessels will use this standard.

The vanilla silhouette textures are normally 512x256 pixels in size. This only allows 128 pixels for each view of a ship and is somewhat small. I have decided to issue these silhouettes in 1024x512 size to incorporate greater detail in the pictures. It will not affect the size of your Recognition Manual on your screen. If you are playing the game at low resolutions you will probably not see much difference but players with larger monitors will hopefully see an increase in detail in the silhouettes with reduced "fuzziness". If you need to reduce the size of the textures back down to 512x256 due to constraints in your hardware, any suitable graphics program should be able to do so. They are saved as DDS DXT5 with Alpha but no MipMaps.

SIZE DOES MATTER!

In addition I have calculated exact Length, Draft and Height values for every vessel in this resource pack based on the actual dimensions of the model used in the game. You will find that over the years the dimensions of the vessels have often been estimated and are frequently grossly incorrect.

Length will benefit those wanting to use manual speed calculations. Draft is essential to know what depth to set for contact or magnetic torpedoes. An accurate height is essential for good rangefinding with the Stadimeter.

Of the vessels checked so far, the Ansyu Maru is only actually 75% of its listed length. The Ada Maru is only half its listed draft while the British War Melody freighter is almost double. The Akita Maru and Zinbu Maru are actually 80% taller than their figures suggest. This makes good firing solutions almost impossible for these vessels.

The correct figures will be listed in table form with every block of vessels released. In the "Method" section below I will outline how I have derived these figures.

To use the accurate figures, compare them to what is in the Data\Sea\VesselName\VesselName.cfg file using Notepad and make any appropriate changes.

PERMISSIONS

You don't need ask me for permission to use the contents of this mod for any reason. You have it. You can add to, subtract from, alter, enhance, embellish, patch, improve to your hearts content. You may add these resources to Compilations. You may re-upload it anywhere. You may print the images in your own hardcopy Recognition Manuals. Once complete I will release the Photoshop PSD file to help you do this conveniently. This is an Open resource that will hopefully prove useful to any Mod or Mega Mod that adds vessels to the game.

DanielCoffey · 06-03-20, 04:11 PM

DOWNLOADS

DOWNLOAD Merchant Pack 01 : http://www.dcoffey.co.uk/images/sile...sMerchant01.7z
File Size : 1.4Mb
Version : 2.1
Release Date : 27/09/2020

Included vessels : NKLCS_Heian, NKLCS_Nagara, NKLSS_Hakusika, NKLSS_Hansa, NKMCS_Akita, NKMCS_Hansa, NKMCS_Heito, NKMCS_Zinbu, NKMSS_Ada, NKMSS_Aden, NKMSS_Ansyu, NKMSS_Biyo, NKMSS_HogIsland, NKMSS_JP, NKMSS_Kinposan, NKMSS_WarMelody, NKMSS_WM, NKPMCS_Express, NKSCS_Taihosan, NKSS_CAT, NKSS_Yae, NKSSS_Kasagisan

DOWNLOAD Merchant Pack 02 : http://www.dcoffey.co.uk/images/sile...sMerchant02.7z
File Size : 1.8Mb

Version : 2.1
Release Date : 18/09/2020

Included vessels : APD_Manley, JP_ShinshuMaru, HeianTender, M35Hansa, M35R, NACA3 ,NAMC ,NAMJP ,NAS_Canopus, NAS_Pelias, NCVW, NECT_Hansa, NKGHAN, NKGHAP, NL_B, NL_C, NL_T01, NLL, NLST, NLUS_Bremen, NOL_Nippon, NOL_Nippon2, NOL_Schliemann, NOM_Buzyun, NOM_Paula, NOS_Haruna, NOTM_T2

DOWNLOAD Small Vessels Pack 03 : http://www.dcoffey.co.uk/images/sile...llVessels03.7z
File Size : 0.9Mb
Version : 2.0
Release Date : 23/06/2020

Included vessels : CH_Gunboat01, CH_Gunboat02, JPFish01, JPFish02, JPGunBoat01, JPGunBoat02, NA25Daihatsu, NADaihatsu, NCDaihatsu, NCO_Bathurst, NCO_Flower, NF_boat, NfishingTrawler, NLCVA, NLCVP, NPT_Br, NPT_Schnellboat, NSampan01, NSampan02, NSampan03, NSC_Subchaser, NTRW_, NUSTUG, STUG, USGunBoat01, Whalechaser

DOWNLOAD Liners Pack 04 : http://www.dcoffey.co.uk/images/sile...tesLiners04.7z
File Size : 0.7Mb
Version : 2.0
Release Date : 23/06/2020

Included vessels : NPL_Conte_Verde, NPL_Hap, NPL_Hikawa, NPL_Horai, NPL_Kiturin, NPL_RC, NPPE_, NPPQ_, NSHOS_, NTUS_

DOWNLOAD Miscellaneous Pack 05 : http://www.dcoffey.co.uk/images/sile...ettesMisc05.7z
File Size : 0.8Mb
Version : 2.0
Release Date : 26/06/2020

Included vessels : AuxSubchaser, CO_Kaibokan, JP_SubTender, NATF, NDA_Sirtori, NKSQ_ ,NKSs_ ,NOTMs, NPS_Tyohei, NTR, NVV, NVV2, OldCorvette, Sub_Depot_Ship, T07B, T07US, W-19

Please note that IJN_SubChaser has been renamed to JP_SubChaser due to a pending name change.

DOWNLOAD Carriers Pack 06 : http://www.dcoffey.co.uk/images/sile...sCarriers06.7z
File Size : 1.3Mb
Version : 2.1
Release Date : 14/09/2020

Included vessels : NCV_Akagi, NCV_Enterprise, NCV_Hiryu, NCV_Hiyo, NCV_Illustrious, NCV_Kaga, NCV_Saratoga, NCV_Shinano, NCV_Shokaku, NCV_Soryu, NCV_Taiho, NCV_Unryu, NCV_USEarlyWar, NCV_USSEssexCV9, NCVE_Akitsu, NCVE_Attacker, NCVE_Bogue, NCVE_Casablanca, NCVE_Kaiyo, NCVE_Ryuho, NCVE_Shoho, NCVE_Taiyo, NCVS_Chitose, NCVS_Nishin, NCVS_Yoshino

DOWNLOAD Submarines Pack 07 : http://www.dcoffey.co.uk/images/sile...ubmarines07.7z
File Size : 0.3Mb
Version : 2.0
Release Date : 21/06/2020

Included vessels : AI_Fleetboat, AI_Fleetboat_Static, AI_Pigboat_Static, AI_Uboat9d2, NSS_A1, NSS_AM, NSS_C3, NSS_Jyunsen_B, NSS_Jyunsen1, NSS_Kaidai4, NSS_Ko, NSS_Sen_Taka, NSS_Sen_Toku_I

DOWNLOAD Escorts Pack 08 : http://www.dcoffey.co.uk/images/sile...esEscorts08.7z
File Size : 1.3Mb
Version : 2.0
Release Date : 29/06/2020

Included vessels : NAuxCru, NDD_Clemson, NDD_Minekaze, NDD_Mutsuki, NDE_Akikaze, NDE_BType, NDE_Buckley, NDE_Chidori, NDE_ChidoriII, NDE_CType, NDE_DType, NDE_Evarts, NDE_JCB, NDE_Kisaragi, NDE_Parker, NDE_ParkerII, NDE_PB102, NDE_River, NDE_Tachibana, NFF_Tacoma, NML_Okinoshima, NMS_No13, NPC_01, NPC_461, NPC_Black_Swan, NPC_Black_Swan_Elite

DOWNLOAD Destroyers Pack 09 : http://www.dcoffey.co.uk/images/sile...estroyers09.7z
File Size : 2.2Mb
Version : 2.1
Release Date : 21/07/2020

Included vessels : NDD_1936A, NDD_1936B, NDD_A&B, NDD_Akatsuki, NDD_Akizuki, NDD_Asashio, NDD_Bagley, NDD_Benham, NDD_Benson, NDD_C&D, NDD_Fletcher, NDD_FletcherII, NDD_Fubuki, NDD_FubukiII, NDD_Gearing, NDD_Hatsuharu, NDD_J, NDD_Kagero, NDD_Kamikaze, NDD_Mahan, NDD_Matsu, NDD_Menaki, NDD_Momi, NDD_MomiII, NDD_Narvick, NDD_Porter, NDD_Shimakaze, NDD_Shiratsuyu, NDD_Sims, NDD_Smith, NDD_Somers, NDD_SU1, NDD_Sumner, NDD_Tribal, NDD_Type7y, NDD_V&W, NDD_Wakatake, NDD_Yugumo, NDD_ZClass

DOWNLOAD Light Cruisers Pack 10 : http://www.dcoffey.co.uk/images/sile...tCruisers10.7z
File Size : 1.0Mb
Version : 2.0
Release Date : 31/07/2020

Included vessels : NCL_Agano, NCL_Atlanta, NCL_Brooklyn, NCL_Cleveland, NCL_DeRuyter, NCL_Dido, NCL_Fiji, NCL_Isuzu, NCL_Katori, NCL_Katori_ASW, NCL_Kuma, NCL_ModLeander, NCL_Naka, NCL_Omaha, NCL_Tenryu, NCL_Yubari

DOWNLOAD Heavy Cruisers Pack 11 : http://www.dcoffey.co.uk/images/sile...yCruisers11.7z
File Size : 1.2Mb
Version : 2.0
Release Date : 25/08/2020

Included vessels : NCA_Aoba, NCA_Baltimore, NCA_Deutschland, NCA_Furutaka, NCA_Haguro, NCA_Kent, NCA_Lutzow, NCA_Maya, NCA_Mogami, NCA_Mogami2, NCA_Myoko, NCA_Northampton, NCA_P26b, NCA_Pensacola, NCA_Pensacola_II, NCA_Portland, NCA_Quincy, NCA_SaltLakeCity, NCA_Takao, NCA_Tone, NCA_Tuscaloosa

DOWNLOAD Battleships Pack 12 : http://www.dcoffey.co.uk/images/sile...ttleships12.7z
File Size : 1.6Mb
Version : 2.1
Release Date : 20/09/2020

Included vessels : NBB_Alabama, NBB_Bismarck, NBB_Colorado, NBB_Fuso, NBB_Iowa, NBB_Ise, NBB_Ise2, NBB_KgeorgeV, NBB_Kongo, NBB_Missouri, NBB_Nagato, NBB_Nelson, NBB_Nevada, NBB_NEW_MEXICO, NBB_NewJersey, NBB_North_Carolina, NBB_Pennsylvania, NBB_Queen_Elisabeth, NBB_Ramillies, NBB_Revenge, NBB_Tennessee, NBB_TennesseeEarly, NBB_Tirpitz, NBB_West_Virginia, NBB_Yamashiro, NBB_Yamato, NBC_GrafSpee, NBC_Repulse

DanielCoffey · 06-03-20, 04:12 PM

METHOD OF CREATING A SILHOUETTE FROM A MODEL

This is an outline of the method I used to create the ship silhouettes from the in-game model. I will describe the tools I used, the issues I came across and how I derived the Length, Depth and Mast measurements from the models. It may not be the most efficient way of doing this but it was the best I could come up with given the tools we have to use to extract the models.

Software Used :

Silent 3ditor
Blender (2.89 onwards)
Blender Script : Import Multiple Objects (io_import_multiple_objs.py)
Photoshop

You may of course use whatever 3D model editor you prefer as well as your favourite equivalent to Photoshop.

Vessel Model Location

In FotRSU each ship has its own unique folder in Data \ Sea. In this folder are several files that tell the game what shape the vessel is, how it is armed, how fast it goes and possibly what it looks like in the Recognition Manual. Not all these files are mandatory.

