Samurai's Shipyard

[Gatling20 753]

Keep up the good work, WBS, we need more of your ships.

 

 

Do any current ships have bump mapping or specular mapping?

 

They are targets you fly past at 300 kts. I can't see the point of that, it is only going to affect frame rate.

[Fubar512 1,350]

Do any current ships have bump mapping or specular mapping?

 

The Ulyanavosk and the Kresta II.

[macelena 1,070]

Soviet surface combatants, US conventional carriers... personally, i would love a Baleares Class frigate (Knox class with 3D radar, SM launcher, and other modifications) and it could be of use in a mod wich has been long time on the "shipyard", but as i understand, there might be other preferences. So far, while i keep the sim just up to the early eighties, i haven´t used many of your modern models, but of those i have, i love them all.

[column5 63]

i thINK yU Ned 2 maK ReeLY CoOl MoDaLS LaTViaN MaFIa HiWaY PaTRol NaVY SeXShIPs, LiK Da strOM kLAss v.Fast PEtroL bOTE.

 

Latvia in da hizzouse!!!

 

[+Julhelm 266]

They are targets you fly past at 300 kts. I can't see the point of that, it is only going to affect frame rate.

By that metric, all the migs are targets you fly past at mach 2, so there is no point to have them modelled or textured since that is only going to affect framerate.

[+WhiteBoySamurai 1,094]

A big thank you to those of you who have given votes, requests, and constructive comments. So far, it looks like the Kuznetsov, Sovremenny, and Ka-25 will be my next big projects. These will take quite a bit of time, and I can't promise that I'll get to the rest of the requests in a timely fashion, but I'll see what I can do.

EDIT: Looks like there might already be a Kuznetsov nearing completion, so I'll hold off on that.

 

Do any current ships have bump mapping or specular mapping?

 

They are targets you fly past at 300 kts. I can't see the point of that, it is only going to affect frame rate.

 

I haven't gotten the hang of specular mapping yet (how many 3rd party aircraft even have it?), but all of my updated ships have bump mapping. If for any reason you don't feel it's worth the frame rate hit, just find the "_____bump.jpg" and yank it out of the ship's folder. Should save you at least 3MB of video memory.

 

Anyway, finding a balance between performance and detail is difficult, especially since users have wildly different machines, and often wildly different preferences and/or standards. I just hope that any new or potential model makers out there don't get discouraged by lofty expectations.

 

 

i thINK yU Ned 2 maK ReeLY CoOl MoDaLS LaTViaN MaFIa HiWaY PaTRol NaVY SeXShIPs, LiK Da strOM kLAss v.Fast PEtroL bOTE.

You mean this? http://en.wikipedia....ass_patrol_boat

I could make those, but only if they are really sexships. :3

 

 

By that metric, all the migs are targets you fly past at mach 2, so there is no point to have them modelled or textured since that is only going to affect framerate.

 

I'm sure many of us frequently find ourselves less than 100m behind a MiG while lining up for a gun kill, so there's reason to appreciate a little detail. Also, we can throw in a cockpit and fly them if we wish. Obviously they have to be made to a different standard compared to ground objects.

Edited April 30, 2012 by WhiteBoySamurai

[+allenjb42 4,234]

My vote was for the Russian ships & the Ka-25.

 

Not to get OT but is anyone looking at the upgrading the ships in the Falklands campaign package to SF2NA standard?

I know Invincible and some RN ships have received some love but I was thinking of the RN support ships, Fearless & Intrepid (especially for North Atlantic, Norway and other ops) and the Argentine fleet.

 

Looking forward to whatever you release WBS!

Edited April 30, 2012 by allenjb42

[+eburger68 201]

allenjb42:

 

I was working on the Fearless and Intrepid just this morning. I did most of the rest over the weekend.

 

Some of the civilian ships, I've discovered, have problems with the models -- meaning, that they move sideways in the water. Keep in mind that those ships were originally built for a mod that envisioned a terrain populated by static ships. In other words, those ships were built to be terrain objects.

