Hi Everyone,

Been ages since I've had time to come to the forum. For those who remember, I have (more or less) finished the job I had going to model some ships for an RAN documentary. Unfortunately I have been too slow delivering the final model so only 4 ships will make it into the documentary (a big disappointment but I will know my limitations (if there is a) next time and won't over-commit). Modelled with MoI V2, poly-reduced (hugely!) with Atangeo Balancer, texture mapped with UV Mapper Pro.

All of the models are textured but only with plain colour. Eventually I will add some rust and grime.

1. HMAS Sydney II (light cruiser) as it was when it destroyed the Italian light cruiser Bartolomeo Colleoni at the Battle of Cape Spada:

2. RN Bartolomeo Colleoni (light cruiser) as lost:

Astonihing result!
Bravo!

Stunning results!! Truly something to be proud of.

Congratulations on the documentary inclusion.

Whoa! Amazing. I don't know if I would ever have the patience to do an entire ship.

Those aren't scale models? WOW!!!

These are tremendous, Mark! Congratulations on the final result!

- Michael

Those are awesome!


The modeling is very well executed.

I was wondering, does arteo balancer preserve vertex normals?

Marc

Hi Mark, I'm sure you could have just whipped them out, but I remember how meticulous you were about getting them correct! Congratulations!

Thanks so much guys for the very kind words. I was feeling a bit down that I didn't deliver the final model and your responses have given me a real lift.

Don, I enjoyed looking through your website. Your pencil drawings are brilliant. Do you use MoI with TurboCad?

Marc, in my experience Balancer does preserve the vertex normals. I have not noticed any issues in that regard. They have recently implemented some additional features to allow some sections of a mesh to be excluded from reduction. On the model of Colleoni I was able to keep the scuttles round by painting the glass and the rim a certain colour and then by locking that material colour, was able to preserve the shape. Definitely worth downloading the demo.

Burr, I went way too far with these models. I'm a lousy businessman! I learned a lot from the experience though. I'm going to finish off that last ship at my own pace and might start a new thread for it.

3. HMAS Sydney II (light cruiser) as lost:

I really like your ship models Mark, these are awesome! you can tell you have a passion by the amount of detail and accuracy you put into them, well done and keep it up.

Cheers

Hello Mark,

Bravo for these outstanding models and rendering !

Did you ever finish the model of Kormoran ?

I left mine as it was 2 years ago. Lack of time, a busy life, you know how it is. But the interest is still there !

Well done again !

Jean-Paul

Hi Mark,

Those are all wonderful looking models & renders, Well done!!

regards Colin

Gallery addition!!!!!!!!

Great modeling job.

If possible, I would love to see them in a larger size (in order to see some of the details).

>Don, I enjoyed looking through your website. Your pencil drawings are brilliant. Do you use MoI with TurboCad?<

I am glad that you enjoyed the pencil drawings. I must confess that it has been a long time since I created any new pencil drawings, but I used to enjoy the process very much.

With regards to using MoI with TurboCAD. Not too often, but when shapes more organic in nature are required (and are not possible in TC) then I use MoI. I export from MoI in stp format and open in TC without issue. The two programs really work well together. Anything I create in MoI that requires rendering can be brought into TurboCAD and rendered there, so that is a bonus as well.

I want to congratulate to you for a gorgeous models.

You are the example I would to became :-)

Hi Jean-Paul. I did indeed finish Kormoran. I don't think it is the best of the models but then, it isn't a particularly glamourous ship, particularly in overall black. Your experiments in shaping your hulls went a long way to helping me complete these so I hope you will get back to your Kormoran some time. Might be very interesting painted in the Japanese colours which I believe were brighter. I'm going to try some on the water renders of the battle between Sydney and Kormoran when I get a chance.

YHWH_777, I will do some larger renders some time, though probably not much closer. Much of the detail is actually not very detailed. The original requirement was that these models come in at 100k polygons. Sydney ended up about 225k from memory, Yarra about 95k, the rest somewhere in-between. Bringing the models in at those counts was very difficult (and time consuming) so much of the 'detail' is only useful at the distances I've shown here. Even then, some substantial poly reduction has been used which degrades the model up close. Perhaps when I have some time I will revisit these with a view to improving them for up close renders.

Thankyou David. I think your own model of "Aurora" is excellent and that you already do work as good as these. Simlab's renderer makes them look nice without much effort on my part! Did you ever get Aurora rendered on the water in a way that you were happy with? I am looking again at methods for doing water, possibly with Blender. There are two links for Blender which show great promise:

http://www.savetheoceansim.com/blog/
http://www.miikahweb.com/en/main

The second link is a very interesting technique. I'm amazed by the potential shown in the videos.

Thanks again everyone for your interest. I really appreciate it.

>> I am looking again at methods for doing water...

You might want to take a look at e-On Vue as well. It is very good at doing nature scenes.

I've downloaded Vue several times (last time was V8) but have not spent enough time with it. It does displacement these days as far as I know which is a definite bonus. Last time I looked on the Vue site there was an image of a fishing trawler which was excellent and very much what I'd like to achieve. I'm definitely going to check it out again.