The .DAT file holds the model information. The .EQP text file lists the people, cargo and guns that may appear on deck. The .SIL file is the existing silhouette and the .CFG text file holds the currently known Length, Draft and Height values. These values need to be checked against the actual size of the model as they may have been assumed rather than measured.

I found it helpful to have three folders for this project...

WORKING - holds a copy of the FotRSU game data for the group of ships I am currently working on.
BLEND - the model file and those parts of the ship which I have extracted.
PSD - for the Photoshop Silhouette template and final .SIL Silhouette file.

I also have a text file with a table for the Ship Measurements.

Setting up Silent 3ditor

There are a couple of small changes to the default settings in S3D that will make your job a little easier.

Firstly (unless you are used to thinking in Radians rather than degrees) UNTICK Tools - Options - Value Formatting Options - "Show rotation values in Radians (degrees = unchecked)". This means that if an object such as a gun needs to be rotated 180 degrees you will see a value of 180 in the Rotation:Y field.

Next there is a pair of checkboxes to TICK in the Export 3D Object window that are fortunately sticky and will be remembered. They are to do with the directions of the X, Y and Z axes. When you do come to Export your first 3D Object you will want to TICK "Flip coordinate system" and TICK "Reverse face winding".

You will also need to select the Map Channels Radio Button for either "Save to .UVW (3ds Max)" if you are using 3ds Max or "Save to .OBJ (others)" if you are using Blender.

This is because the models in SH4 use a different X,Y,Z system than tools such as Blender. You need to convert between the two in order for your ship parts to line up easily. This is why we have ticked the Flip coordinate system and Reverse Face Winding boxes.

While it will look like it is pointing up into the sky in Blender that is not an issue as you can orient the Camera correctly so that your silhouette is perfect. The X,Y,Z fields in S3D will be in the same order as the X,Y,Z fields in Blender but unfortunately there will always be one axis pointing the wrong way and it seems to be the Y axis. For the moment X,Y,Z will map to X,-Y,Z.

Units of Measurement

Fortunately for us, Blender uses a very similar scale of measurement as the game. Both are Metric. The game measures in Meters and Blender (by default) measures 10 Meter uinits. This means that a 100m vessel will be 10.0 units long in Blender. A vessel that is 27.5m high above the waterline will be 2.75 units high in Blender. It is precisely 10:1 in scale.

Setting up Blender

For this work I used the latest available version of Blender. I will assume you have version 2.89 or newer from www.blender.org.

When you first open Blender you will be looking at a "scene" where you can place lights, cameras and of course your model. You may find that the default view also contains a standard Cube model to play with but we will be deleting ALL objects in the scene and making use of a template I have created with standardized lighting and cameras.

BLENDER TEMPLATE LINK : http://www.dcoffey.co.uk/images/sile...lateBlender.7z

Choosing the Render Engine Type

When you look at an object in Blender you usually just see it in a flat preview mode where the lighting is fairly accurate but does not include shadows. It is easy and quick to move around an object without having to wait for Blender to redraw complicated shadows. Selecting a Camera (such as "Camera - 090") and pressing F12 will ask Blender to open a new window and Render the model in high detail. This may take some time depending on your computer and GPU.

Make sure that the "Render Engine" is set to "Cycles" as this is currently the best way for Blender to draw accurate shadows. The "Eevee" Render Engine is more approximate in its shadow calculations and I preferred the way that "Cycles" handled shadows cast by overhanging superstructure ledges better.

If you select a Camera then look down in the lower right panel you will notice a small "TV Set" icon with a "Render Properties" tooltip. On this tab you should check that the Render Engine is set to "Cycles" and if you have a decent GPU that "Device - GPU Compute" is selected. If your GPU is not powerful enough to support this, just leave it to "Device - CPU" and accept that it will take longer to complete the final drawing.

The next icon down looks like a small Printer and has the "Output Properties tooltip. I have set the X and Y resolution to 1980x1080px here for consistency.

Scene Cameras

The template I have provided has three cameras in it that correspond precisely to the three views we want to capture for our Silhouettes. There is Side camera at 90 degrees for the broadside picture. There is a Bow camera which captures 0 degrees for the dead ahead shot and another camera that has been rotated by 45 degrees for the offset picture.

All three cameras are set to use the Orthogonal view of an object rather than a Perspective view. This allows us to see the masts, cranes and turrets of a vessel clearly no matter how much above or below the waterline we are viewing the target.

You can check this behaviour by selecting a camera (such as "Camera - 090") in the top right scene panel, clicking the Camera icon in the lower right panel and noting that Camera Type is set to Orthogonal.

All three cameras are hanging in space precisely 250m (or 25.0 Blender units) away from the 0,0,0 Origin of the scene and are aligned to point directly towards it along the waterline. This ensures we have a perfect view of the vessel from all three cameras.

Of note is that each camera has an "Orthogonal Scale" value which is effectively the "Zoom" of the camera. We want to ensure that our vessel is entirely within the frame on the 90 degree Side view without too much dead space. As you lower the Orthogonal Scale value the camera zooms in. As you raise it, the camera zooms out. All three cameras MUST be set to the same Orthogonal Scale that best suits the particular vessel length you are working on. I will repeat this with an example when we get to capturing an actual Silhouette later.

Scene Lighting

I have set up four lights in the scene to help create a standard appearance for our vessels. You may find that for very small vessels you may need to increase the Power of the lights or move the two side lights closer together.

All lights are defined with a 600W power and are of the "Broad Square" type. They cast the same sort of soft light as you would get coming in through a window. This avoids shadows that are too crisp.

There is a Bow light that is ahead and slightly above the vessel. This light mainly provides light to the bow and superstructure.

The Side High light is above and to one side of the vessel. It is to avoid dark shadows on the Port side when the vessel is viewed from the front.

Side Front and Side Back are the two lights that shine on the Starboard side of the vessel. They both point towards the deck rather than the waterline. One is set towards the bow and the other is towards the stern. If a vessel is either very long or alternatively very short then you may have to adjust these lights to give a good spread of illumination.

Once you are working on a ship model it is a good idea to click the "Display or Hide" eye in the top right panel next to the "Lights and Cameras" group. The lights will still exist but will be hidden and out of your way.

Adding the Import Multiple Objects script to Blender

By default Blender can only import one .OBJ file at a time and since our Silent Hunter ships are made up of as many as 20-30 Objects, this can get tedious. Fortunately there is a third party Python script that adds an "Import Multiple Object" option to the Import menu.

Download the script from here…

LINK : https://blenderartists.org/t/import-...r-2-8x/1164372

In Blender select Edit - Preferences - Add-ons - Import. Navigate to where you downloaded the script and select it. It will appear in the list of Add-ons. Tick it and you are done. Restart Blender and you should see a File - Import - Import Multiple (.OBJ) menu option.

Extract parts of the Model

When you open a vessel's .DAT file in the Silent 3ditor you will quickly see one main Node on the left panel that holds all the parts of the model, the types of noises it should make and where the people and weapons should appear on the decks.

If you open the "Model Preview" tab on the right you will see a picture of the vessel itself. I would suggest making sure the following small icons are toggled on… "Solid", "Enable Diffuse Map", "Toggle Grid", "Toggle Axes", "Toggle Bounding Box", "Toggle Origins" and "Toggle Visibility".

Inside the vessel's main Node will be one "3D Model" which is usually the hull as well as a large number of other sub-nodes that can be other parts of the vessel such as boats, funnels and masts as well as locations for all the sensors, weapons and static crew the vessel should be displayed with. Other items such as noises, damage hit boxes and animations are not of any interest for a silhouette.

The parts of the vessel we need to locate are the main hull (always the root node), any small boats on the deck (boat or barca), masts (catarg), cranes (macara or kran), cables (cablu), funnels (cos), rangefinders (dir or tir), pipes, deck, cabin (cabina), glass, portholes (bulleye), deck armour and superstructure.

Unless the vessel is small and the rudder is likely to be visible we are not really interested in the rudder (cirma) or propellors (elice).

All these parts will have a 3d Model inside them which we can export. They will be highlighted on the main model as we click on them if we have "Toggle Bounding Box" active.

Each model part has to be exported individually and then reassembled into the correct positions in Blender.

Select a "3d Model" part and click the "Export" link. Make sure you are going to save it to the correct working folder and that Save as Type : WaveFront Object (*.obj) is selected.

On the next Export Settings page you will need to check that the following are all ticked… "Flip coordinate system", "Reverse Face Winding", "Float precision : 6", "Compress Floats", "Use Materials", "Save/overwrite new MTL file", "Put quotes round texture", "Save absolute texture" and importantly, "Save to .OBJ (others).

You will now see a short list of one or more File Names to export. There will be one for each Texture Map on the model. One will always be the Diffuse or displayed texture of the vessel. Others which are optional will be the Occlusion or shadow map, the Normal or bump map and possibly the Specular or shininess map. You only want the very first one that will be named in the format "VesselName_VesselPart.obj". You should untick any subsequent ones that are labelled "VesselName_VesselPart-uv2.obj" as they are the other texture maps that we do not need.

About 2/3 of the models will have more than just a plain texture map so there will often be items to untick here. It can also vary between individual parts of the same vessel depending on where they were originally imported from so stay alert.

Once you have gone through the entire vessel looking for Nodes with a "3D Model" that corresponds to part of the ship that is above the waterline you should have between 5-30 individual .OBJ (and their corresponding .MTL file) files in your working folder.

Leave Silent 3ditor open and go into Blender in order to import all the pieces and reassemble them like a giant kit into a complete vessel.

Import into Blender

Open the Blender Template that you downloaded above and you will see an empty Scene with some lighting and cameras visible. I found it convenient to Hide the lights and cameras by clicking on the open eye next to their Group in the top right panel. The objects still exist but are not visible in the Scene window.

If you prefer you can simply open an existing .blend file from a previous silhouette, select all the Ship parts and delete them. You can then then click on File - Clean Up - Purge All about three times to purge the objects, the materials and finally the images that the previous model had used.

To bring the parts of the vessel into Blender click File - Import - Import Multiple. Navigate to where you saved the ship parts when using S3D then select all the vessel parts that you want to import.

I don't know if it makes a difference but my template had "-Z Forward" and "Y Up" set for how the model is orientated.

Click "Import Multiple OBJ's" and all components will be imported into the view window.

You will almost certainly see some parts coloured in magenta. That is because Blender cannot find the texture that is named in the Material file for that Object. We will sort that out very easily soon.

You will also notice that many of the parts of the vessel will be centered around the 0,0,0 Origin point rather than being in their proper place in the model. Sadly S3D does not retain the positions of a child object relative to its parent. When exporting from S3D it is usual to see the child object simply located relative to the Origin. We will have to go into EVERY part of the vessel and compare its current location to where it should be in the model and adjust each one individually. This will be the most time consuming part of making a silhouette by far.

The first time-saving thing we have to do is make sure that the Origin Point in Blender s indeed set to 0,0,0. Depending on how the UI panels have been set up in Blender you will need to locate the View tab of the main Scene window. In my case it was a set of tabs (Item, Tool and View) in the top right of the main Scene window. Click the View tab and look down to the values under "3D Cursor". You want to make sure the X, Y and Z values are all 0.

You can now select all Objects in your vessel in the right hand panel, move the cursor into the main Scene window, right click and select Set Origin - Origin to 3D Cursor.

What we have now done is give every object in the Scene a position of 0,0,0. This is useful because they tended to be all over the place by small amounts and having to add an offset to an offset is unnecessarily complicated.

Now I suggest you click the "Restore Down" icon in the top right of the frame of the main Blender window and drag the space that Blender takes up on your desktop to the right. This will allow you to have about 40% of your screen dedicated to the Silent 3ditor and the other 60% to Blender side by side. If you are lucky enough to have two monitors however you can simply have one application on each screen.

