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[Gofo]

Good day to all, salute!
I started working on the "big five" five months ago, starting from scratch. I first published a post on another site, also asking help for being a complete novice in modding. Some encouragement but no answer!
So, after the disappointment and a bit of time, I learned by myself and step by step how to use the UV maps and to make textures. This is the result today.


The image is a Colorado-class battleship (more precisely, the West Virginia) at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbour. As you can see, some details such as railings and ridging are still missing, moreover "cage masts" and radar array appear "solid". All because I have not yet learned to cut surfaces with alpha channel. Any web's tutorial has been fruitless, no joy!
Well, this is a major limitation to my first job. The second is that, nowadays I got a bunch of UV maps and textures: how to merge them? Every attempt was catastrophic.
I know that an undamaged and Level 0 model is just a quarter, perhaps a bit less, of the final labour, further level of details are necessary. Will a Level 1 be sufficient? A damage level 1 is requested?
I heard about collision boxes and shadows. How to realize them?
Once the design work has been achieved, I will begin to import the model into IL-2 using the sotware proposed by Maraz. By the way, I learned a lot from the discussions in the forum on the Nagato and the Eagle, much more than what is written in the "bibles" or elsewhere but I will need a hand. I’m sure I will get it.

Gianni

P.S Many others ships are queuing for the slipway, among these the R.N. Bartolomeo Colleoni, the HMS Hood, the USN England and the IJN Fuso. Help me to free up the slip…

[asheshouse]

Looks like you are making good progress. Nice work.
Looks like you are using Max. What version is it?
I am using Max 9.

For learning how to import it is probably best to work just with the LOD0 model.
Other LOD's, shadows, collisions etc can be added later.

Rigging (wires) are simple 3 sided cylinders, with the caps removed (total 6 triangles).
For long rigging wires extrude more sections of cylinder to model the curve of the wire.
For shorter wires just make them straight.

Your number of polys seems to be a bit high. Maximum should be about 15000 to 20000 for a capital ship.

Before you export it is best to make all the textures into a single Multi/Sub-Object group of textures.

You then apply the Group to the model and change the Material channel of the parts to show the different textures. There was an image of the Material Editor setup in the Nagato thread.



At this stage a channel can be added for the railings texture. This uses the alpha cutting technique so when you have added railings you will know how to do the bird cage masts.

I am keen to see this in the game and hope you will be able to complete it.
The existing generic USN BB is long overdue for replacement.

[HundertzehnGustav]

Bloody...!!

Cutting alphachannels is fun, if you have a wireframe available. Love that. shaping objects , not with vertices but with a pencil. LOL. my kinda modeling ^^

hey, for USS England, get in touch with Plowshare if you ever need a Painter... he will decline that DE in 25 thousand Paints.

and...
Welcome too!

[Blumax]

You've done very well so far, i taught myself also to use 3dsmax 09 but have not been brave enough to attempt anything yet so its really great to see you having a go at doing this yourself and getting as far as you can before asking for guidance. Now you've attracted the attention of SAS's very own king of the oceans asheshouse i'm sure you'll get this beauty into the game soon enough and i'm really looking forward to it, you've come to the right place and if i find this ship sitting in port at Pearl harbour on my Hawaii map then i'll take that as my insperation to have a go myself....although i might start with a rowing boat first

[OberstDanjeje]

Gianni, and your Reggiane 2001?

[Gofo]

hi all,
thanks for the welcome.
Ashe, I'm using Max 9 on a MacIntosh machine fitted with BootCamp and Windows XP professional, and my modelling method is rather complicated, yet simple and fast. The 3d models are made by LightWave 9, more user-friendly and having some modelling facilities not available in Max. Once done, I use a 3d-object converter, my best 6 euros investment, to obtain a .ds format. The next step is to import the file into Max to achieve the job. Easier to be made than to be said  .

