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Post by akosjaccik on Feb 16, 2019 10:01:45 GMT -6
Just a bit of an update and sneak peek of what's about to come probably in one or two days. I continued to work on the idea of "modeling an RtW2 campaign", and for now I decided to make a bit of a diorama - again, using stuff that's fairly abstracted in-game, so I am certain I can get away with what I'm about to produce.
The flying boat is based roughly on the Lohner L type, the sub is (or, to be precise, the top half of) the U 1, but she'll sport a different colour scheme and I'll probably try to present the submersible with a bit more weathered look. The age of naval aviation is at the doorstep, so it's time to experiment in multiple ways!
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Post by akosjaccik on Feb 17, 2019 4:25:16 GMT -6
...and end result!
"Catch me if you can!" The starting point of the idea behind the scene was that according to my knowledge, in RtW2 it may be possible delegate flying boats to an ASW role - or they are doing it on their own, it's unclear as of yet. Regardless, an Austro-Hungarian Lohner L flying boat was maybe the first naval aircraft to ever sink an enemy submarine (the french Focault on 16. sept. '15.), and as a representation of an "early flying boat", the aircraft looked pretty much the part, and so...
I modeled something along those lines. At this point I started to realize exactly what I was going to make: a scene about a flying boat and a submarine excercising together, in order to find out more about the capabilities of these aircraft when it comes to at least searching for and detecting submersibles. I already had an early coastal sub-model as seen above, the U 1 (based on the Lake-type), I simply cut the model in half in the software and printed the top half out. As mentioned in my earlier post, for the sake of experimenting and "story-telling", unlike as my "proper model" which I made in a pristine shape "as commissioned", I wanted to give the sub now a more worn out and corroded look (so I experimented with rust and paint discoloration on the deck), and also selected a "newer" paint scheme for her, inspired by historical looks. The deck gun, that's missing on the "as-built" model, attempts to show a refit later in her service.
Water did not turn out horribly realistic largely due to my own incompetence, but oh well, Blue Nutella is a harsh mistress and it's a learning process anyway, and some more excuses such as these. I could have probably also use something more subtle than a copper wire to keep the aircraft, well... airborne, but I just couldn't be bothered, fit for purpose I reckon.
"You know, these flying things might be a problem in the future, don't you think?"
Edit: A bit of Paint Shop Pro for immersion's sake.
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Post by garrisonchisholm on Feb 22, 2019 17:53:56 GMT -6
I'm 5 days late in seeing it, but Out Standing work. I would never have patience for such a thing. Here's a hearty "Harumph!"
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Post by akosjaccik on Feb 23, 2019 6:54:54 GMT -6
I'm 5 days late in seeing it, but Out Standing work. I would never have patience for such a thing. Here's a hearty "Harumph!" Much obliged, sir! While as far as quailty goes, it really cannot compete with "proper" model building, but I am still having a tremendous amount of fun with realizing ...whatever I dearly want (or able to model to at least a credible state with a finite amount of work), really, and I fully expect it to get even better when I'll be able to continue with actual battle screens and designs! It will be a busy spring / summer I hope.
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Post by akosjaccik on Mar 21, 2019 12:54:45 GMT -6
Greetings, gentlemen! To sink my free time into something that helps me waiting for the game in a creative way, I put together a small webpage for my wannabe-project. A good fifteen years ago I picked up some very basic html and I am proud to announce that the regression and decay in my skills ever since then is easily noticeable! To make matters even worse, the pages are existing in a state of "testing-limbo", so some things do work, but serve little purpose for the time being. However, I decided to share it, should you have any criticism that helps. Of course, do excuse my english skills, or rather the lack of it. Hopefully it will not be too disturbing. All in all, I thought that a webpage, be it however basic, would help me organize the information and the game better than the linear nature of the forum posts. Should my idea come to fruition, I'll probably make a topic for it in the RtW2 section, but I do not feel the need or that it would be appropriate without the ability to actually play the campaign. Besides that, the current models in the works: Medium submarine (painting) Small minesweeper (painting)
Minelaying submarine (modeling)
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Post by boomboomf22 on Mar 21, 2019 18:04:35 GMT -6
I would like to say that the website is quite decent and far beyond my crappy abilities.