You need to be able to see the S3D application as well as the Blender screen as we are now going to be selecting an Object in S3D and manually copying its coordinates into Blender so that it shifts into the right place on the vessel.

Moving the model parts into place

Understanding how the parts of a vessel will move as you adjust their position is easy if you remember that in Blender negX is Port and posX is Starboard, negY is Up and posY is Down, negZ is Aft and posZ is Forward.

Some vessel parts such as guns, direction finders and occasionally torpedoes and planes may need to be rotated and again Blender uses a different coordinate system to S3D. In Blender an angle of negY swings an object to Port and posY swings it to Starboard. Occasionally a gun barrel may need elevating with a small posX angle adjustment.

Generally I have found that three significant digits is sufficiently accurate for object placement, rounded on the last digit. S3D stores offsets to six decimal places and this is more than we need to worry about.

Go through the objects in S3D one at a time and copy their X, Y and Z values to the corresponding object in Blender. As you tab out of each field you will see the object jump to its new position. Remember to reverse the value of the Y position as an object on the deck in S3D will have a positive Y value but in Blender it will need to be negative. If S3D has a negative Y value to shift it below something then entering it as positive Y in Blender will achieve the same result

Nested Offsets

You are likely to have some nested objects in S3D. For example a cable may be inside a mast object. A window may be nested inside a cabin. The offset value of a nested Child is always relative to its Parent, not the vessel origin.

My advice is to group the objects into the correct Parent/Child order in Blender then make the adjustment to the Child first followed by the Parent.

Take the example of a Glass object inside a Cabin object. In Blender, Click on the Glass object first then Ctrl-Click on the Cabin object second. You will notice that the child is in orange and the parent is in yellow. Now Right-Click and select Parent followed by Object (or press Ctrl-P as a shortcut). You will now see that the Glass child has nested inside the Cabin parent.

Now you can go to S3D and look at the necessary adjustment that the Child needs. Make this adjustment in Blender and you will see the glass move very close to the cabin. Then you can do the same with the cabin. Both the cabin and the glass will move together as they are grouped.

You can group several objects together in this way as long as you make sure the last one selected is the one you want to be the parent. You can also nest groups inside groups. You are likely to need to do this when you have a Direction Finder Barrel inside a Direction Finder that is attached to a Conning Tower that is placed on a Mast. Groups in Blender will help you organise the objects together and make sure that the offsets are maintained.

Find the Textures

Now that you have got your model imported into Blender and the parts in the correct location you will almost certainly spot some bright magenta objects. This is because Blender cannot find the texture in either the expected place or with the expected name.

There are three places that textures are stored in FotRSU.

The first is in the folder with the .DAT file. This is usually Data / Sea / Vesselname. The hull and often the deck will be stored here with the filename Vesselname_T01.dds. If you copy these textures to the same folder location as your working .blend file and restart Blender it will automatically pick them up.

The second location a texture may be stored is embedded in the .DAT along with the Objects that make up the vessel. When looking for objects in S3D you may see Nodes called Vesselname_Deck_T01.dds. Expanding these Nodes may reveal an "Embedded Image". Clicking on this Node and Exporting the Image to the Blender working folder will allow it to be picked up.

The final place an image may be stored is in the main FotRSU texture library. This is Data / Textures / TNormal / tex. Bookmark this "tex" folder as a favourite in Blender as you will be referencing it often.

Finally you may notice that S3D is telling the game that an object uses a texture in TGA format but in FotRSU it is likely to be in DDS format. This is most frequently the case in glass, planes, gun turrets and barrels. All we have to do is select the object in Blender and tell it to use the DDS instead.

Click on the magenta object in Blender. Click on the Material Properties icon in the lower right panel (looks like a small red globe near the bottom of the list). You will see the lower right panel change to show a list of Materials in the selected object. There may be more than one Material linked to an object. Under Base Colour you will see the name of the missing texture (such as Glass.tga). Click on the name of the missing texture and select "Image Texture" in the popup (shortcut is "T"). You can now click on the white Folder icon which will bring up a Search window. Select (or navigate to) your FotRSU texture folder shortcut and you will see the FotRSU textures listed. The chances are you will be seeking a TGA file which does not exist. I found that normally editing the name of the missing file from, say, Glass.tga to Glass.dds and selecting the "tex" folder would allow Blender to replace the missing TGA with the correct DDS image.

Find the Weapons

When looking at the main Node for a vessel in S3D you will see quite a few sub-Nodes with names like "cfg#M01_VesselName". They don't appear to have a model inside them and simply have a set of X, Y, Z coodinates.

These are placeholders for the weapons and planes on a vessel and are simply a reference point in the Model for where to place the weapon once in the game.

The definition of that weapon is actually in the VesselName.cfg file which is usually in the same folder as the .DAT.

The reason it is done this way is that the weapons on a vessel may change over time as the vessel comes in for refits and upgrades. The .EQP file will have multiple entries for each weapon that are date dependent.

The convention is that Main weapons are labeled M01-99, Secondary weapons are S01-99, AA weapons are A01-99, Torpedo launchers are T01-99 and plains are usually X01-99.

Checking the DAT in S3D will show you which weapon types may be fitted on a vessel and where they should be placed. The EQP will tell you what their internal name is at any given year but you still don't know what they actually look like. For that you will need to ask the FotRSU team for a current copy of a spreadsheet that holds the weapon names referenced against which Library DAT they are stored in. This file is called "FotRSU - Equipment & Unit list.xlsx"

Taking the example of the M01 main turret of the NBB_Bismark, the EQP file tells us she carried something called "15InchDoubleT" for all the years of the war.

Looking up the "15InchDoubleT" in the "FotRSU - Equipment & Unit list.xlsx" spreadsheet we are told that object appears in Library / ShipParts / Guns.dat

Opening Library / ShipParts / Guns.dat in S3D will quickly allow you to spot there is a Node called "15InchDoubleT". It has two separate parts to its model - a turret and a barrel, one nested inside the other.

Export both the turret and the model to your Blender working folder, bring them into Blender using the "Import Multiple Objects" script and select both of them. Set their center relative to the Origin and you are ready to assemble the weapon.

First select the barrel and move it into place by checking its coordinates in S3D. You may also need to check for a small amount of elevation (posX angle). You will almost always need to shift the barrel slightly but not many have an elevation amount.

Once this is done you can permanently Join the barrel to the turret in Blender since you will never need them to be separate again. Select both then right click Join or use Ctrl-J as the shortcut.

It is almost certain that the weapon will not be able to find its textures and will be pink. Select the object in Blender, check the Materials tab on the lower right panel and click on each Material in turn (there may be up to three). Each one will be looking for a TGA texture but FotRSU holds them as DDS. Click on each Base Colour field and select Image Texture followed by opening the Texture Search panel exactly as you searched for Textures above. Change the extension from TGA to DDS and select the "tex" folder shortcut. One by one the gun parts will turn from pink to their proper colours.

Once you have done this, you can save the complete weapon into a folder for later use. I had a "guns" folder into which I placed each weapon as I encountered it since many are shared.

Making sure the turret is still at the 0,0,0 Origin point I selected the Object and selected File - Export - Wavefront (,obj). Ensure that "Selection Only" is ticked. You will need to give the weapon a filename and I found the easiest way to do this was to click on the .obj listing for the turret since it will be visible in the Blender working folder. Having done that you can simply select your "guns" folder and save the weapon object in there.

Now any time you need a "15InchDoubleT" on a vessel you have it already defined and textured. You can simply import it from your "guns" folder, set the x, y, z coordinates and rotation if required and you are done.

Place the Weapons

Unless you want a 100% accurate silhouette, you will need to decide which weapons to display on a vessel. As vessels become larger and will therefore be viewed from further away you only want to display the larger weapons. A good rule of thumb is to always show the Main weapons, the Secondaries if they are going to be visible against the skyline, Torpedoes if they are visible against the skyline but not if they are embedded inside as well as all planes. AA weapons are only really visible on vessels such as Merchantmen and Destroyers or smaller.

Look a the model and decide which weapons you want to display, check their name in the .EQP file then import them from your "guns" folder" if you have seen them before.

Go through each instance of a weapon, check it is the correct type, Import it once and put it into place then Duplicate it if there is more than one of them. As you go through the vessel in S3D you may see some weapons face backwards. Just make their Y rotation 180 degrees and they will be correct. Secondary weapons along the sides of larger vessels tend to be mirrored on the port and starboard sides. Do one side then duplicate all weapons on that side. One by one flip their X coordinate and they will appear on the other side of the vessel. Flip their X angle and they will point the right way too.

Check the Cameras

Now the vessel is fully assembled, it is time to check the scale of the cameras to make sure that they are correctly zoomed in.

Click on the "Camera - 090" entry in the Lights and Cameras Collection in the top right panel of the Scene tab then toggle the view with Numpad-0. You should now be observing the scene through that camera. You will see a perfect side view of the vessel but the zoom may not be correct.

Pressing Numpad-0 again will toggle between the normal Model view and the Camera view.

Once in the Camera view, click on the little green camera icon (Object Data Properties) in the lower right panel and you will see that the Camera Lens is set to Orthographic and that there will be a value in the Orthographic Scale field. Increasing this value will zoom the camera out. Decreasing it will zoom the camera in.

For a large vessel you may find that a value of 20-25 is needed whereas for smaller vessels something around 10-15 will be more suitable.

You will want to adjust the Orthographic Scale until the entire vessel is visible in the "Camera - 090" view. There should be a modest border between the edge of the highlighted window and both the bow and the stern of the vessel. I did not bother with fractions in this value, just whole numbers.

If the vessel appears to be shifted off to one side and there is a much larger gap between the frame and one end of the vessel, the solution is to select every object in the entire vessel and place them all in one group (Parent - Object or Ctrl-P). You can then shift the entire group to the left or right with a Z axis adjustment until it is more centered in the window. This may allow you to get a more suitable Orthographic Scale value.

Once you are happy with the appearance of the vessel in the 090 view, make a note of the value in the Orthographic Scale field, select the 045 and 000 cameras and make the Orthographic Scale the same in all three.

Save the Silhouettes

Once the scale is adjusted, it is time to Render the vessel properly in the Blender Cycles Engine. This will give a properly shadowed image of the vessel. Select the 090 camera then click the Render Properties (small TV screen) tab in the lower right panel. Check that the Render Engine is set to Cycles and that Device is showing "GPU Compute" if you have a supported graphics card or "CPU" if you do not.

Press F12 and wait a moment for the picture to generate. The time it takes will vary widely on your own specific hardware. For reference a 1080Ti takes between 4-5 seconds per Render and a 7700K takes about 16 seconds.

With the mouse cursor over the Render window, press Shift-Alt-S to Save the image. Make sure that the File Format is set to PNG and choose a file name. I used VesselName_090.png for the 90 degree view and _045.png or _000.png for the other two.

Save the image and repeat the process for the other two views by selecting the relevant camera, pressing F12 to Render and Shift-Alt-S to Save the image.

Calculate the Length, Draft and Mast Height of the Vessel

The length of a vessel can easily be obtained by clicking on the Hull object in Blender and looking at the X, Y, Z Dimensions that are usually displayed. The Y dimension is the actual length. Taking the NBB_Bismark as an example, clicking on the hull shows the Y dimension as 27.5m. Remembering that S3D is exactly 10x the scale of Blender we now know the Bismark model is 275m in length.

For the Draft and Mast Height we will need to make a flat plane on the waterline and drag it down until it just touches the keel then drag it up until it just touches the tallest mast tip.

I made a flat plane that was 10 units wide, 25 units long and 0 units thick. I set it to the 0,0,0 Origin so that it acted as an artificial waterline and then saved it (File - Export - Wavefront (.obj) - Selection Only) intro the "guns" folder as I needed it for every vessel.

