WhiteBoySamurai

View File Essex class (long-hull) aircraft carrier This model represents the long-hull straight-deck Essex class aircraft carriers, beginning with CV-14 USS Ticonderoga circa 1944. These ships were about 5 meters longer than the original CV-9 Essex, and featured heavier anti-aircraft armament. Two versions of the ship are included: The original WW2 configuration, and the jet-capable Korean War era modernization. Decals for each unit are included. Random aircraft parking has been designed for currently available models with folding wings. In addition to its complement of aircraft, each ship is armed with a battery of twin 5" guns and single 5" guns, plus a vast number of 40mm Bofors and 20mm Oerlikon anti-aircraft guns. Please see the readme for full details and credits. Because this is a very high-poly, high-definition model, instructions are also included to improve framerate for those of us without premium supercomputers. This model is dedicated to Wrench, who requested it, and who provides us with great playgrounds for all our toys. Submitter WhiteBoySamurai Submitted 09/27/2015 Category Aircraft Carriers

Most or all of the late 70's Essex units were the SCB-125 version, which is a stock model. I may do some SCBs at some point in the future, but I'd like to get back to smaller ships for a while. I really appreciate the thought of crowdfunding. On one hand, I want to say "I don't need your money, I'm doing this for love!" But it would be nice to have some new software. For example, I ran into a problem when trying to bake the textures for the Essex: Max 2009 kept crashing on me because it ran out of memory. According to what I've read, newer versions of Max take full advantage of 64-bit OS and can use all 8+ GB of RAM, so they don't have this problem. *shrug* But while I might decide to accept donations someday, I'll never charge you guys for access to my models. Anyway, the long hull Essex is done and being uploaded now. I want to take a moment to explain my thought process, because this is a big departure from my previous models. I said "yes" to this project 3 years ago. Can you believe it? There was a lot of procrastination, scrapping and restarting, and nearly giving up at several points. I experimented with new texture patterns, new brushes, new ways of building objects. And I had to put a lot of thought into "what do the CombatAce members want from this model?" The trend I've been seeing, from the requests I get and the screenshot thread, is that folks want carriers, and they want stuff in super-high detail for photo ops. Other kinds of ships get little or no representation in screencaps. So I went balls-out with this boat. The result is the most insanely detailed model I could possibly manage: 100,000 polygons (2x my Ticonderoga cruiser) 4096x4096 + 2048x2048 main textures (more than double any of my previous models) I'm aware that some of you have Essex class (probably short hull) ships from other sources. How does mine compare to Yankee Air Payware? Designed specifically for SF2 Both WW2 and Korean War variants included in one package Far more detail at similar poly count Distance LODs, custom collision LOD Bump mapping; will add specular mapping if enough people request it Templates available on request if anyone wants to do measure/splinter camo schemes Full names list and decals for entire line of ships instead of one ship with number painted onto the texture Parked aircraft generation FREE And if you angle the camera just right, you can watch aircraft take off from the bridge. So anyway, I'm sorry this ship took so long to finish. I hope you all enjoy it.

Soon.

Testing out decals using stock cvn numbers for now. 20mm Oerlikons have been added, but not enabled. There are 48 mounts around the ship, and they contribute a total of 12000 polygons on the close-in LOD. That's about as many triangles as one of my modern frigates.

No, they can be located in any game folder if you have all the titles merged. Here are the requirements for auto-generated task forces in summary: 1. The terrains need to have the "NavalMap=TRUE" line set in the .ini 2. There must be a water map with properly placed zones for friendly and enemy surface groups 3. The nations you want to spawn ships must be set as FriendlyNation001= and EnemyNation001= in the nations.ini file 4. Those nations must have capital ships and escorts available The game will attempt to build task forces around one or more capital ships, i.e. aircraft carriers, battleships, cruisers, and transports. If no aircraft carriers are available, it will check for battleships. If no battleships are available, it will check for cruisers. If all ship types are available, the game may create up to three groups centered around a carrier, battleship, and transport. The battleship's surface group will typically be forward relative to the carrier's position, and the amphibious group will be behind the carrier group. The game will attempt to spawn at least the minimum number of escorts for each surface group. Destroyers and frigates are always escorts, but battleships and cruisers will also be assigned as escorts if available. When using the mission editor or creating a custom campaign, however, you can create any sort of fleets you like in any formation you prefer. However, I'm pretty sure that only one carrier can be active per group, and it has to be the flagship of the group for carrier ops to work correctly. Other carriers should have their own task forces.

Sorry, I doubt it. I've got way too many models in the pipe as it stands. Acesfakia did a couple of LSTs which are of the same design lineage, I think: http://combatace.com/files/file/15123-landingshiptank-mk-i/ http://combatace.com/files/file/15226-lst-mkii-2/ Currently testing out parked aircraft on the Essex. I wish the Hellcat had folding wings.

The 40mm guns are halfway done. I could definitely use your help with the 20mm guns once I place them all.

Got it, thanks for the photos. Main battery, catapults, and wires are now operational. ...The bullet holes? Uh, I neglected to remove all the enemy aircraft in the test mission and ran afoul of some Zeroes. The AI has no trouble landing either. Finishing the textures and installing the AAA guns will take a lot of work, but I'll try to at least get the WW2 version done before the end of September.

It'll happen one day! Actually I'll be building the Hyuga next after the Essex, and eventually the Izumo.

I'm finally doing initial in-game tests. No major issues so far. Finishing the painting and entering the data for dozens and dozens of guns will take quite a while. I'm shooting for mid/late September. A couple more questions: -How many arresting wires? Some drawings seem to show a ton of them, at least on the early versions. -Can I get some clarification on the search radars? The references I've been using show an SK-2 radar: That's already complete. But, other sources say the ship (or at least some variants) had a rectangular SK radar: Or some combination of both. ...Which means I will have to build an entirely new set.

The second of the Izumo class helicopter carriers, Japan's largest warship since WW2, was launched a few days ago, and given the name of one of the IJN's most infamous fleet carriers. http://www.navyrecognition.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3048 Her flight deck is actually longer and wider than WW2 Kaga. While the Izumo class are not intended as offensive weapons, I'm sure the choice of name will rustle some jimmies in certain countries.

The one in that pack is the Komatsu LAV (Light Armored Vehicle), which is a completely different animal. I could put together a LAV-25 fairly quickly if you really need one.

Yes, this is a long-hull straight-deck Essex (CV-14 and most of her sisters that followed), as originally requested. Unwrapping is nearly finished, except for the catapults, arresting wires, and eventually the blast deflectors for the Korean War era refit. I've started with some texturing already, to make sure I have uniform scaling for the deck edges and other areas. I'm also working on a seamless texture for the deck. I'm basing it off of photos and professional scale models, like this one:

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.

10-round burst.

View File Iver Huitfeldt class frigate 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! Submitter WhiteBoySamurai Submitted 08/01/2015 Category Frigates

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.

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.

View File Horizon Forbin class frigate 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! Submitter WhiteBoySamurai Submitted 07/21/2015 Category Frigates