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[western0221]

Mirror landing aid of USS Intrepid 1959.
http://www.rlynn.net/Meatball


about 15 meters back from Mirror landing aid, these orange "source lights" existed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:816-squadron-flypast-hmas-melbourne-1979.jpg

[karla]

Bon Homme Richard in IL-2 4.12.2m

Thanks for the comments. Progress is continuing and many minor additions and changes have been made both to modelling and to texture maps. I will bring additions to a halt and just check on existing details: looking out for inverted normals and so on. Jet Blast Deflectors are modelled and have not been tested yet. Mirror landing system structure is installed but will not be functioning (this may be fixed by me or someone else at a later date).

I intend to model some crew starting with MakeHuman http://www.makehuman.org and export to Blender via MHX interface. I estimate that a dozen relatively high poly characters will look quite realistic - so long as they are in fairly static poses. We'll see how it goes; if there seems to be no real benefits we'll dump them.

I now have a little time to try and land my F-4 Phantom on 'the boat' and my success rate is at the 15% level - the Navy minimum rate of 86% seems a long way off!

[S3231541]

Very nice work! I can barely wait to use it  .

[Tofolo]

Very nice work! I can barely wait to use it  .

+100!

[duffys tavern]

Exciting news!

[Ranwers]

My crew waiting for it !

[karla]

Thanks guys.

@Ranwers quick one - are you working on new crew? I aim to populate BHR with only a few (less than two dozen), slightly more detailed (approximately 2000 vertices), less active (then they don't look frozen in mid-action) and not quite as visibly exposed (so they don't intrude too much in the deck area). [Your carrier crew take up about 30,000 vertices at about 450 verts each; so I thought 15x 2000 verts figures may add a more realistic feel to my deck (kudos to you for the versions created in the past).

[BOYAN]

Glad to hear from you Karla, I was starting to wonder about the BHR status! If I may mention a detail about the crew.. Would you guys consider making the island crew smaller? They seem bigger than the deck crew... I already mentioned that with a few images here on this page, reply 27... https://www.sas1946.com/main/index.php/topic,42027.24.html   

[karla]

Bon Homme Richard island, some crew and equipment rendered using Cycles in Blender

The crew are getting ready for duty on Bonnie Dick. In order to minimize vertices and keep realism high, there will only be a small number of crew in few locations and in fairly static poses. There's still some work to do on them and I'll post close-ups when I think they're ready.

(Your question has been answered at last Boyan).

[western0221]

Hi karla.
New BHR is amazing !

This part on the bridge...

is a range finder for 5inch AAA.
Mesh files are named Head68.msh and Gun68.msh with the Hook named ShellStart68.

Original Diving_Hawk's model has its moving function to aim the nearest enemy in rotating right or left.
Its animation in game gives us reality.

To keep the function....
- keep the names from the original
- keep the pivots positions and axis (hier.him attaching parameters) with its Hook
- keep the static facing , just the front of the ship (1st one) or just rear of the ship (when 2nd one exists)
- ships.ini entry
are needed.

Good luck!

[karla]

I'll keep Head68/69 in working order western.

My crew trials have not been successful and - even after reducing the vertices by half - they kept freezing the game. The game did not accept my 16 crew figures with 1000 vertices / figure and I didn't want to reduce their detail any further because they will be no different than Ranwer's crew.

So, unfortunately, no crew. I'll go round the ship again and add a few minor details in lieu of the crew.

For those who want to generate figures in future my method is outlined below.

MakeHuman (makehuman.org)
1. adjust modifiers to make suitable character
2. File/Export/Mesh Format/Blender exchange (mhx)

Blender (blender.org)
3. import character .mhx file
4. Pose mode
5. manipulate to make suitable pose
6. select layers with figure and clothing; omit bones/rigging layer
7. select each object in turn and Apply the Modifier to freeze the pose
8. select all objects and export to .3ds to clean up the file
9. File/New
10. import .3ds file to obtain clean, uncluttered mesh
11. select appropriate meshes
12. delete unwanted vertices and faces eg. hidden clothing, soles of shoes, mouth interior, eye socket etc
13. in Edit Mode model as required
14. model gaunlets by chopping off most of fingers, facing ends (loop select (^-Alt select) and F), then resize
15. model cloth helmet by removing ears, closing skull holes (loop select/extrude/size), selecting area of skull and resizing
16. select objects one by one, Edit Mode and UV/Image Editor, manipulate UV maps for efficient use of space
17. UV mapping of face is especially important
18. Export UV layout
19. select all objects and join (Ctrl-j)
20. Add Modifier/Generate/Decimate to create a lower poly mesh

Gimp (gimp.org)
21. load UV layout map
22. use plenty of layers to create individual maps for objects and associated shadows, creases and weathering
23. export initial version of texture map as .TGA/No RLE compression

Blender
24. load latest crew mesh model
25. load latest version of texture map
26. Texture Paint mode to accurately draw features, creases and shadows
27. save the modified texture map guide with a new name

Gimp
28. load the modified texture map guide and overlay on initial version of texture map
29. use guide to paint appropriate features, creases and shadows
30. export updated version of texture map
31. goto (24) and repeat as often as needed

[karla]

flight deck crew added to BHR as seen in game

Another change in features - that's why it's called WIP - is that we will have flight deck crew after all. The crew are Ranwers carrier crew (https://www.sas1946.com/main/index.php?topic=28970.0) fully integrated in the CVA-31 file with an option of switching them out. They will be slightly modified so that they fit comfortably on board ship and some of the more active poses will be subdued. At the same time I have removed the gun crews to keep up the realism. A little more work will be done on the crew before I look at adding further minor details to the ship. We seem to be getting there at last.

A big disappointment discussed here and in other threads is my lack of efficient modelling-to-mesh conversion tools. I have tried Dr Jones Mshconverter yet again thinking that a workflow involving intermediate .obj generation might work but still gave inaccurate data values (see https://www.sas1946.com/main/index.php/topic,31164.0.html). I also tried to get Blendy Blendy Exporter to work with Blender 2.49 and Python 2.5.2. Five installations and many trials with no luck. My terminal error readout at one time seemed to point to a missing system environment variable setting which, on checking appeared to be OK. Another time the terminal error pointed to a Python syntax error which I tracked down on the Net somewhere but couldn't fix. If anyone is using Blender and BBExporter to produce working .msh files please get in touch because I would really like to use these tools.