You can then Import the plane, rotate the view of the model so you can see the keel, select just the plane and adjust its Y location until it goes down just far enough to stop touching the keel. You can then turn the model round and zoom in enough to see the tip of the tallest mast and move the plane up till it just stops touching the mast. Make a note of the Y offset required for this and you have the Draft and Mast Height. Remember to multiply the value by 10.

Taking the Bismark as our example again you will see that the hull is no longer visible when the Y offset for the plane is 1.02m and the aft mast is no longer visible at -5.53m. We therefore know the Draft is 10.2m and the Mast Height is 55.3m.

These values should be checked against the VesselName.cfg file where you will see entries for Length, Mast and Draft. While it would also be possible to calculate exact Width values in the same way as the Draft, I don't think we need these values for an accurate silhouette or any other game purpose.

Setting up Photoshop

If you don't have it already then you will need to download the nVidia DDS Utility from here : https://developer.nvidia.com/legacy-texture-tools

This will allow Photoshop to export DDS files with the correct transparency and compression for the game.

You will also need the following template that I have created for the Silhouettes. It is the correct size and shape for the FotRSU Silhouettes. There are some Guide Lines already in it to help you position the silhouettes correctly on the waterline and appropriate centers.

PHOTOSHOP TEMPLATE LINK : http://www.dcoffey.co.uk/images/sile...tePhotoshop.7z

You may not need the Aiming Marks on each vessel but I have included them so that you can use or hide them depending on the specific Silhouette. They are a 50px x 6px Shape in dull red (0 colour, 100 saturation, 80 brightness).

You will notice the Rulers are placed on the waterline of both the top (90 degree) and bottom (0 and 45 degree) Silhouettes. There are also three vertical Rulers to help find the center point of each image so that they are always in the correct place. The left one is for the 0 degree silhouette, the middle one is for the 90 degree and the one more to the right is for the 45 degree silhouette.

Create the Silhouette

If you are using Photoshop to make the Silhouettes I will assume a basic familiarity with Rulers, Masks, Layer Styles and Smart Objects. If you are using a different utility such as Gimp, I will explain what each step does and you should be able to find the equivalent tool.

In order to make a Silhouette you will need to be able to Import three .PNG files, select exactly the top half of each one, Mask the image so that only the top half is visible, apply a Stroke Layer Style to the image and be able to scale it. Finally you will need to be able to Save As DDS with some specific settings.

Open the Photoshop Silhouette Template and also Open all three of the VesselName_000/045/090.png Renders that you exported from Blender.

Select the _090 image and use a Horizontal Ruler to find the waterline exactly halfway down the image. Since Blender exports images at a resolution of 1920x1080, we are looking to place a Ruler along the waterline at 540px.

Box Select the entire top half of the image down to that ruler and apply a Layer Mask. Since layer Masks are white where the image is to be shown and black where the image is to be hidden we should now only be able to see the vessel from the masts down to the waterline. The underwater part of the hull should be hidden.

Apply a Stroke Layer Style to the image. The Stroke needs to have the following properties… Colour black, Size 1px, Position Center, Blend mode Normal, Opacity 100%. This will highlight cables and outlines of small parts of the vessel that might be invisible if scaled down too much.

Select the _045 and _000 images and repeat these two steps. You should end up with three images where the underwater parts are hidden and the visible parts have a slight outline.

Now you need to be able to see the Template and all three images at once because we are going to drag all three into the Template. In Photoshop this is easily done by selecting Window - Arrange - Tile All Vertically.

Drag a copy of each of the three images into the Template.

Collapse the Window view so that you only see the Template. In Photoshop this is done by right-clicking on the title bar of the Template and selecting "Consolidate All to Here".

The next step is to Scale the images so that they fit neatly between the Ruler lines of the Template. When you Scale an image repeatedly it becomes blurred but this can be avoided by converting it to a Smart Object in Photoshop. This allows you to Scale the image as many times as you like but it retains the crispness of the original each time. If you don't have access to a Smart Object tool, just make sure you Undo between each Scale attempt if the size was not right.

Select each of the three vessel Layers in the Template and Convert to Smart Object.

Select the _090 image and scale it to 50% by using Transform - Maintain Aspect Ratio - 50%.

Drag the _090 layer so that it snaps to the waterline Ruler on the upper half of the Template. If the mast goes over the top-most ruler, the image will need scaling down a little smaller. I found that for the shorter vessels with relatively tall masts they needed scaling to between 40-50%.

Make sure that the bow and stern are still inside the area of the Silhouette and that the mast is not over the top ruler. Generally 50% is a good starting point as it will also guarantee the most crisp image.

Once you have decided on the correct Scale for the image, make a note of the value then Place the image.

Apply the exact same Scale transformation to the _045 and _000 images.

Drag all three images so that they snap to their appropriate waterline and then move them so that they snap to their vertical centerline too. As mentioned above, the _000 and _045 images use the two outside centerlines and the _090 uses the middle one.

Decide the Aiming Point

The convention for determining the Aiming Point in FotRSU is that it is the tallest point of the vessel unless indicated otherwise. You will often find however that the tallest point is sometimes not obvious and needs highlighting. This may be because the vessel has multiple masts and you need to show which is the tallest one or perhaps the most obvious mast is rather thin at the top and needs pointing out.

Generally if the vessel has a forward mast that is clearly visible then you do not need to use the Aiming Point indicators. The Aiming Points can be hidden so they don't get in the way.

If the forward mast is thin or only a little taller than the superstructure then an Aiming Point is useful.

If the tallest point is the aft mast then an Aiming Point is very useful.

Very rarely the vessel will have an extremely thin mast or antenna that is not clear enough to use as an aiming point. An example of this is the CHGunboat02 model where there are a pair of masts, one of which also has an antenna.

In this case it may be better to nominate the top of a funnel or cabin instead. You will have to calculate the height of the vessel carefully in Blender by dragging the flat plain to the top of the area you think is a better aiming mark and noting that height even if it is not the tallest part of the vessel. You can then point the Aiming Mark to the part of the vessel you ant the player to use.

All three views of the vessel will probably need their own Aiming Point so move them to the correct place. Take care to make sure the lines on the _000 and _045 view are at exactly the same level.

Save the Silhouette

Once you have the silhouette to your liking with the vessel lined up against the rulers and with any necessary Aiming Points, it is time to save the Photoshop file and to generate the FotRSU DDS file.

First save the PSD into your working folder as VesselName_sil.psd

Next Save as Format D3D/DDS with a lowercase extension as VesselName_sil.dds. Make sure to remove the space and "copy" from the end of the file name.

The settings you will need to select on the nVidia DDS Utility are "DXT5 argb" and "No MipMaps". This will generate a 1024x512px DDS file with an alpha channel which will hold the transparency data of the image so that the texture of the Recognition Manual will show through. The file size should be 513Kb.

iambecomelife · 06-03-20, 05:02 PM

Thank you for your work.

Making silhouettes is one of my least favorite things to do for the game. I am sure everyone will appreciate. Just to clarify, are you saying that the developers of stock SH4 provided models with incorrect dimensions? Thanks.

DanielCoffey · 06-03-20, 05:21 PM

Hopefully we can assume stock SH4 was correct but it will have suffered from Chinese Whispers as mods evolved and grew.

If folks are wondering what these silhouettes look like, here is an example of the Ansyu Maru. It is shown here on a white background but the actual texture is transparent to allow the page of the RM to show through. Top half is the normal view. Bottom half is the "offset" view.

The outline of the vessel is emphasized with a slight "stroke" to show up the rigging and masts more clearly.

DanielCoffey · 06-04-20, 01:47 AM

Working on the next block of Merchants. It will be a little untidy with Tenders, Tankers and Liners in there but they are all still mostly civilian or support vessels.

After that I may get the Small Boats out of the way which will be mixed fishing, improvised and patrol boats.

Michael Wood · 06-04-20, 03:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DanielCoffey

DOWNLOADS

DOWNLOAD Merchant Pack 01 : http://www.dcoffey.co.uk/images/sile...sMerchant01.7z
File Size : 1.4Mb
Version : 1.0
Release Date : 04/06/2020

Included vessels : NKLCS_Heian, NKLCS_Nagara, NKLSS_Hakusika, NKLSS_Hansa, NKMCS_Akita, NKMCS_Hansa, NKMCS_Heito, NKMCS_Zinbu, NKMSS_Ada, NKMSS_Aden, NKMSS_Ansyu, NKMSS_Biyo, NKMSS_HogIsland, NKMSS_JP, NKMSS_Kinposan, NKMSS_WarMelody, NKMSS_WM, NKPMCS_Express, NKSCS_Taihosan, NKSS_CAT, NKSS_Yae, NKSSS_Kasagisan

Up Next : Merchant Pack 02 - there are so many of the little devils!

When I click on download line nothing happens.

DanielCoffey · 06-04-20, 04:22 AM

It works fine for me, popping up a window in firefox "You have chosen to download...". Here is the actual link as text so you can copy and paste it...

Code:

http://www.dcoffey.co.uk/images/silenthunter4/silhouettes/SilhouettesMerchant01.7z

vickers03 · 06-04-20, 05:09 AM

good work, looks awesome

Mad Mardigan · 06-04-20, 05:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Michael Wood

When I click on download line nothing happens.

Just tried it & it showed up for Me, showed the download info & I have it set up when I do downloads to ask just where do I want to have it complete the action.

It could have been just a hiccup on your end, that occurred when you initially went to download it at the time... that can & does occur sometimes.

Michael Wood · 06-04-20, 05:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DanielCoffey

It works fine for me, popping up a window in firefox "You have chosen to download...". Here is the actual link as text so you can copy and paste it...

Code:

http://www.dcoffey.co.uk/images/silenthunter4/silhouettes/SilhouettesMerchant01.7z

Pasted. Didn't work in FoxFire or MS Internet Explorer. Sad.

Jeff-Groves · 06-04-20, 05:47 PM

Try this link.
http://www.mediafire.com/file/5kc9ov...hant01.7z/file

Michael Wood · 06-04-20, 06:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeff-Groves

Try this link.
http://www.mediafire.com/file/5kc9ov...hant01.7z/file

Nope. Same as the other two. Screen updates (blinks) and returns to same screen. Sad.

Mad Mardigan · 06-04-20, 06:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Michael Wood

Nope. Same as the other two. Screen updates (blinks) and returns to same screen. Sad.

After clicking on the links, minimize the browser & see if your selected area you have set up to download to, to save doesn't have a window opened up waiting on you to finalize the download.. doesn't happen often but that can & does happen for some. It can get hidden off behind the browsers on occasion.

I retested the original link & tested the media fire one, that provided as well... Both worked fine for Me. the screen did blank out for a microsecond, but the window opened for where I have downloads set to go to did pop up in front of My browser. The browser I use though, is Opera.. it comes with a built in VPN & ad blocker that works great.. and it is free to download & use.

Jeff-Groves · 06-04-20, 06:24 PM

Your stuff is screwed up!
Chrome and IE download fine for me.
Opens a window on where to save to.

