Hi Everyone,

Haven't been very active lately, just too much to do I'm afraid. Really looking forward to going through all the posts as soon as I can find a spare moment.

Just some screen shots of ship 4 of 5, RN Bartolomeo Colleoni.

Happy Easter to all!

Mark

Looking great so far Mark, it will be nice to see this one rendered up when you are finished!

- Michael

Thanks Michael. I'm really looking forward to doing some renders of the battle between this ship and HMAS Sydney II.

A bit more work done on Colleoni and a simple Supermarine Walrus for the model of Sydney.

Hi Mark, that's cool - is the Walrus one that they would call a "flying boat" ?

- Michael

Hi Michael,

Yes, the Walrus was a flying boat, initially supplied to the RAN as the "Seagull V", only later evaluated and then placed into service by the RN, to finally become the (identical, virtually indistinguishable?) Walrus.

They were carried on a number of warships. I believe many a ditched pilot owes his life to these ungainly little planes.

Another screen shot. This one mostly changes the platform arrangements on the forward superstructure to tie in better with how I believe Colleoni looked at the time of her loss. Also added catapult rails.

I finally started using the shell & inset tools (for insetting the platforms). Great work Michael. Really looking forward to being on the V3 beta train!

I love your awesome ships!
I´m sure that this new one wil be another fantastic job.
Expecting more post :-)

Hi David,

Thanks for your kind words. I'll keep posting progress shots. I'm having more fun and less issues with this one due to better reference materials and less guess work. She's a pretty interesting looking ship too I think. These were the fastest cruisers ever built but were seriously compromised in terms of protection and were poor gun platforms. All of the ships of this class were lost with two sunk by destroyers in a single action.

Mmmhh, now I understand that you are trying to build a scene with all the ships involved in those battle.

I have been reading something about that a few minutes ago :-) (in spanish)

http://historia.mforos.com/681970/4572434-el-hundimiento-del-bartolomeo-colleoni/
http://www.lasegundaguerra.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=424

Also, I have visited your webpage. I like your renders very much. I´m waiting for the final stage :-)

And, can I asking how are you made the sea surface in your renders?. I´m finishing to model another ship - a russian ship Aurora- but when I try to build or put materials on it, the results are awful.
But the sea is pathetic :-) and your sea is awesome!

Fabulous ship choice David. Are you able to visit the Aurora for research? Are you able to show some progress shots?

The Battle of Cape Spada is not as well known to Australians as Sydney's loss at the hands of Kormoran. On paper it appears as if the Italian cruisers had a superior position. The destroyers operating with Sydney couldn't reach the Italians with their guns, leaving 16 6" guns on the Italian side with which to counter Sydney's 8 6" guns. I've come to believe though that in reality the Italians were at a considerable disadvantage. The Italian cruisers had been built as a response to the large French destroyers with the emphasis on speed at the expense of protection. These cruisers were barely armoured and very vulnerable. In addition they were unstable gun platforms with serious roll issues making fire control difficult. To top it all off getting the range was made difficult by shells of variable weight, variable charges and guns prone to jams. On the day the Italians attempted to use their speed advantage but Sydney's fire was accurate, even switching targets a number of times during the engagement and scoring hits on both the Italian ships with fatal results for Colleoni.

Regarding the sea surface, I believe that rendering ocean accurately is just about the hardest thing you can do in this hobby. My results are nothing more than many hours of experimentation with shader settings. I am still not happy with the look of it (particularly close to the camera). I have found that shaders which look OK on a flat plane often look awful on a wavy mesh (the mesh I'm using is the same one I created in trueSpace years ago). I'd also like to be able to animate my oceans but this is impossible at the moment. I envy those with plugins like dreamscape (and the Max to use it with).

What are you using for rendering? If it is Kerkythea I would be happy to share my test scene with you.

Just prep work for adding plate and belt lines to Colleoni tonight.

Thanks for show your advances and techniques.
I hope to post my ship tomorrow or on weekend. I would like to share with you (and the forum, of course) the techniques used to model it.
I have learned a ton searching other posts from you and JPBWEB.
About the rendered, I rejected kerkythea because I didn´t get the results I wanted, but I must to recognized that the problem was mine, not the rendered (as obviously).
A time ago, I made this render but I am not happy with the result. Then, I´ve been trying with Luxrender....but I´d love to come back to kerkythea only for get a nice result :-)
BTW...last week I read that the team of kerkythea have developed Thea render. It´s not free but people says that it is a great rendered. (and now, I know why there weren´t newest versions of kerkythea)

Hi David, really looking forward to your Aurora WIP. I will be very interested to see your hull method. Without JP's help (and Burr, Danny etc) I'd still have a segmented hull. Being able to form the hull sides in one piece makes adding plate lines and the like much easier.

>About the rendered, I rejected kerkythea because I didn´t get the results I wanted, but I must to recognized that the problem was mine, not the rendered (as obviously).
A time ago, I made this render but I am not happy with the result. Then, I´ve been trying with Luxrender....but I´d love to come back to kerkythea only for get a nice result :-)
BTW...last week I read that the team of kerkythea have developed Thea render. It´s not free but people says that it is a great rendered. (and now, I know why there weren´t newest versions of kerkythea)

I really like the model car. I'm not a render expert (perhaps others might like to offer some advice/suggestions) but to me the lighting on the desk is a bit bright. As this appears to be an indoor shot, perhaps your renderer has some built in light settings which you could tweak to create more natural indoor lighting. Also the render method you choose has a big impact on render output I find. In KT I often use "Progressive Path Tracing" which offers a good compromise between speed & quality.

The KT forum is a pretty quiet place these days. They have promised that some of the advances in Thea will trickle down to KT though. Time will tell.

Send me a PM if you would like my KT test scene. Try it the way I have it set up then just play with the settings to get it the way you want it.

Plate extrusions done, scuttles (I *hate* doing scuttles!), anchors and odds and sods.