 

And at this point I'm still not sure whether for the purposes of the campaign it makes sense (or is even practical) to do something different.

 

Eric Howes

[+allenjb42 4,234]

allenjb42:

 

I was working on the Fearless and Intrepid just this morning. I did most of the rest over the weekend.

 

Some of the civilian ships, I've discovered, have problems with the models -- meaning, that they move sideways in the water. Keep in mind that those ships were originally built for a mod that envisioned a terrain populated by static ships. In other words, those ships were built to be terrain objects.

 

And at this point I'm still not sure whether for the purposes of the campaign it makes sense (or is even practical) to do something different.

 

Eric Howes

 

Eric, thanks for the reply. Looking forward to whatever you release too!

[macelena 1,070]

Incidentally, i tried to dumb-bomb a USn Task Force with an USMC A-4M, with all the sams and CIWS, i bet flying an Argie Scooter is gonna get quite interesting

[+WhiteBoySamurai 1,094]

I'm doing some visual updates for many of my ships, starting with the Ticonderoga, which I'll be releasing in an all-in-one superpack of every single variant and refit. I added detail to the forward hull, made a new anchor, tweaked the masts a bit, installed some SRBOC launchers, and retextured a few other areas.

 

 

Later variants are also well on their way. Here's the "last" Ticonderoga, CG-73 Port Royal. Notice the new Bushmaster cannons on the stern deck.

 

With all the new details, the ship is about 48000 polygons close in (still roughly 10k max distance).

 

The Leahy and Bainbridge are getting a lot of work. I've already rebuilt the hull from scratch and will focus on making them look nicer overall. The Arleigh Burke, Kongo, and Freedom will also get some polishing along with new improved close-in weapon performance. New ships are still coming as promised, but I can only ask for your patience.

[+Typhoid 231]

Awesome work!!

 

Midway (with 2 cats and 3 wires) and Belknap?

 

Edited May 4, 2012 by Typhoid

[+Julhelm 266]

I would bake those harpoon launchers if I were you. And change those windows on the bridge to ones that don't look as cartoony. Otherwise it looks better than your earlier efforts :)

[+WhiteBoySamurai 1,094]

Thanks, those areas needed some attention. How's this?

 

Bridge:

I considered cutting out glass (.tga) windows like I did with the Burke and Kongou, but I think I'll save that for when I have more free time.

 

Harpoon canisters:

 

I do all the artificial shadows and stuff by hand because I do not grok baking. I remember trying to follow a tutorial on ambient occlusion, and the damn thing output 100+ maps, one for every component of the model. So then I'm expected to meticulously re-scale and position all those onto the main texture and merge down with just the right degree of transparency? If that's what it takes to be a professional, maybe I'll just try knitting or origami instead. But, if someone could point me to a guide showing an easier and faster way to do it, I would be most grateful.

[+Julhelm 266]

Looks better for sure but it's not difficult to set up a bake. The way I usually do it is copy all my objects and attach them together into one mesh, give it a white phong material and render out a lighting map with lighttracer and a skylight. It will render separate maps for separate objects so you have to group your meshes by UVs, and also make sure you don't have overlapping UVs. That's not to say you can't mirror stuff - you can do that but the mirrored UVs have to be moved away from 0-1 space. I too used to handpaint all my shading but outside of doing handpainted styles there is little point to do so when Max gives a much better and accurate result and does it faster. Sure, it takes some effort to learn how to get it right but as with everything else in life the payoff is usally worth the effort :)

 

Attached is my UV layout on a tanker where you can see I've offset stuff and the resulting bake and some pictures from Marmoset so you can get an idea of what I mirrored and where. If you build the model with mirroring UVs in mind it's generally much easier to do things. For example this tanker (like most ships tbh) is very symmetric so I only built half of it, mapped it, and then baked it with along with a dummy copy to give the correct shading. I did the same for the Kresta 2.