06-03-20, 04:09 PM	#1
DanielCoffey Planesman Join Date: May 2020 Location: South Ayrshire, UK Posts: 199 Downloads: 5 Uploads: 0	Ship Silhouettes - Modder's Resource SHIP SILHOUETTES This Modder's Resource Pack is a collection of clean and complete Ship Silhouettes inspired by the vessels in the Fall of the Rising Sun Ultimate Mega Mod. It will hopefully also be a useful resource for owners of other Mods that add to the vanilla ships. This is not an actual mod itself that you can install using JSGME. Rather it is intended to allow other modders (including FotRSU) to incorporate accurate silhouettes into their own mods. If you are using a mod that you think has incorrect or incomplete silhouettes, please ask the author to have a look at this mod in case any of the vessels are a direct match for theirs. Each vessel in the game has a folder in Data\Sea\VesselName\ in which is a VesselName_sil.dds file. You will probably find that your favourite mods may or may not have one or more silhouettes at 90 degree, 45 degree and 0 degree offsets. The 45 degree and 0 degree silhouettes are often absent. My new silhouettes contain all three viewpoints. All silhouettes are taken with an Orthogonal viewpoint rather than Perspective to show masts and rigging to best effect and to avoid perspective issues with funnels and bows. Unless the silhouette states otherwise by the use of a "red aiming line", it is assumed the Top Of Mast point is to be used for all vessels. It is my intention that the very large majority of vessels will use this standard. The vanilla silhouette textures are normally 512x256 pixels in size. This only allows 128 pixels for each view of a ship and is somewhat small. I have decided to issue these silhouettes in 1024x512 size to incorporate greater detail in the pictures. It will not affect the size of your Recognition Manual on your screen. If you are playing the game at low resolutions you will probably not see much difference but players with larger monitors will hopefully see an increase in detail in the silhouettes with reduced "fuzziness". If you need to reduce the size of the textures back down to 512x256 due to constraints in your hardware, any suitable graphics program should be able to do so. They are saved as DDS DXT5 with Alpha but no MipMaps. SIZE DOES MATTER! In addition I have calculated exact Length, Draft and Height values for every vessel in this resource pack based on the actual dimensions of the model used in the game. You will find that over the years the dimensions of the vessels have often been estimated and are frequently grossly incorrect. Length will benefit those wanting to use manual speed calculations. Draft is essential to know what depth to set for contact or magnetic torpedoes. An accurate height is essential for good rangefinding with the Stadimeter. Of the vessels checked so far, the Ansyu Maru is only actually 75% of its listed length. The Ada Maru is only half its listed draft while the British War Melody freighter is almost double. The Akita Maru and Zinbu Maru are actually 80% taller than their figures suggest. This makes good firing solutions almost impossible for these vessels. The correct figures will be listed in table form with every block of vessels released. In the "Method" section below I will outline how I have derived these figures. To use the accurate figures, compare them to what is in the Data\Sea\VesselName\VesselName.cfg file using Notepad and make any appropriate changes. PERMISSIONS You don't need ask me for permission to use the contents of this mod for any reason. You have it. You can add to, subtract from, alter, enhance, embellish, patch, improve to your hearts content. You may add these resources to Compilations. You may re-upload it anywhere. You may print the images in your own hardcopy Recognition Manuals. Once complete I will release the Photoshop PSD file to help you do this conveniently. This is an Open resource that will hopefully prove useful to any Mod or Mega Mod that adds vessels to the game. __________________ Caselabs S8 : Intel i7-7700K 4.5GHz / 32Gb DDR4 3000 / Asus 1080 Ti / Samsung 960PRO 1Tb / Dell U2715H 27" 2560x1440 / Corsair AX1200i / APC SMT1500I / Windows 10 PRO Last edited by DanielCoffey; 09-22-20 at 06:56 AM.

06-03-20, 04:11 PM	#2
DanielCoffey Planesman Join Date: May 2020 Location: South Ayrshire, UK Posts: 199 Downloads: 5 Uploads: 0	DOWNLOADS DOWNLOAD Merchant Pack 01 : http://www.dcoffey.co.uk/images/sile...sMerchant01.7z File Size : 1.4Mb Version : 2.1 Release Date : 27/09/2020 Included vessels : NKLCS_Heian, NKLCS_Nagara, NKLSS_Hakusika, NKLSS_Hansa, NKMCS_Akita, NKMCS_Hansa, NKMCS_Heito, NKMCS_Zinbu, NKMSS_Ada, NKMSS_Aden, NKMSS_Ansyu, NKMSS_Biyo, NKMSS_HogIsland, NKMSS_JP, NKMSS_Kinposan, NKMSS_WarMelody, NKMSS_WM, NKPMCS_Express, NKSCS_Taihosan, NKSS_CAT, NKSS_Yae, NKSSS_Kasagisan DOWNLOAD Merchant Pack 02 : http://www.dcoffey.co.uk/images/sile...sMerchant02.7z File Size : 1.8Mb Version : 2.1 Release Date : 18/09/2020 Included vessels : APD_Manley, JP_ShinshuMaru, HeianTender, M35Hansa, M35R, NACA3 ,NAMC ,NAMJP ,NAS_Canopus, NAS_Pelias, NCVW, NECT_Hansa, NKGHAN, NKGHAP, NL_B, NL_C, NL_T01, NLL, NLST, NLUS_Bremen, NOL_Nippon, NOL_Nippon2, NOL_Schliemann, NOM_Buzyun, NOM_Paula, NOS_Haruna, NOTM_T2 DOWNLOAD Small Vessels Pack 03 : http://www.dcoffey.co.uk/images/sile...llVessels03.7z File Size : 0.9Mb Version : 2.0 Release Date : 23/06/2020 Included vessels : CH_Gunboat01, CH_Gunboat02, JPFish01, JPFish02, JPGunBoat01, JPGunBoat02, NA25Daihatsu, NADaihatsu, NCDaihatsu, NCO_Bathurst, NCO_Flower, NF_boat, NfishingTrawler, NLCVA, NLCVP, NPT_Br, NPT_Schnellboat, NSampan01, NSampan02, NSampan03, NSC_Subchaser, NTRW_, NUSTUG, STUG, USGunBoat01, Whalechaser DOWNLOAD Liners Pack 04 : http://www.dcoffey.co.uk/images/sile...tesLiners04.7z File Size : 0.7Mb Version : 2.0 Release Date : 23/06/2020 Included vessels : NPL_Conte_Verde, NPL_Hap, NPL_Hikawa, NPL_Horai, NPL_Kiturin, NPL_RC, NPPE_, NPPQ_, NSHOS_, NTUS_ DOWNLOAD Miscellaneous Pack 05 : http://www.dcoffey.co.uk/images/sile...ettesMisc05.7z File Size : 0.8Mb Version : 2.0 Release Date : 26/06/2020 Included vessels : AuxSubchaser, CO_Kaibokan, JP_SubTender, NATF, NDA_Sirtori, NKSQ_ ,NKSs_ ,NOTMs, NPS_Tyohei, NTR, NVV, NVV2, OldCorvette, Sub_Depot_Ship, T07B, T07US, W-19 Please note that IJN_SubChaser has been renamed to JP_SubChaser due to a pending name change. DOWNLOAD Carriers Pack 06 : http://www.dcoffey.co.uk/images/sile...sCarriers06.7z File Size : 1.3Mb Version : 2.1 Release Date : 14/09/2020 Included vessels : NCV_Akagi, NCV_Enterprise, NCV_Hiryu, NCV_Hiyo, NCV_Illustrious, NCV_Kaga, NCV_Saratoga, NCV_Shinano, NCV_Shokaku, NCV_Soryu, NCV_Taiho, NCV_Unryu, NCV_USEarlyWar, NCV_USSEssexCV9, NCVE_Akitsu, NCVE_Attacker, NCVE_Bogue, NCVE_Casablanca, NCVE_Kaiyo, NCVE_Ryuho, NCVE_Shoho, NCVE_Taiyo, NCVS_Chitose, NCVS_Nishin, NCVS_Yoshino DOWNLOAD Submarines Pack 07 : http://www.dcoffey.co.uk/images/sile...ubmarines07.7z File Size : 0.3Mb Version : 2.0 Release Date : 21/06/2020 Included vessels : AI_Fleetboat, AI_Fleetboat_Static, AI_Pigboat_Static, AI_Uboat9d2, NSS_A1, NSS_AM, NSS_C3, NSS_Jyunsen_B, NSS_Jyunsen1, NSS_Kaidai4, NSS_Ko, NSS_Sen_Taka, NSS_Sen_Toku_I DOWNLOAD Escorts Pack 08 : http://www.dcoffey.co.uk/images/sile...esEscorts08.7z File Size : 1.3Mb Version : 2.0 Release Date : 29/06/2020 Included vessels : NAuxCru, NDD_Clemson, NDD_Minekaze, NDD_Mutsuki, NDE_Akikaze, NDE_BType, NDE_Buckley, NDE_Chidori, NDE_ChidoriII, NDE_CType, NDE_DType, NDE_Evarts, NDE_JCB, NDE_Kisaragi, NDE_Parker, NDE_ParkerII, NDE_PB102, NDE_River, NDE_Tachibana, NFF_Tacoma, NML_Okinoshima, NMS_No13, NPC_01, NPC_461, NPC_Black_Swan, NPC_Black_Swan_Elite DOWNLOAD Destroyers Pack 09 : http://www.dcoffey.co.uk/images/sile...estroyers09.7z File Size : 2.2Mb Version : 2.1 Release Date : 21/07/2020 Included vessels : NDD_1936A, NDD_1936B, NDD_A&B, NDD_Akatsuki, NDD_Akizuki, NDD_Asashio, NDD_Bagley, NDD_Benham, NDD_Benson, NDD_C&D, NDD_Fletcher, NDD_FletcherII, NDD_Fubuki, NDD_FubukiII, NDD_Gearing, NDD_Hatsuharu, NDD_J, NDD_Kagero, NDD_Kamikaze, NDD_Mahan, NDD_Matsu, NDD_Menaki, NDD_Momi, NDD_MomiII, NDD_Narvick, NDD_Porter, NDD_Shimakaze, NDD_Shiratsuyu, NDD_Sims, NDD_Smith, NDD_Somers, NDD_SU1, NDD_Sumner, NDD_Tribal, NDD_Type7y, NDD_V&W, NDD_Wakatake, NDD_Yugumo, NDD_ZClass DOWNLOAD Light Cruisers Pack 10 : http://www.dcoffey.co.uk/images/sile...tCruisers10.7z File Size : 1.0Mb Version : 2.0 Release Date : 31/07/2020 Included vessels : NCL_Agano, NCL_Atlanta, NCL_Brooklyn, NCL_Cleveland, NCL_DeRuyter, NCL_Dido, NCL_Fiji, NCL_Isuzu, NCL_Katori, NCL_Katori_ASW, NCL_Kuma, NCL_ModLeander, NCL_Naka, NCL_Omaha, NCL_Tenryu, NCL_Yubari DOWNLOAD Heavy Cruisers Pack 11 : http://www.dcoffey.co.uk/images/sile...yCruisers11.7z File Size : 1.2Mb Version : 2.0 Release Date : 25/08/2020 Included vessels : NCA_Aoba, NCA_Baltimore, NCA_Deutschland, NCA_Furutaka, NCA_Haguro, NCA_Kent, NCA_Lutzow, NCA_Maya, NCA_Mogami, NCA_Mogami2, NCA_Myoko, NCA_Northampton, NCA_P26b, NCA_Pensacola, NCA_Pensacola_II, NCA_Portland, NCA_Quincy, NCA_SaltLakeCity, NCA_Takao, NCA_Tone, NCA_Tuscaloosa DOWNLOAD Battleships Pack 12 : http://www.dcoffey.co.uk/images/sile...ttleships12.7z File Size : 1.6Mb Version : 2.1 Release Date : 20/09/2020 Included vessels : NBB_Alabama, NBB_Bismarck, NBB_Colorado, NBB_Fuso, NBB_Iowa, NBB_Ise, NBB_Ise2, NBB_KgeorgeV, NBB_Kongo, NBB_Missouri, NBB_Nagato, NBB_Nelson, NBB_Nevada, NBB_NEW_MEXICO, NBB_NewJersey, NBB_North_Carolina, NBB_Pennsylvania, NBB_Queen_Elisabeth, NBB_Ramillies, NBB_Revenge, NBB_Tennessee, NBB_TennesseeEarly, NBB_Tirpitz, NBB_West_Virginia, NBB_Yamashiro, NBB_Yamato, NBC_GrafSpee, NBC_Repulse __________________ Caselabs S8 : Intel i7-7700K 4.5GHz / 32Gb DDR4 3000 / Asus 1080 Ti / Samsung 960PRO 1Tb / Dell U2715H 27" 2560x1440 / Corsair AX1200i / APC SMT1500I / Windows 10 PRO Last edited by DanielCoffey; 09-27-20 at 01:39 AM.