Col. King, you're right: I'm Italian. Many thanks for your offer, I'm 68 years old and during my life I logged many documents, even too many as my wife says, but I will not hesitate to contact you in case of necessity. I'm particularly short on technical drawings of the heavy cruisers of the Regia Marina and the County-class of Royal Navy. But I've to finish the present job, and it will be not so easy

 Gianni

[EMS2/7_Puma]

oh, yes, the BB-48 USS West Virginia, We need your super job. Especially as the BB-44 California, BB-43 Tennessee and BB-46 Maryland have the same hull as the BB - 48 West Virginia.


Cheer up...

[Gofo]

Good day to all, salute!
A little updating, rigging, funnels bracing and flags have been added.




Answering to OberstDanjeje: “my” Re 2001 is parked in its hangar with the Ba 65, Ba 88, Ju 188, He 177 and others. They are waiting patiently for better times .

335th_Puma, Tennessee and Colorado class had an almost identical layout, apart the main armament as we know. I have developed both classes in parallel, as they appeared at the time of Pearl Harbour and after their first, partial reconstruction (stumped mainmast and AA-machine guns fitted on platforms). For the Maryland and Colorado, the model corresponding to their final appearance (from late 1943 onwards) is almost complete, while regarding to the completely rebuilt California and Tennessee (and W. Virginia) I’ve nothing in sight, totally different from their initial looking. Nevertheless, the hull of the Colorado is suitable for the New Mexico ships, just a little change in the underwater bow and a very slight beam increase. This is in my future job-list.

Thanks for the suggestion Asheshouse, I created a Multi/Sub material slot. You’re right, the poly-number is a bit larger but these old ladies of the sea had very complex conning towers and superstructure, difficult to optimize meshes without affecting the quality of detail. But they are too tempting for me. I shudder to think of ships such as the Fuso or the Kongo....
I’ll try to decrease the poly-number. BTW, an ex colleague said me that some limitation on 3D-animation have been completely superseded by the new graphics cards, and that is not important the number of faces but that of the vertices. Is he right?
Now the demand for advice and help. The figure below illustrates how the model appears in the "top" viewport.



a) the orientation is correct?
b) Taking into account this view, the rotation is considered positive in the clockwise direction and negative in the opposite case?
c) The amount of rotation is expressed in degrees, radians, or what?
 
One last cry for help (for now  ). Could you explain by an idiot-proof method (and yes, aging is a bad thing) how to do an alpha-cutting?

Thanks and excuse me for being so boring

Gianni

[western0221]

How do you do, Gofa!
I'm happy to see new birth of USN Battleships , a good rival of IJN Nagato.

IL-2 1946's 3D XYZ direction is a bit different from usual 3D modelers , applications.
X+ == Front , X- == Back
Y+ == Left , Y- == Right
Z+ == Up , Z- == Down


You will fit your model to IL-2 1946's direction by rotating around Z +90 deg.

[asheshouse]

As Western says, the centre of the ship at the waterline must  be located at 0,0,0
Scale should be 1 drawing unit = 1 metre.

Alpha cut textures are 32bit tga files.   Normal RGB textures are 24bit

You need graphics software capable of editing alpha channels, Photoshop or Gimp.

Start with a normal tga image
Open in Photoshop.
Open the Layers drop down menu.
This has tabs  "Layers, Channels Paths"
You will have one layers
Switch to "Channels" tab
This shows RGB Layers Red Green Blue
Click Create New Channels
An Alpha layer will appear.

Select the alpha layer. Keep the RGB layers visible  but not selected.
All of the image has a red tint.
This means all of the image is masked by the alpha channel and will be transparent in Max
Use the Eraser tool to remove some of the red tint.
These areas become visible.
Swap foreground colour from black to white,
Use the Eraser again to put back the Alpha Mask Layer.

Save as 32bit tga image.

In max the alpha channel of a 32bit material is setup as an opacity layer in the Materials Editor

[HundertzehnGustav]

ll she needs is the grumman duck from the "addon cruisers" mod...

O.O

[RAF_Cobber]

see your "my message"