[+GrinchWSLG 24]

The Ulyanavosk and the Kresta II.

 

Updated Fletcher has it too, not very well done though, was just a test case.

[+PureBlue 71]

Fantastic looking ship there Julhelm!

 

@WBS, looking forward to see how the SRBOC system performs.

[+WhiteBoySamurai 1,094]

Thanks a lot, Julheml! The tutorials I had read never mentioned about attaching objects or how to best arrange the uvws, so it was a real sticking point for me. I tried it out on the LCS-1 first since it has fewer parts and simpler geometry, after adding a few more features:

 

 

@PureBlue-- I'm using the LCS as a testbed for SRBOC now, and it will probably be ready for release before I finish the Ticonderoga variants.

 

Basically, the system launches a bunch of "chaff and flares" which are actually just slow, short-range missiles. The minimum altitude is set very low, and they're useless against aircraft, so they just try to get in the way of anti-ship missiles. I've been experimenting with the values a lot to balance their performance. Just like real countermeasures, they won't be a "silver bullet," but they do help. I brought the SRBOC-equipped USS Freedom into the "CIWS test" mission (courtesy of KJakker in a different thread), and while the original ship got slaughtered quickly, the new version can reliably live through several salvos of Harpoons. Not bad for a corvette.

[+Julhelm 266]

Looks a hell of a lot better already.

[the test pilot 5]

Talking about ships... I think that the super etendard and the french crusaders need a proper Clemenceau.

I remember seing one at the time of the series one, but even then we only got the screenshots.

[+WhiteBoySamurai 1,094]

Talking about ships... I think that the super etendard and the french crusaders need a proper Clemenceau.

I remember seing one at the time of the series one, but even then we only got the screenshots.

 

That's strange, I have a Clemenceau in my folder, but for the life of me I can't find it again in the download section. It's all updated for NA and everything.

 

 

I ran into two small problems while updating my models. First, there's a strange issue showing up when I render for the ambient occlusion bake. Some parts of the model, typically where two meshes join, have this strange thing going on like someone dumped a bucket of paint in the corners:

 

So basically it doesn't precisely match where the shadows should be. Any idea what's causing it? Fixing it by hand would be a pain on more complex models. Are there some settings in Render setup I can adjust for this?

 

 

Also, I recently updated my Nvidia driver from 296.10, which was giving me extremely frequent purple-screen-of-death, to 301.24. No more crashes, everything looks even better-- but now I'm seeing a strange graphical glitch in game on some of my models and some other third party ones. It looks like this:

See how there's a flickering mess at the ends? The objects marked in the screenshot are ones I had cylinder wrapped, and didn't bother to flatten the uv's for each end. This is only in-game and doesn't show up in max viewports or renders for me. This is what I get for literally "cutting corners" I guess. :P Anyway, it's easy to fix, and I've already done so for some of my models. But I just wanted to find out if anyone else was seeing this graphical glitch, and give other modders a heads up about it.

[+Julhelm 266]

The bottom part is because you have flat faces and a normalmap and it's basically flickering because it can't calculate the surface normal on those faces. As for the bake, I dunno, the scanline renderer doesn't handle intersecting geometry so well so I just tend to work around it. Sometimes I paint over with a black brush if I have to.

[+SupGen 79]

As far as Clemenceau goes, I'm pretty sure Wrench said it's a Marcfighters product and that for some reason Marcelo doesn't want it released; someone uploaded it by mistake a few months ago(well, last year sometime), and I grabbed it, but...

[+CrazyhorseB34 937]

Clem is an easter egg in the old MF weaps pack.........downloadable here I think.

[macelena 1,070]

Clem is an easter egg in the old MF weaps pack.........downloadable here I think.

 

True, i got it and edited it for SF2NA, http://combatace.com/files/file/5956-mirage-factory-weapons-pack-janurary-2008/