06-03-20, 04:12 PM	#3
DanielCoffey Planesman Join Date: May 2020 Location: South Ayrshire, UK Posts: 199 Downloads: 5 Uploads: 0	METHOD OF CREATING A SILHOUETTE FROM A MODEL This is an outline of the method I used to create the ship silhouettes from the in-game model. I will describe the tools I used, the issues I came across and how I derived the Length, Depth and Mast measurements from the models. It may not be the most efficient way of doing this but it was the best I could come up with given the tools we have to use to extract the models. Software Used : Silent 3ditor Blender (2.89 onwards) Blender Script : Import Multiple Objects (io_import_multiple_objs.py) Photoshop You may of course use whatever 3D model editor you prefer as well as your favourite equivalent to Photoshop. Vessel Model Location In FotRSU each ship has its own unique folder in Data \ Sea. In this folder are several files that tell the game what shape the vessel is, how it is armed, how fast it goes and possibly what it looks like in the Recognition Manual. Not all these files are mandatory. The .DAT file holds the model information. The .EQP text file lists the people, cargo and guns that may appear on deck. The .SIL file is the existing silhouette and the .CFG text file holds the currently known Length, Draft and Height values. These values need to be checked against the actual size of the model as they may have been assumed rather than measured. I found it helpful to have three folders for this project... WORKING - holds a copy of the FotRSU game data for the group of ships I am currently working on. BLEND - the model file and those parts of the ship which I have extracted. PSD - for the Photoshop Silhouette template and final .SIL Silhouette file. I also have a text file with a table for the Ship Measurements. Setting up Silent 3ditor There are a couple of small changes to the default settings in S3D that will make your job a little easier. Firstly (unless you are used to thinking in Radians rather than degrees) UNTICK Tools - Options - Value Formatting Options - "Show rotation values in Radians (degrees = unchecked)". This means that if an object such as a gun needs to be rotated 180 degrees you will see a value of 180 in the Rotation:Y field. Next there is a pair of checkboxes to TICK in the Export 3D Object window that are fortunately sticky and will be remembered. They are to do with the directions of the X, Y and Z axes. When you do come to Export your first 3D Object you will want to TICK "Flip coordinate system" and TICK "Reverse face winding". You will also need to select the Map Channels Radio Button for either "Save to .UVW (3ds Max)" if you are using 3ds Max or "Save to .OBJ (others)" if you are using Blender. This is because the models in SH4 use a different X,Y,Z system than tools such as Blender. You need to convert between the two in order for your ship parts to line up easily. This is why we have ticked the Flip coordinate system and Reverse Face Winding boxes. While it will look like it is pointing up into the sky in Blender that is not an issue as you can orient the Camera correctly so that your silhouette is perfect. The X,Y,Z fields in S3D will be in the same order as the X,Y,Z fields in Blender but unfortunately there will always be one axis pointing the wrong way and it seems to be the Y axis. For the moment X,Y,Z will map to X,-Y,Z. Units of Measurement Fortunately for us, Blender uses a very similar scale of measurement as the game. Both are Metric. The game measures in Meters and Blender (by default) measures 10 Meter uinits. This means that a 100m vessel will be 10.0 units long in Blender. A vessel that is 27.5m high above the waterline will be 2.75 units high in Blender. It is precisely 10:1 in scale. Setting up Blender For this work I used the latest available version of Blender. I will assume you have version 2.89 or newer from www.blender.org. When you first open Blender you will be looking at a "scene" where you can place lights, cameras and of course your model. You may find that the default view also contains a standard Cube model to play with but we will be deleting ALL objects in the scene and making use of a template I have created with standardized lighting and cameras. BLENDER TEMPLATE LINK : http://www.dcoffey.co.uk/images/sile...lateBlender.7z Choosing the Render Engine Type When you look at an object in Blender you usually just see it in a flat preview mode where the lighting is fairly accurate but does not include shadows. It is easy and quick to move around an object without having to wait for Blender to redraw complicated shadows. Selecting a Camera (such as "Camera - 090") and pressing F12 will ask Blender to open a new window and Render the model in high detail. This may take some time depending on your computer and GPU. Make sure that the "Render Engine" is set to "Cycles" as this is currently the best way for Blender to draw accurate shadows. The "Eevee" Render Engine is more approximate in its shadow calculations and I preferred the way that "Cycles" handled shadows cast by overhanging superstructure ledges better. If you select a Camera then look down in the lower right panel you will notice a small "TV Set" icon with a "Render Properties" tooltip. On this tab you should check that the Render Engine is set to "Cycles" and if you have a decent GPU that "Device - GPU Compute" is selected. If your GPU is not powerful enough to support this, just leave it to "Device - CPU" and accept that it will take longer to complete the final drawing. The next icon down looks like a small Printer and has the "Output Properties tooltip. I have set the X and Y resolution to 1980x1080px here for consistency. Scene Cameras The template I have provided has three cameras in it that correspond precisely to the three views we want to capture for our Silhouettes. There is Side camera at 90 degrees for the broadside picture. There is a Bow camera which captures 0 degrees for the dead ahead shot and another camera that has been rotated by 45 degrees for the offset picture. All three cameras are set to use the Orthogonal view of an object rather than a Perspective view. This allows us to see the masts, cranes and turrets of a vessel clearly no matter how much above or below the waterline we are viewing the target. You can check this behaviour by selecting a camera (such as "Camera - 090") in the top right scene panel, clicking the Camera icon in the lower right panel and noting that Camera Type is set to Orthogonal. All three cameras are hanging in space precisely 250m (or 25.0 Blender units) away from the 0,0,0 Origin of the scene and are aligned to point directly towards it along the waterline. This ensures we have a perfect view of the vessel from all three cameras. Of note is that each camera has an "Orthogonal Scale" value which is effectively the "Zoom" of the camera. We want to ensure that our vessel is entirely within the frame on the 90 degree Side view without too much dead space. As you lower the Orthogonal Scale value the camera zooms in. As you raise it, the camera zooms out. All three cameras MUST be set to the same Orthogonal Scale that best suits the particular vessel length you are working on. I will repeat this with an example when we get to capturing an actual Silhouette later. Scene Lighting I have set up four lights in the scene to help create a standard appearance for our vessels. You may find that for very small vessels you may need to increase the Power of the lights or move the two side lights closer together. All lights are defined with a 600W power and are of the "Broad Square" type. They cast the same sort of soft light as you would get coming in through a window. This avoids shadows that are too crisp. There is a Bow light that is ahead and slightly above the vessel. This light mainly provides light to the bow and superstructure. The Side High light is above and to one side of the vessel. It is to avoid dark shadows on the Port side when the vessel is viewed from the front. Side Front and Side Back are the two lights that shine on the Starboard side of the vessel. They both point towards the deck rather than the waterline. One is set towards the bow and the other is towards the stern. If a vessel is either very long or alternatively very short then you may have to adjust these lights to give a good spread of illumination. Once you are working on a ship model it is a good idea to click the "Display or Hide" eye in the top right panel next to the "Lights and Cameras" group. The lights will still exist but will be hidden and out of your way. Adding the Import Multiple Objects script to Blender By default Blender can only import one .OBJ file at a time and since our Silent Hunter ships are made up of as many as 20-30 Objects, this can get tedious. Fortunately there is a third party Python script that adds an "Import Multiple Object" option to the Import menu. Download the script from here… LINK : https://blenderartists.org/t/import-...r-2-8x/1164372 In Blender select Edit - Preferences - Add-ons - Import. Navigate to where you downloaded the script and select it. It will appear in the list of Add-ons. Tick it and you are done. Restart Blender and you should see a File - Import - Import Multiple (.OBJ) menu option. Extract parts of the Model When you open a vessel's .DAT file in the Silent 3ditor you will quickly see one main Node on the left panel that holds all the parts of the model, the types of noises it should make and where the people and weapons should appear on the decks. If you open the "Model Preview" tab on the right you will see a picture of the vessel itself. I would suggest making sure the following small icons are toggled on… "Solid", "Enable Diffuse Map", "Toggle Grid", "Toggle Axes", "Toggle Bounding Box", "Toggle Origins" and "Toggle Visibility". Inside the vessel's main Node will be one "3D Model" which is usually the hull as well as a large number of other sub-nodes that can be other parts of the vessel such as boats, funnels and masts as well as locations for all the sensors, weapons and static crew the vessel should be displayed with. Other items such as noises, damage hit boxes and animations are not of any interest for a silhouette. The parts of the vessel we need to locate are the main hull (always the root node), any small boats on the deck (boat or barca), masts (catarg), cranes (macara or kran), cables (cablu), funnels (cos), rangefinders (dir or tir), pipes, deck, cabin (cabina), glass, portholes (bulleye), deck armour and superstructure. Unless the vessel is small and the rudder is likely to be visible we are not really interested in the rudder (cirma) or propellors (elice). All these parts will have a 3d Model inside them which we can export. They will be highlighted on the main model as we click on them if we have "Toggle Bounding Box" active. Each model part has to be exported individually and then reassembled into the correct positions in Blender. Select a "3d Model" part and click the "Export" link. Make sure you are going to save it to the correct working folder and that Save as Type : WaveFront Object (.obj) is selected. On the next Export Settings page you will need to check that the following are all ticked… "Flip coordinate system", "Reverse Face Winding", "Float precision : 6", "Compress Floats", "Use Materials", "Save/overwrite new MTL file", "Put quotes round texture", "Save absolute texture" and importantly, "Save to .OBJ (others). You will now see a short list of one or more File Names to export. There will be one for each Texture Map on the model. One will always be the Diffuse or displayed texture of the vessel. Others which are optional will be the Occlusion or shadow map, the Normal or bump map and possibly the Specular or shininess map. You only want the very first one that will be named in the format "VesselName_VesselPart.obj". You should untick any subsequent ones that are labelled "VesselName_VesselPart-uv2.obj" as they are the other texture maps that we do not need. About 2/3 of the models will have more than just a plain texture map so there will often be items to untick here. It can also vary between individual parts of the same vessel depending on where they were originally imported from so stay alert. Once you have gone through the entire vessel looking for Nodes with a "3D Model" that corresponds to part of the ship that is above the waterline you should have between 5-30 individual .OBJ (and their corresponding .MTL file) files in your working folder. Leave Silent 3ditor open and go into Blender in order to import all the pieces and reassemble them like a giant kit into a complete vessel. Import into Blender* Open the Blender Template that you downloaded above and you will see an empty Scene with some lighting and cameras visible. I found it convenient to Hide the lights and cameras by clicking on the open eye next to their Group in the top right panel. The objects still exist but are not visible in the Scene window. If you prefer you can simply open an existing .blend file from a previous silhouette, select all the Ship parts and delete them. You can then then click on File - Clean Up - Purge All about three times to purge the objects, the materials and finally the images that the previous model had used. To bring the parts of the vessel into Blender click File - Import - Import Multiple. Navigate to where you saved the ship parts when using S3D then select all the vessel parts that you want to import. I don't know if it makes a difference but my template had "-Z Forward" and "Y Up" set for how the model is orientated. Click "Import Multiple OBJ's" and all components will be imported into the view window. You will almost certainly see some parts coloured in magenta. That is because Blender cannot find the texture that is named in the Material file for that Object. We will sort that out very easily soon. You will also notice that many of the parts of the vessel will be centered around the 0,0,0 Origin point rather than being in their proper place in the model. Sadly S3D does not retain the positions of a child object relative to its parent. When exporting from S3D it is usual to see the child object simply located relative to the Origin. We will have to go into EVERY part of the vessel and compare its current location to where it should be in the model and adjust each one individually. This will be the most time consuming part of making a silhouette by far. The first time-saving thing we have to do is make sure that the Origin Point in Blender s indeed set to 0,0,0. Depending on how the UI panels have been set up in Blender you will need to locate the View tab of the main Scene window. In my case it was a set of tabs (Item, Tool and View) in the top right of the main Scene window. Click the View tab and look down to the values under "3D Cursor". You want to make sure the X, Y and Z values are all 0. You can now select all Objects in your vessel in the right hand panel, move the cursor into the main Scene window, right click and select Set Origin - Origin to 3D Cursor. What we have now done is give every object in the Scene a position of 0,0,0. This is useful because they tended to be all over the place by small amounts and having to add an offset to an offset is unnecessarily complicated. Now I suggest you click the "Restore Down" icon in the top right of the frame of the main Blender window and drag the space that Blender takes up on your desktop to the right. This will allow you to have about 40% of your screen dedicated to the Silent 3ditor and the other 60% to Blender side by side. If you are lucky enough to have two monitors however you can simply have one application on each screen. You need to be able to see the S3D application as well as the Blender screen as we are now going to be selecting an Object in S3D and manually copying its coordinates into Blender so that it shifts into the right place on the vessel. Moving the model parts into place Understanding how the parts of a vessel will move as you adjust their position is easy if you remember that in Blender negX is Port and posX is Starboard, negY is Up and posY is Down, negZ is Aft and posZ is Forward. Some vessel parts such as guns, direction finders and occasionally torpedoes and planes may need to be rotated and again Blender uses a different coordinate system to S3D. In Blender an angle of negY swings an object to Port and posY swings it to Starboard. Occasionally a gun barrel may need elevating with a small posX angle adjustment. Generally I have found that three significant digits is sufficiently accurate for object placement, rounded on the last digit. S3D stores offsets to six decimal places and this is more than we need to worry about. Go through the objects in S3D one at a time and copy their X, Y and Z values to the corresponding object in Blender. As you tab out of each field you will see the object jump to its new position. Remember to reverse the value of the Y position as an object on the deck in S3D will have a positive Y value but in Blender it will need to be negative. If S3D has a negative Y value to shift it below something then entering it as positive Y in Blender will achieve the same result Nested Offsets You are likely to have some nested objects in S3D. For example a cable may be inside a mast object. A window may be nested inside a cabin. The offset value of a nested Child is always relative to its Parent, not the vessel origin. My advice is to group the objects into the correct Parent/Child order in Blender then make the adjustment to the Child first followed by the Parent. Take the example of a Glass object inside a Cabin object. In Blender, Click on the Glass object first then Ctrl-Click on the Cabin object second. You will notice that the child is in orange and the parent is in yellow. Now Right-Click and select Parent followed by Object (or press Ctrl-P as a shortcut). You will now see that the Glass child has nested inside the Cabin parent. Now you can go to S3D and look at the necessary adjustment that the Child needs. Make this adjustment in Blender and you will see the glass move very close to the cabin. Then you can do the same with the cabin. Both the cabin and the glass will move together as they are grouped. You can group several objects together in this way as long as you make sure the last one selected is the one you want to be the parent. You can also nest groups inside groups. You are likely to need to do this when you have a Direction Finder Barrel inside a Direction Finder that is attached to a Conning Tower that is placed on a Mast. Groups in Blender will help you organise the objects together and make sure that the offsets are maintained. Find the Textures Now that you have got your model imported into Blender and the parts in the correct location you will almost certainly spot some bright magenta objects. This is because Blender cannot find the texture in either the expected place or with the expected name. There are three places that textures are stored in FotRSU. The first is in the folder with the .DAT file. This is usually Data / Sea / Vesselname. The hull and often the deck will be stored here with the filename Vesselname_T01.dds. If you copy these textures to the same folder location as your working .blend file and restart Blender it will automatically pick them up. The second location a texture may be stored is embedded in the .DAT along with the Objects that make up the vessel. When looking for objects in S3D you