[WIP] Ship Silhouettes - Modder's Resource

[propbeanie]

Oh yes, excellent! I really like the #2 version also!

[DanielCoffey]

Agreed. The subs that carry float planes will get that box in the same place on the top silhouette.
Note the very slightly uneven "printed" border? No I don't have shaky hands - that is jitter in the brush settings and pressure sensitivity in the pen.

[propbeanie]

I understand the "drawing" stuff... You could work on that for hours trying to get it to look better, and hours later, have something worse than what you started with... lol

[DanielCoffey]

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

[Mad Mardigan]

Originally Posted by s7rikeback

Number two get my thumbs up..

I concur.. #2 gets My vote.. still gives enough info to know that it can launch planes yet keeping the sil clean to recognize it for what it is, an IJN sub capable of launching them gnat planes...

[Moonlight]

The AI_Pigboat_sil needs to be changed to AI_Pigboat_Static, apart from that there are no other errors.

[DanielCoffey]

Oh you are right, sorry. I was still trying to learn how the subs fitted together when I did that one. and got the name wrong.

[Jeff-Groves]

Originally Posted by propbeanie

My guess is that since most, if not all of the AI subs are made from Human-Playable vessels, that is the reason behind all of the detail on them. I would most likely entail more than it is worth to "fix".

I would say that is the lazy approach.


I'm not one to accept crappy Units or a 'Quick' Unit just to get it out there.
Do it right or save us the time to fix your lazy arse excuse of a bad job!

[propbeanie]

For a person of my skills in 3D, it's the sensible approach... someone else built them, and someone else will most likely have to fix them. If I could tell the difference between a green crayon and a pencil, I'd have a go at 'em Jeff, but my art skills have not reached the level of stick figures yet. It might be fun though to see what I would turn those subs into... but, to paraphrase Whimpy, "We would gladly pay someone Tuesday, for a cheeseburger today"...

"If anyone of you would like to volunteer for this mission, please take a step forward!" [everyone steps back, except Jeff] - "Why, thank you Mr. Jeff-Groves!" Actually, I might try what DanielCoffey suggested, if I can remember enough of my Blender, and see what does happen with all of the nodes when re-importing... I might be doing a bit of PM'ing ya Jeff, ole buddy ole pal...

[DanielCoffey]

If anyone could write down a step by step list of how to export an OBJ from S3D into Blender then put it back in again, that would open up the doors to model optimization. Many of the vessels have what I would consider grossly excessive triangle counts and there are plenty of models with dead parts hidden or placed inside them. A drydocking and thorough scrubbing is what these vessels need!

I did try it myself and although I can get the model into Blender, I just cannot get it back into S3D without huge numbers of complaints about indexes and unknown parameters.

Once we have a working method it could do with writing up and illustrating in its own thread which I am happy to do.

[DanielCoffey]

I will briefly be pausing the silhouettes of the Warships as I have just signed up to Lynda.com/LinkedIn to take some online courses in Blender.


I have been struggling a little with trying to understand the interface, have found a few things I didn't know how to do to the models when putting them back together for the silhouettes and messed up my settings in Blender.


Hopefully after a few short courses I will be able to get back to making the silhouettes more easily. The warships are a bit more complicated than the Merchants due to the number of weapons that have to be assembled and sub-sections with nested offsets so I would like to get more efficient at it.


In the mean time if someone had the time to either PM me or post here with how to get an OBJ out of S3D, into Blender and back into S3D again without too much manual editing I would really appreciate it. I will then write it up tidily as a resource for the forum.

[DanielCoffey]

Right - lots of useful stuff discovered. I can handle the nested offsets much better, navigate around inside the Blender viewport properly and have picked up on some of the keyboard shortcuts.


Two things I discovered I was doing wrong is that I had been taking the silhouettes in "preview" mode rather than a final render with good shadows. The differences are somewhat small but it may be worth my while going back over the models I have done so far and recapturing the screenshots in better detail then re-releasing the DDS files as a "Version 2.0".


