Mark, I remember about a year ago? you were discussing water. I was just starting texture creation (I'm still a beginner), but I made a project to make a decent looking water texture for you to try. I just went through my pc and I still have it. I'm posting it now. It's a 512 x 512, predominantly blue texture and one that is predominantly green. The water is about what you'd get when at sea on a not particularly calm day but not stormy. It has a (I think regular normal map), a regular texture jpg and a fluid height map. I'd like for you to use it if it has promise, and since I still have the project files I can remake the textures in a higher resolution. I am deeply impressed by your ships and hope to be that good someday. If you need changes to it I could definitely try. It would be good practice for me.

Al

Here is a picture of the blue regular image texture that is in the package. I'm not sure what it will look like with the fluid height map and the disturbed normal map, but it might be fun to see. I made it with Genetica Pro 3.

Hi Mark:

My laptop was broken 3 weeks ago, and I'm still thinking what will I do. (repair it, buy a new one....)
Meanwhile, I haven´ t got MoI, and I am desesperate :-)

Then, I have a big computer running under linux, but I can't use MoI in it. I am trying to virtualize the HD of my laptop (afortunately it works) under VirtualBox, but I have problems I don't know how can I solved. Therefore, I can't use MoI in this way. :-(

And more....I was doing stupid things and I lost all my /home under linux. Then, I have lost the *.blend files and the pictures I was rendered. It doesn't matter, because I have the MoI files secures, but I must to export the ship again and remake the UV textures I was finished....when I can use MoI again!

About the ocean...there are buildings of blender including the Ocean modifiers.
I have used any of them, but Blender shut down when I tried to make the textures of the foam :-(

Here is the last building with ocean:

http://www.graphicall.org/builds/builds/showbuild.php?action=show&id=1858

Good luck with the sea!
David

Hi Mark,

> The original requirement was that these models
> come in at 100k polygons.

Wow, any particular reason why they put such a low limit on it?

That's even more impressive that you were able to get such a nice detailed appearance within a low polygon budget, but yeah I can sure believe that made for a lot more extra work and planning.

- Michael

Amazing work !!!

Great job, those look fantastic!

Hi Al,

Sorry for the slow reply. I have been messing about with your excellent water texture.

I used the dielectric material I've used for water previously as the starting point for using the textures. After experimenting for a while I decided on both colour textures in the refraction channel plus bump. The normal map didn't seem to play well with the dielectric material so I left it out for the time being.

I would be very happy to have more like it if you don't mind doing them. Something to give a North Atlantic stormy look would be very nice.

Here are renders of HMAS Perth I with the unusual unfinished paint job she was wearing when lost, as well as Sydney rendered in KT with your water textures:

Hi David,

Sorry to hear about your laptop. Even worse is hearing that you lost some of your work. That is always heartbreaking!

I tried exactly the same thing with VirtualBox on a Linux netbook. In the end I just had to accept that the DirectX emulation in VirtualBox is too immature to run MoI. Instead, I managed to install Windows XP on a USB stick and booted from there. More trouble than it was worth really but it did work. I think though that installing Windows in another partition on your Linux box is a better option.

The Ocean Sim and that 'Dynamic Paint' build are both very interesting additions to the new Blender. I'm also thinking about taking another look at Terragen and a first look at Mojoworld. Povray also seems to have come a long way since I last tried it.

So many interesting possibilities.

Paq, sorry to read on your page that your employer shut up shop. It will be somebody's lucky day to snap you up. I've always thought the work you've shown here is something special. The gallery on your blog page is incredible! You are a seriously talented 3D artist.

Thanks to both you and Jim and everyone who has commented so kindly about these models. I'll finish all this off with some Simlab renders of Yarra in a day or two. Then I think I'll take a break from modelling to do some coding. I'm a terrible programmer but I find it relaxing....

Hi Michael,

Yes, the low polygon budget was a real challenge. I don't know exactly why they set such a low target, which in the end I failed to achieve. Some of the battles they want to simulate had quite a lot of ships involved so perhaps the number of models on screen plus the need to simulate the ocean, smoke etc was a factor in that. One would hope though that the Navy has a fair bit of rendering power at its disposal!

Hi Mark,
It looks like using your dielectric material and both textures came out really realistic. I'm very glad you could use them. I think your renders are always awesome, and I'm flattered that I could contribute something that you could use. I'll have a think on how best to do stormy North Atlantic. Were you able to use the height map for displacement?

So basically you would need one or two layers for color channels (or maybe three because of the whitecaps) and a height map for displacement?

Al

EDIT: I went ahead and removed the textures since you have them already.

Your models are an inspiration Mark!

Fantastic models, I can tell you are very passionate about these boats. Ships. :)

I am curious as to how Moi handled such detailed objects. I haven't been sure if it's my particular machine or not but Moi get's pretty bogged down with things even half as complex as these for me.

Did you model them all in one file or did you break them up into separate files?

I am interested for the methods for the Hull with Moi
http://moi3d.com/forum/messages.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4222.1