may see Nodes called Vesselname_Deck_T01.dds. Expanding these Nodes may reveal an "Embedded Image". Clicking on this Node and Exporting the Image to the Blender working folder will allow it to be picked up. The final place an image may be stored is in the main FotRSU texture library. This is Data / Textures / TNormal / tex. Bookmark this "tex" folder as a favourite in Blender as you will be referencing it often. Finally you may notice that S3D is telling the game that an object uses a texture in TGA format but in FotRSU it is likely to be in DDS format. This is most frequently the case in glass, planes, gun turrets and barrels. All we have to do is select the object in Blender and tell it to use the DDS instead. Click on the magenta object in Blender. Click on the Material Properties icon in the lower right panel (looks like a small red globe near the bottom of the list). You will see the lower right panel change to show a list of Materials in the selected object. There may be more than one Material linked to an object. Under Base Colour you will see the name of the missing texture (such as Glass.tga). Click on the name of the missing texture and select "Image Texture" in the popup (shortcut is "T"). You can now click on the white Folder icon which will bring up a Search window. Select (or navigate to) your FotRSU texture folder shortcut and you will see the FotRSU textures listed. The chances are you will be seeking a TGA file which does not exist. I found that normally editing the name of the missing file from, say, Glass.tga to Glass.dds and selecting the "tex" folder would allow Blender to replace the missing TGA with the correct DDS image. Find the Weapons When looking at the main Node for a vessel in S3D you will see quite a few sub-Nodes with names like "cfg#M01_VesselName". They don't appear to have a model inside them and simply have a set of X, Y, Z coodinates. These are placeholders for the weapons and planes on a vessel and are simply a reference point in the Model for where to place the weapon once in the game. The definition of that weapon is actually in the VesselName.cfg file which is usually in the same folder as the .DAT. The reason it is done this way is that the weapons on a vessel may change over time as the vessel comes in for refits and upgrades. The .EQP file will have multiple entries for each weapon that are date dependent. The convention is that Main weapons are labeled M01-99, Secondary weapons are S01-99, AA weapons are A01-99, Torpedo launchers are T01-99 and plains are usually X01-99. Checking the DAT in S3D will show you which weapon types may be fitted on a vessel and where they should be placed. The EQP will tell you what their internal name is at any given year but you still don't know what they actually look like. For that you will need to ask the FotRSU team for a current copy of a spreadsheet that holds the weapon names referenced against which Library DAT they are stored in. This file is called "FotRSU - Equipment & Unit list.xlsx" Taking the example of the M01 main turret of the NBB_Bismark, the EQP file tells us she carried something called "15InchDoubleT" for all the years of the war. Looking up the "15InchDoubleT" in the "FotRSU - Equipment & Unit list.xlsx" spreadsheet we are told that object appears in Library / ShipParts / Guns.dat Opening Library / ShipParts / Guns.dat in S3D will quickly allow you to spot there is a Node called "15InchDoubleT". It has two separate parts to its model - a turret and a barrel, one nested inside the other. Export both the turret and the model to your Blender working folder, bring them into Blender using the "Import Multiple Objects" script and select both of them. Set their center relative to the Origin and you are ready to assemble the weapon. First select the barrel and move it into place by checking its coordinates in S3D. You may also need to check for a small amount of elevation (posX angle). You will almost always need to shift the barrel slightly but not many have an elevation amount. Once this is done you can permanently Join the barrel to the turret in Blender since you will never need them to be separate again. Select both then right click Join or use Ctrl-J as the shortcut. It is almost certain that the weapon will not be able to find its textures and will be pink. Select the object in Blender, check the Materials tab on the lower right panel and click on each Material in turn (there may be up to three). Each one will be looking for a TGA texture but FotRSU holds them as DDS. Click on each Base Colour field and select Image Texture followed by opening the Texture Search panel exactly as you searched for Textures above. Change the extension from TGA to DDS and select the "tex" folder shortcut. One by one the gun parts will turn from pink to their proper colours. Once you have done this, you can save the complete weapon into a folder for later use. I had a "guns" folder into which I placed each weapon as I encountered it since many are shared. Making sure the turret is still at the 0,0,0 Origin point I selected the Object and selected File - Export - Wavefront (,obj). Ensure that "Selection Only" is ticked. You will need to give the weapon a filename and I found the easiest way to do this was to click on the .obj listing for the turret since it will be visible in the Blender working folder. Having done that you can simply select your "guns" folder and save the weapon object in there. Now any time you need a "15InchDoubleT" on a vessel you have it already defined and textured. You can simply import it from your "guns" folder, set the x, y, z coordinates and rotation if required and you are done. Place the Weapons Unless you want a 100% accurate silhouette, you will need to decide which weapons to display on a vessel. As vessels become larger and will therefore be viewed from further away you only want to display the larger weapons. A good rule of thumb is to always show the Main weapons, the Secondaries if they are going to be visible against the skyline, Torpedoes if they are visible against the skyline but not if they are embedded inside as well as all planes. AA weapons are only really visible on vessels such as Merchantmen and Destroyers or smaller. Look a the model and decide which weapons you want to display, check their name in the .EQP file then import them from your "guns" folder" if you have seen them before. Go through each instance of a weapon, check it is the correct type, Import it once and put it into place then Duplicate it if there is more than one of them. As you go through the vessel in S3D you may see some weapons face backwards. Just make their Y rotation 180 degrees and they will be correct. Secondary weapons along the sides of larger vessels tend to be mirrored on the port and starboard sides. Do one side then duplicate all weapons on that side. One by one flip their X coordinate and they will appear on the other side of the vessel. Flip their X angle and they will point the right way too. Check the Cameras Now the vessel is fully assembled, it is time to check the scale of the cameras to make sure that they are correctly zoomed in. Click on the "Camera - 090" entry in the Lights and Cameras Collection in the top right panel of the Scene tab then toggle the view with Numpad-0. You should now be observing the scene through that camera. You will see a perfect side view of the vessel but the zoom may not be correct. Pressing Numpad-0 again will toggle between the normal Model view and the Camera view. Once in the Camera view, click on the little green camera icon (Object Data Properties) in the lower right panel and you will see that the Camera Lens is set to Orthographic and that there will be a value in the Orthographic Scale field. Increasing this value will zoom the camera out. Decreasing it will zoom the camera in. For a large vessel you may find that a value of 20-25 is needed whereas for smaller vessels something around 10-15 will be more suitable. You will want to adjust the Orthographic Scale until the entire vessel is visible in the "Camera - 090" view. There should be a modest border between the edge of the highlighted window and both the bow and the stern of the vessel. I did not bother with fractions in this value, just whole numbers. If the vessel appears to be shifted off to one side and there is a much larger gap between the frame and one end of the vessel, the solution is to select every object in the entire vessel and place them all in one group (Parent - Object or Ctrl-P). You can then shift the entire group to the left or right with a Z axis adjustment until it is more centered in the window. This may allow you to get a more suitable Orthographic Scale value. Once you are happy with the appearance of the vessel in the 090 view, make a note of the value in the Orthographic Scale field, select the 045 and 000 cameras and make the Orthographic Scale the same in all three. Save the Silhouettes Once the scale is adjusted, it is time to Render the vessel properly in the Blender Cycles Engine. This will give a properly shadowed image of the vessel. Select the 090 camera then click the Render Properties (small TV screen) tab in the lower right panel. Check that the Render Engine is set to Cycles and that Device is showing "GPU Compute" if you have a supported graphics card or "CPU" if you do not. Press F12 and wait a moment for the picture to generate. The time it takes will vary widely on your own specific hardware. For reference a 1080Ti takes between 4-5 seconds per Render and a 7700K takes about 16 seconds. With the mouse cursor over the Render window, press Shift-Alt-S to Save the image. Make sure that the File Format is set to PNG and choose a file name. I used VesselName_090.png for the 90 degree view and _045.png or _000.png for the other two. Save the image and repeat the process for the other two views by selecting the relevant camera, pressing F12 to Render and Shift-Alt-S to Save the image. Calculate the Length, Draft and Mast Height of the Vessel The length of a vessel can easily be obtained by clicking on the Hull object in Blender and looking at the X, Y, Z Dimensions that are usually displayed. The Y dimension is the actual length. Taking the NBB_Bismark as an example, clicking on the hull shows the Y dimension as 27.5m. Remembering that S3D is exactly 10x the scale of Blender we now know the Bismark model is 275m in length. For the Draft and Mast Height we will need to make a flat plane on the waterline and drag it down until it just touches the keel then drag it up until it just touches the tallest mast tip. I made a flat plane that was 10 units wide, 25 units long and 0 units thick. I set it to the 0,0,0 Origin so that it acted as an artificial waterline and then saved it (File - Export - Wavefront (.obj) - Selection Only) intro the "guns" folder as I needed it for every vessel. You can then Import the plane, rotate the view of the model so you can see the keel, select just the plane and adjust its Y location until it goes down just far enough to stop touching the keel. You can then turn the model round and zoom in enough to see the tip of the tallest mast and move the plane up till it just stops touching the mast. Make a note of the Y offset required for this and you have the Draft and Mast Height. Remember to multiply the value by 10. Taking the Bismark as our example again you will see that the hull is no longer visible when the Y offset for the plane is 1.02m and the aft mast is no longer visible at -5.53m. We therefore know the Draft is 10.2m and the Mast Height is 55.3m. These values should be checked against the VesselName.cfg file where you will see entries for Length, Mast and Draft. While it would also be possible to calculate exact Width values in the same way as the Draft, I don't think we need these values for an accurate silhouette or any other game purpose. Setting up Photoshop If you don't have it already then you will need to download the nVidia DDS Utility from here : https://developer.nvidia.com/legacy-texture-tools This will allow Photoshop to export DDS files with the correct transparency and compression for the game. You will also need the following template that I have created for the Silhouettes. It is the correct size and shape for the FotRSU Silhouettes. There are some Guide Lines already in it to help you position the silhouettes correctly on the waterline and appropriate centers. PHOTOSHOP TEMPLATE LINK : http://www.dcoffey.co.uk/images/sile...tePhotoshop.7z You may not need the Aiming Marks on each vessel but I have included them so that you can use or hide them depending on the specific Silhouette. They are a 50px x 6px Shape in dull red (0 colour, 100 saturation, 80 brightness). You will notice the Rulers are placed on the waterline of both the top (90 degree) and bottom (0 and 45 degree) Silhouettes. There are also three vertical Rulers to help find the center point of each image so that they are always in the correct place. The left one is for the 0 degree silhouette, the middle one is for the 90 degree and the one more to the right is for the 45 degree silhouette. Create the Silhouette If you are using Photoshop to make the Silhouettes I will assume a basic familiarity with Rulers, Masks, Layer Styles and Smart Objects. If you are using a different utility such as Gimp, I will explain what each step does and you should be able to find the equivalent tool. In order to make a Silhouette you will need to be able to Import three .PNG files, select exactly the top half of each one, Mask the image so that only the top half is visible, apply a Stroke Layer Style to the image and be able to scale it. Finally you will need to be able to Save As DDS with some specific settings. Open the Photoshop Silhouette Template and also Open all three of the VesselName_000/045/090.png Renders that you exported from Blender. Select the _090 image and use a Horizontal Ruler to find the waterline exactly halfway down the image. Since Blender exports images at a resolution of 1920x1080, we are looking to place a Ruler along the waterline at 540px. Box Select the entire top half of the image down to that ruler and apply a Layer Mask. Since layer Masks are white where the image is to be shown and black where the image is to be hidden we should now only be able to see the vessel from the masts down to the waterline. The underwater part of the hull should be hidden. Apply a Stroke Layer Style to the image. The Stroke needs to have the following properties… Colour black, Size 1px, Position Center, Blend mode Normal, Opacity 100%. This will highlight cables and outlines of small parts of the vessel that might be invisible if scaled down too much. Select the _045 and _000 images and repeat these two steps. You should end up with three images where the underwater parts are hidden and the visible parts have a slight outline. Now you need to be able to see the Template and all three images at once because we are going to drag all three into the Template. In Photoshop this is easily done by selecting Window - Arrange - Tile All Vertically. Drag a copy of each of the three images into the Template. Collapse the Window view so that you only see the Template. In Photoshop this is done by right-clicking on the title bar of the Template and selecting "Consolidate All to Here". The next step is to Scale the images so that they fit neatly between the Ruler lines of the Template. When you Scale an image repeatedly it becomes blurred but this can be avoided by converting it to a Smart Object in Photoshop. This allows you to Scale the image as many times as you like but it retains the crispness of the original each time. If you don't have access to a Smart Object tool, just make sure you Undo between each Scale attempt if the size was not right. Select each of the three vessel Layers in the Template and Convert to Smart Object. Select the _090 image and scale it to 50% by using Transform - Maintain Aspect Ratio - 50%. Drag the _090 layer so that it snaps to the waterline Ruler on the upper half of the Template. If the mast goes over the top-most ruler, the image will need scaling down a little smaller. I found that for the shorter vessels with relatively tall masts they needed scaling to between 40-50%. Make sure that the bow and stern are still inside the area of the Silhouette and that the mast is not over the top ruler. Generally 50% is a good starting point as it will also guarantee the most crisp image. Once you have decided on the correct Scale for the image, make a note of the value then Place the image. Apply the exact same Scale transformation to the _045 and _000 images. Drag all three images so that they snap to their appropriate waterline and then move them so that they snap to their vertical centerline too. As mentioned above, the _000 and _045 images use the two outside centerlines and the _090 uses the middle one. Decide the Aiming Point The convention for determining the Aiming Point in FotRSU is that it is the tallest point of the vessel unless indicated otherwise. You will often find however that the tallest point is sometimes not obvious and needs highlighting. This may be because the vessel has multiple masts and you need to show which is the tallest one or perhaps the most obvious mast is rather thin at the top and needs pointing out. Generally if the vessel has a forward mast that is clearly visible then you do not need to use the Aiming Point indicators. The Aiming Points can be hidden so they don't get in the way. If the forward mast is thin or only a little taller than the superstructure then an Aiming Point is useful. If the tallest point is the aft mast then an Aiming Point is very useful. Very rarely the vessel will have an extremely thin mast or antenna that is not clear enough to use as an aiming point. An example of this is the CHGunboat02 model where there are a pair of masts, one of which also has an antenna. In this case it may be better to nominate the top of a funnel or cabin instead. You will have to calculate the height of the vessel carefully in Blender by dragging the flat plain to the top of the area you think is a better aiming mark and noting that height even if it is not the tallest part of the vessel. You can then point the Aiming Mark to the part of the vessel you ant the player to use. All three views of the vessel will probably need their own Aiming Point so move them to the correct place. Take care to make sure the lines on the _000 and _045 view are at exactly the same level. Save the Silhouette Once you have the silhouette to your liking with the vessel lined up against the rulers and with any necessary Aiming Points, it is time to save the Photoshop file and to generate the FotRSU DDS file. First save the PSD into your working folder as VesselName_sil.psd Next Save as Format D3D/DDS with a lowercase extension as VesselName_sil.dds. Make sure to remove the space and "copy" from the end of the file name. The settings you will need to select on the nVidia DDS Utility are "DXT5 argb" and "No MipMaps". This will generate a 1024x512px DDS file with an alpha channel which will hold the transparency data of the image so that the texture of the Recognition Manual will show through. The file size should be 513Kb. __________________ Caselabs S8 : Intel i7-7700K 4.5GHz / 32Gb DDR4 3000 / Asus 1080 Ti / Samsung 960PRO 1Tb / Dell U2715H 27" 2560x1440 / Corsair AX1200i / APC SMT1500I / Windows 10 PRO Last edited by DanielCoffey; 10-10-20 at 01:35 PM.