The other important difference is that I can now calculate the height and draft much more accurately. I may have only been half a meter off due to rounding but I can now be exact. Since the draft and height are important for targetting, I will have a look at the values I calculated and consider revising them for the Merchants.


I appreciate this will mean that folks who have used my previous figures will have to revise them but the differences will hopefully be small, especially if I highlight the ones which can be left alone.


I will revise the silhouettes and measurements and issue an updated Pack which aggregates Pack 01 to Pack 05 into one resource.

[propbeanie]

... and I will then incorporate that into an FotRSU-compatible mod-let... I have watched many videos on the use of Blender, and for some reason, as soon as I try to use what I just watch, my brain drains... lol - I cannot remember a thing... then I sleep, and make matters worse!

[Mad Mardigan]

Originally Posted by DanielCoffey

Right - lots of useful stuff discovered. I can handle the nested offsets much better, navigate around inside the Blender viewport properly and have picked up on some of the keyboard shortcuts.


Two things I discovered I was doing wrong is that I had been taking the silhouettes in "preview" mode rather than a final render with good shadows. The differences are somewhat small but it may be worth my while going back over the models I have done so far and recapturing the screenshots in better detail then re-releasing the DDS files as a "Version 2.0".


The other important difference is that I can now calculate the height and draft much more accurately. I may have only been half a meter off due to rounding but I can now be exact. Since the draft and height are important for targetting, I will have a look at the values I calculated and consider revising them for the Merchants.


I appreciate this will mean that folks who have used my previous figures will have to revise them but the differences will hopefully be small, especially if I highlight the ones which can be left alone.


I will revise the silhouettes and measurements and issue an updated Pack which aggregates Pack 01 to Pack 05 into one resource.

I know the fun it is with doing the work you are, DanielCoffey, just with a different subject.

Am working on a radio fix for We dive at Dawn & am running into all sorts of fun issues with that. Need some info about certain aspects on it & coming up dry at the well of useful info and having to leave it on hold until I can find out what I need to know before I attempt to do anything further with the work I'm doing..

On what you're doing here.. can't wait to see it incorp'ed into FotRS v1.1 or whatever v #'ing it ends up with, to be frank and hopefully incorp'ed into Op. Monsun Enhanced, as well... or maybe explained of how to do so with it if Fifi makes the choice to not do so themselves...

Any way, keep up the good work.. Gute Jagd Herr Kaleun...

M. M.

[DanielCoffey]

I will be happy to talk folks through the method I used to make the silhouettes.

I have used our wonderful S3D tool to export (although there are two issues which have created more work than necessary with putting the model back together), Blender to reassemble the models and hunt for the textures and Photoshop to make the silhouettes themselves. The NVidia DDS plugin is useful too for making the DDS files easily.

There is nothing unique to PS that anyone who prefers Gimp or similar couldn't reproduce but it is simply what I have here. If it can Stroke (no smirking please), align to a ruler and (optionally) allow repeated resizing without loss of quality (PS uses Smart Objects but you can simply try a size, Undo and try again) then it will be fine.

I am finding that due to rounding errors in my first crude estimates of draft and height, absolutely every one of them is having to be adjusted. I got the total keel-to-mast height right but the rounding errors generally favoured height over draft. The margins were about 0.5m but more extreme the longer and lower the boat was.

I have already worked my way through Merchants 01, Merchants 02 and Subs 06 (no new silhouettes needed there - subs are basically a tube with a "sticky up bit on the top") but all the vessels are benefiting from using the real Render engine inside Blender as it models shadows properly.

The greatest difference will be in the Carriers. I tried putting a flat top through the Renderer and the difference was really amazing. Blender Eevee (preview) tried its best but Blender Cycles (final) is much better at the shadows in overhangs and recesses. I don't have a "sea surface" plane reflecting light from underneath because these are of course intended as printed silhouettes rather than recon photos but Eevee could not handle that at all if we did want it.

When I have done a few more blocks of the Merchant vessels I will update them to version 2.0 all at once.