Also I think you are underselling you English abilities. I didn't catch anything and I only speak English, albeit that does not guarantee I am actually good at englishing
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Post by cwemyss on Mar 21, 2019 18:57:37 GMT -6
I would like to say that the website is quite decent and far beyond my crappy abilities. Also I think you are underselling you English abilities. I didn't catch anything and I only speak English, albeit that does not guarantee I am actually good at englishing Same. And I really look forward to seeing what you come up with next!!!
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Post by akosjaccik on Mar 22, 2019 6:28:45 GMT -6
Thank you! I'm grateful for your kind attention. If you have any ideas about what you'd like to see more of, do tell of course! As for the language, fortunately I am able to explain myself in most cases, but I am a bit afraid of the possibility of "forcing" people to interpret badly written long text - so I'll try to not make reading the webpage more work than it should be, but it might still happen. Still, it's a step up from my german; I am unable to even ask what time it is in german, and I learned it... how many years? Jesus. Let's not think about that. Time always seems to take it's toll.
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Post by akosjaccik on Mar 23, 2019 12:47:57 GMT -6
Just to give you gent yet another reason to hang around the forums, some update - though nothing major. Both models are still under construction, though I'm nearing to the end. The sub seems to turn out to be decent, the MS well... less so, but I'm not giving up on her either just yet. (Sources were whatever little is available on A-H's mine warfare ships, mainly Dromedar and Salamander, but also the MT.130 class.) The model's lenght is about 64 millimeters, and serious compromises were in order to make it happen in this scale. Coming from this angle, it turned out... actually, hm, somewhat better than I expected actually.
Oh, an important thing just came into my mind - they are of course not in scale with each other (but the submarines will be in the same scale if all goes well).
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Post by garrisonchisholm on Mar 26, 2019 15:05:55 GMT -6
I really hope your enthusiasm persists at this level my good sir- top notch presentation, and as an ignorant American who knows only English your use of wit and repartee with the language is sound. Harumph!
I can't wait to follow the project's course!
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Post by akosjaccik on Mar 29, 2019 14:21:22 GMT -6
I really hope your enthusiasm persists at this level my good sir- top notch presentation, and as an ignorant American who knows only English your use of wit and repartee with the language is sound. Harumph! I can't wait to follow the project's course! Much obliged! Creating something silly is always fun, but creating in "two worlds" simultaneously and with - expectedly - a fair amount of variability in such an interesting setting, and even sharing it is an even more immense fun. I am extremely curious how for example capital ships or potential dioramas will turn out.
For the time being I finished the "medium submarine". Not extremely happy with the rigging - it isn't tense enough, but even more of a problem, due to the rigidity of the fishing line it curves upwards, very unnaturally. I might just go with bog-standard cotton threads in the future if they don't turn out to be too thick for my liking - or simply should've used two pieces instead of one, and problem solved. Oh well, overall I'm happy with the result.
Propeller shafts got metallic paint which is not necessarily the most plausible choice, but at this scale a bit of diversity doesn't hurt. The actual propellers are so small that there was no way for me to reproduce them via 3D printing, so I attached three tiny, almost sub-millimeter pieces of copper wire with superglue to the shaft and painted them with bronze. Looks decent enough in hand.
Deck gun is now "standard issue".
Some comparison with the coastal sub! It might be interesting coming from the fact that their length at least corresponds well enough to their real counterparts and they are supposedly in the same scale. In short, they look like side-by-side roughly like the real U 1 and U 14 looked like regarding their sizes.
Finally, the poor sod "random MS", 200 tons, 2 guns, fill that CP-number! Chances are I'll get back to the corvettes once the game is out and managed to grab and play it - and produce at least a decent one in the class -, as she certainly doesn't do them justice in 1947. Still... the model seems to kind of "grab the spirit" of the A-H's workhorses. Hell, maybe she deserves the flag!
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Post by akosjaccik on Apr 6, 2019 4:34:09 GMT -6
Hopefully you all have a calm and sunny weekend!
This time I have arrived to steal your entire bandwidth! ...well, nothing out of the ordinary here. For now, I managed to finish this model based roughly on the Hansa-Brandenburg W.29:
Frankly, I have no idea as of yet what I'm going to do with it, but it might come in handy later on! I just felt like slapping together a "floatplane fighter" of some sort after "all those subs". Speaking of the devil... The last kind of the submersibles, the minelaying sub is being built! I was forcing myself away from esentially modeling "low-budget versions" of real-world assets in preparation for the times where historical accuracy goes out right of the window and I can no longer work with any historical "obvious choice" but - just like in the game - have to go where A-H never went before. As such, while the idea is based around the UC series, this time there isn't a clear historical counterpart for the design.
