WhiteBoySamurai

10-round burst.

Ooh, is that a Talwar for the Indian Navy?

I was thinking about doing the Georges Legues and Cassard, but I may not have time for them. I need to finish my current big project and then get back to the Asian theater first. The air defense FREMM is only an idea on paper right now. When they build a real one, I'll make a model of it. Your research is much appreciated. To be clear, I'm only doing the long-hull (CV-14) version, since that's the one that was requested. The short-hulls have significant structural differences, so reworking the model would not be that easy. I finally have the island, walkways, deck edges, and platforms seamlessly unwrapped and organized. Now I just need to fit them all on a single texture sheet, or otherwise add yet *another* material to the model. Welcome to my nightmare.

File Name: Iver Huitfeldt class frigate File Submitter: WhiteBoySamurai File Submitted: 01 August 2015 File Category: Frigates This model represents the Iver Huitfeldt class frigate of the Royal Danish Navy, in commission since 2011. They are dedicated air defense frigates based on the same hull as the Absalon class support ship. Please be sure to download that ship as well to enable Danish task forces on appropriate terrains. The Iver Huitfeldt is very heavily armed for its size, and loadouts can be swapped easily using the StanFlex system. This model has a typical cofiguration of a 76mm rapid gun, two 35mm Millenium CIWS, a 32-cell Mk41 VLS with SM-2, two 12-cell Mk56 VLS with ESSM, and four 4-round Harpoon launchers. The flight deck can support one medium helicopter. An update patch is included in this package that will enable a helicopter deck on the Absalon as well. See the readme for full details and credits. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or constructive criticisms regarding this model, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you! Click here to download this file

Thanks so much for all the info, guys. I think it's the "every one of them is different" thing like Crazyhorse said that's giving me a lot of trouble. Ideally I'd like to keep it to two or three variants at most for this long hull boat. The island and deck edges are next to be unwrapped. Stock carriers and some other third party ones use a wrap-around tile for the edges, which is efficient in terms of texture size, but that won't let me do ambient occlusion or proper weathering in those areas. I'll do my best to find a balance between detail and performance. I'm going to be out of town the rest of this weekend, but I thought I'd upload one more model before that. I put it together from existing parts and retextured it in about 2-3 hours. With this ship and the Absalon, the sim will be able to create miniature task forces for the Royal Danish Navy starting from 2011 on terrains like the Baltic Entrance.

File Name: Horizon Forbin class frigate File Submitter: WhiteBoySamurai File Submitted: 21 July 2015 File Category: Frigates This model represents the Forbin class frigate of the French Navy, in service from 2008 to present. The Forbin is part of the Horizon program of air defense frigates for France and Italy. Two of the class have been built for the French Navy, replacing the Suffren class. The Italian Horizon differs significantly in loadout, and is not included in this package. The Forbin is armed with two super-rapid 76mm guns and 20mm GIAT cannons, eight MM40 Block 3 Exocet missiles, Mistral short-range SAMs in two Sadral launchers, and 48 Aster 30 SAMs in Sylver VLS. (The sound effect for the Aster missiles is taken from actual test footage.) The flight deck can support one medium helicopter. Early and late versions of the Mistral missile are included. They are compatible with other ground objects as well as helicopters (using "SpecificStationCode=mistral"). You may also wish to download my Aquitaine and La Fayette frigates to complete your collection of modern French surface combatants. See the readme for full details and credits. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or constructive criticisms regarding this model, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you! Click here to download this file

I'm going to try and finish am older (and long overdue) carrier first. The unwrapping is taking forever. There are so many tube-like structures such as gun pits and lookout platforms. They do not respond well to box mapping or flatten mapping. I have to meticulously cylinder-wrap the inside and outside of each one and then manually rescale the uvws. Then there are these balcony/walkway/lint trap things, highlighted in the pic above. There are dozens and dozens of them spaced around the deck. Because I was an idiot when I first built these sections, I didn't unwrap the first one before cloning it fifty times and placing them. So I've got to do that all over again the right way. On the other hand, I gave the doors around the ship their own texture already. The reason for this is that it would be too difficult to paint them onto the hull and island textures due to the uvw scaling and angle issues. It's an extra 2500 polygons, but there's no easier way at this point. Also, I need to know what the original catapults looked like as-built. Can't seem to find photos of that, so any help would be appreciated.

Three French beauties

The Forbin is now finished and uploaded. So now we've got all three of France's most modern surface combatants. I think they look quite nice together. I know some of you are going to bug me for a Charles de Gaulle now, but I really need to get around to finishing some old projects before I even consider starting something of that scale.

I'm very sorry. It's not my intention to put you down. You have a lot of potential as a modder. But I want to save you from the same mistakes that I made. My first major model was the Ticonderoga class, my favorite USN ship. In retrospect, trying to build such a complex ship so soon was a bad move. I did sloppy work, I made so many rookie mistakes, and because of that I've rebuilt and re-uploaded that model a dozen times. Even now, I'm not 100% satisfied with it. I should have started small, with simpler models, and learned to do things properly step by step. UVW unwrapping, polygon efficiency, symmetry, modularity, normal maps, light maps, ambient occlusion... I would have improved faster and saved so much time. But I wasn't patient. So, that's my advice. I did things the hard way, but you can do better. I'll continue to help however I can, if you like. As for this ship in particular: If you knew what Yamato meant to Japan, and what Japan means to me, you would understand why I guard her jealously.

Textures are nearly complete, mostly just need occlusion and weathering. I think I'll be able to finish sooner than I estimated.

Perhaps you didn't see it, but I already said in this thread that I'll be doing the Yamato class. Twice, in fact-- Finishing up the one that russouk2004 provided as a nice place-holder, and (much later) building my own version in far greater detail. I've already built some components for mine, but I estimate it will take about a year to finish. That ship deserves nothing but the best, and I'm going to give it to her. I'm still really looking forward to your Lupo/Soldati, Maestrale, Padilla, helicopters, etc. How about finishing all those smaller projects before starting anything new?

Mistral missile Fins are fully animated, etc. etc. If you have any helicopters capable of carrying this weapon, a quick .ini edit will make it into an air-to-air missile.

Five is just the initial order. I'd go so far as to predict that Japan will look into license-building more, as they've done with most US-designed hardware in the past.

Mesh is finished. Initial painting and testing underway.

Haters gonna hate.

Thanks for the info, KJakker. I'll get to work on the missile. Now all I really need is the train/elevation rate for the launcher itself. The ship in its entirety should be ready in just over one week.

I'm just finishing up the Sadral launcher and about to start texturing everything... ...when I suddenly realized that there is no Mistral in my weapons folder. Huh. Isn't there one available somewhere? I mean, it's one of the most prolific portable SAMs in the world. It wouldn't be difficult to build one, but I don't wanna waste my time if a model already exists.

Thanks, Suicidal! I'm in the process of unwrapping parts of the Horizon, but still need to add some details, cut the windows, and build a Sadral launcher.

That Iskander is great! We need more "high value targets" like this.

I'll consider it after the ship is at full operational capability (in 1~2 years?). By then there will probably be photos and reference material all over the place.

Got it, thanks!

Would like to help out with that, but for me the real joy of making these ship models is watching them shoot at stuff. Maybe after I finish the fifty-something modern surface combatants that I have planned. And a flattop or two. And a helicopter. And some WWII favorites. For now, I've selfishly taken over the Horizon project, so I can finish all the latest French vessels as I had originally planned. I have rather good diagrams and references for this ship. I think it'll look great next to my La Fayette and Aquitaine.