06-03-20, 05:02 PM	#4
iambecomelife Silent Hunter Join Date: Apr 2005 Posts: 4,583 Downloads: 297 Uploads: 0	Thank you for your work. Making silhouettes is one of my least favorite things to do for the game. I am sure everyone will appreciate. Just to clarify, are you saying that the developers of stock SH4 provided models with incorrect dimensions? Thanks. __________________ https://www.facebook.com/WolvesoftheKaiser/

06-03-20, 05:21 PM	#5
DanielCoffey Planesman Join Date: May 2020 Location: South Ayrshire, UK Posts: 199 Downloads: 5 Uploads: 0	Hopefully we can assume stock SH4 was correct but it will have suffered from Chinese Whispers as mods evolved and grew. If folks are wondering what these silhouettes look like, here is an example of the Ansyu Maru. It is shown here on a white background but the actual texture is transparent to allow the page of the RM to show through. Top half is the normal view. Bottom half is the "offset" view. The outline of the vessel is emphasized with a slight "stroke" to show up the rigging and masts more clearly. __________________ Caselabs S8 : Intel i7-7700K 4.5GHz / 32Gb DDR4 3000 / Asus 1080 Ti / Samsung 960PRO 1Tb / Dell U2715H 27" 2560x1440 / Corsair AX1200i / APC SMT1500I / Windows 10 PRO

06-04-20, 01:47 AM	#6
DanielCoffey Planesman Join Date: May 2020 Location: South Ayrshire, UK Posts: 199 Downloads: 5 Uploads: 0	Working on the next block of Merchants. It will be a little untidy with Tenders, Tankers and Liners in there but they are all still mostly civilian or support vessels. After that I may get the Small Boats out of the way which will be mixed fishing, improvised and patrol boats. __________________ Caselabs S8 : Intel i7-7700K 4.5GHz / 32Gb DDR4 3000 / Asus 1080 Ti / Samsung 960PRO 1Tb / Dell U2715H 27" 2560x1440 / Corsair AX1200i / APC SMT1500I / Windows 10 PRO

06-04-20, 04:22 AM	#8
DanielCoffey Planesman Join Date: May 2020 Location: South Ayrshire, UK Posts: 199 Downloads: 5 Uploads: 0	It works fine for me, popping up a window in firefox "You have chosen to download...". Here is the actual link as text so you can copy and paste it... Code: http://www.dcoffey.co.uk/images/silenthunter4/silhouettes/SilhouettesMerchant01.7z __________________ Caselabs S8 : Intel i7-7700K 4.5GHz / 32Gb DDR4 3000 / Asus 1080 Ti / Samsung 960PRO 1Tb / Dell U2715H 27" 2560x1440 / Corsair AX1200i / APC SMT1500I / Windows 10 PRO

06-04-20, 05:09 AM	#9
vickers03 Grey Wolf Join Date: May 2007 Location: germany Posts: 970 Downloads: 705 Uploads: 37	good work, looks awesome

06-04-20, 05:47 PM	#12
Jeff-Groves Village Idiot Join Date: Sep 2014 Posts: 5,317 Downloads: 130 Uploads: 0	Try this link. http://www.mediafire.com/file/5kc9ov...hant01.7z/file __________________ I don't do Stupid. So don't ask.

06-04-20, 06:24 PM	#15
Jeff-Groves Village Idiot Join Date: Sep 2014 Posts: 5,317 Downloads: 130 Uploads: 0	Your stuff is screwed up! Chrome and IE download fine for me. Opens a window on where to save to. __________________ I don't do Stupid. So don't ask.

Thread Tools
Show Printable Version Email this Page
Display Modes
Linear Mode Switch to Hybrid Mode Switch to Threaded Mode