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Post by akosjaccik on Apr 7, 2019 12:26:18 GMT -6
Resurrecting a forgotten fighter...
For now, a bit more "personal" story. Almost fifteen years ago, as a high schooler about to accomplish my final exams I visited the local University of Technology's Open Day. The Department of Fluid Mechanics also came up with a presentation, people were allowed inside the wind tunnel etc., but a strange little aircraft model grabbed my attention in the lab, namely this one:
Turned out, this very laboratory once tested this model in it's wind tunnels. In 1940. The model underwent a restoration in 2001 due to it's historical significance, but otherwise it was just hanging there - literally, from the ceiling. ...this model is, apart from maybe two or three surviving photographs, the last visual clue that remained in existence regarding an aircraft that was once planned, built, flew, but was abandoned once the prototype suffered a crash.
This aircraft is the Weiss-Manfréd factory's WM-23, dubbed by the workers unofficially "Silver Arrow". As the factory had a production surplus of two WM K–14 engines per day, plus as the Air Force had positive experience with the Heinkel He-112, the Ministry of Defence ordered the development of a new, native-built aircraft something along those lines. Intended armament was 2*12,7mm and 2*8mm machine guns. The director of the factory ordered that designing and manufacturing of the plane should proceed simultaneously to get the plane airborne as soon as possible (approximately 70-80 people worked on the project), and the WM-23 did so in february, 1941. Experience with the small, nimble plane - according to the test documents - was overall positive, the vehicle reached 520 kph (~330 mph) and was relatively pleasant to fly, but there were serious issues with resonance/fluttering. The factory's co-workers managed to lessen the resonance considerably by redesigning the exthaust besides other things, but never really eliminated it at high speeds until the prototype suffered a catastrophic failure on the right aileron in april, '42. The pilot had to eject, the only prototype was destroyed, and the project - probably rather sensibly - discontinued in favor of manufacturing off-the-shelf foreign designs like the Me-109.
...but it could make a comeback. The model, as always, is faaar from perfect unfortunately, but neither my skills, nor the intended role of the software allows much better result.
In this "alternate reality" the design's day may yet to come if the circumstances are favourable, and if one is dreaming, dream big - after all, it's free -, so let's put the ol' girl on carrier deck! <-- yup, this is an idea for a diorama. Foldable wings, arresting hook, reinforced structure - not so easy in reality, far more simple in-game.
...aaand because it's sunday (no, I have no idea what does this have to do with anything ) I put some floats under her as well - in fact, this conversion is far more plausible historically (or rather - technologically) than a carrier-borne version, but again, we are talking about Austria-Hungary in 1940, so the Weiss-Manfréd Aeroplane- and Engine Factory won't get too shocked about a bit different design specifications this time.
As a final bit of trivia, on paper, the WM-23 was classified sometimes as a "fighter-bomber", but I guess we can agree that 20 kilograms worth of bomb load, if this approximation stands regarding the design's real capabilities, maybe does not justify the "bomber"-part...
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Post by akosjaccik on Apr 9, 2019 5:21:02 GMT -6
About two weeks until launch - with the lack of anything better I can think of (apart from actual work...), I sketched up the base of a ~4-500 ton "starter destroyer". The idea is that later, once the game is going, I can easily "dress her up" with superstructure, funnels, guns, torpedo mounts, masts and whatnot. The Huszár-class provided the handy historical basis example and starting point. While I was at it, I did fire up the printer to grab some more experience with it and check the semi-finished model cut at waterline for quicker and more efficient printing (for now, the hull itself wouldn't give me much information, I was curious about the possibility to print fine details like the searchlight or the quick-firing gun).
While unfortunately due to the bare white PLA material burning out the picture, it is barely even visible, it does look promising in hand. The length of the "real ship" is about 68 meters, x1,5 in millimeters for easier conversion -> the model's full length is 102mm, so it's a 'bit' odd 1:666,66 scale, but this gives me the most possible detail while still being able to make large destroyers / destroyer leaders in the same scale such as the models in the given ship type remain comparable. For example, a Fubuki's model would be 168mm in lenght.
You can also see that I took a deep breath and went for more realistic proportions than I originally intended to. May God have mercy upon my poor soul.
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Post by cabusha on Apr 11, 2019 18:35:52 GMT -6
I have to say this is really, really cool! Awesome project!
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