Ships Parts for Everybody

[ddg]

The Projekt 631/(regular) Schlesien pictured above is my design and side view. It's funny that you can see a little of the evolution of the parts packs between the two, as Galaga's ends up looking substantially more detailed (he is also, to be frank, a better artist than I am). The LP is indeed great fun, although I'm sure it's rather a lot of work for the person running it. We're pretty certain that wing turrets are no more than three turns out at the time of this contest (and we already have cross deck firing), which was certainly frustrating this time around.

[garrisonchisholm]

So, here's a question- what is the likelihood of an "installer" ever being created for all the part packs and paint sets here? I know, installing them individually isn't (shouldn't be) hard, I just have a phobia about such things. If I don't understand what I'm doing plainly, I don't want to ruin something that is successfully acting as my electromagnetic antidepressant. :\

[Nuno dos Santos]

Oct 11, 2016 16:45:06 GMT -6 ccip said:

 Nuno dos Santos - A quick question for you: do you have any advice or easy ways to change colour schemes for ships/ship parts? It'd save a lot of time if I could just put together a superstructure once and then automatically convert it to all the other schemes! 

Well, I don't know if this helps, but I can tell you how I do it.

First I made a copy of the original set. For some reason, I could not change the colors on the bitmaps them selfs (the original images), so I copied each and everyone to a blank Paint sheet. Well, a sheet for the hulls, another for the turrets, and so on. On a red field, so you can always know the image size.

Then I changed the colors there. After that it's a simple question of selecting the piece, and "copy to" and replace the original one. It's painstaking, given the amount of parts, However, the color changing it self can be done rather quickly:

Because I had all the parts in one sheet, all I had to do, in Paint, was to select the color I wanted to replace as the secondary color. select all the sheet and copy it. Then paste the sheet over a new sheet made of the new color I wanted to apply, while having the option to have the original selected color invisible. This would replace it with the new background color. then it's a matter of repeating it until you have a new sheet of parts with a whole new set of colors.

Turrets are a little tricky, because of the amout of color grade in the barbettes, but in all it was not hard, particularly because my sets had decreasingly number of colors. I mean, to make this process easier, I reduced the number of different colors: the superstructures in the original sets had about 10/12 diferent shades of gray. My latter sest, starting from the older ones, reduced the different shades of the dominant color to just four or five each.

I hope I'm being clear. You could use this process by just composing your assembled sets on a paint page, and then applying my process to get the same set with new colors. The more strutures you put on a page, the more you get when you finnish the process. 

In case it helps, I'm giving you some of my sheets, with the parts already copied from the originals. They're in diferent colors, and it may look confusing, because it was not meant to be shared, just used, but maybe you can do something with it, or maybe it can save you some work.

Turrets and masts:

www.mediafire.com/view/h6fm6bfe3b3dbk2/turrets%20masts.bmp

superstructures:

www.mediafire.com/view/cvxapg114cpsugz/superstructures.bmp

Hulls:

www.mediafire.com/view/1ra0w1u23a01676/hulls.bmp

New bows and sterns:

ww.mediafire.com/view/fv8wnookr3w5lh3/bows.bmp


Say something if you need or if I need to explain myself better.

PS- the Mounbatten Pink set was obtained by BulletHead from one of my sets using a diferent process, You can read about it on an earlier post. His process may be easier, but I could not understand how it works. Maybe because I'm using an older version of paint. You may want to check that.

[dang]

Hello cool men:

would it be possible to make a tumblehome hull accessory that just makes a waterline bulge type looking thing?

[ccip]

Oct 13, 2016 3:08:00 GMT -6 Nuno dos Santos said:

Oct 11, 2016 16:45:06 GMT -6 ccip said:

 Nuno dos Santos - A quick question for you: do you have any advice or easy ways to change colour schemes for ships/ship parts? It'd save a lot of time if I could just put together a superstructure once and then automatically convert it to all the other schemes! 

Well, I don't know if this helps, but I can tell you how I do it.

First I made a copy of the original set. For some reason, I could not change the colors on the bitmaps them selfs (the original images), so I copied each and everyone to a blank Paint sheet. Well, a sheet for the hulls, another for the turrets, and so on. On a red field, so you can always know the image size.

Then I changed the colors there. After that it's a simple question of selecting the piece, and "copy to" and replace the original one. It's painstaking, given the amount of parts, However, the color changing it self can be done rather quickly:

Because I had all the parts in one sheet, all I had to do, in Paint, was to select the color I wanted to replace as the secondary color. select all the sheet and copy it. Then paste the sheet over a new sheet made of the new color I wanted to apply, while having the option to have the original selected color invisible. This would replace it with the new background color. then it's a matter of repeating it until you have a new sheet of parts with a whole new set of colors.

Turrets are a little tricky, because of the amout of color grade in the barbettes, but in all it was not hard, particularly because my sets had decreasingly number of colors. I mean, to make this process easier, I reduced the number of different colors: the superstructures in the original sets had about 10/12 diferent shades of gray. My latter sest, starting from the older ones, reduced the different shades of the dominant color to just four or five each.

I hope I'm being clear. You could use this process by just composing your assembled sets on a paint page, and then applying my process to get the same set with new colors. The more strutures you put on a page, the more you get when you finnish the process. 

In case it helps, I'm giving you some of my sheets, with the parts already copied from the originals. They're in diferent colors, and it may look confusing, because it was not meant to be shared, just used, but maybe you can do something with it, or maybe it can save you some work.

Turrets and masts:

www.mediafire.com/view/h6fm6bfe3b3dbk2/turrets%20masts.bmp

superstructures:

www.mediafire.com/view/cvxapg114cpsugz/superstructures.bmp

Hulls:

www.mediafire.com/view/1ra0w1u23a01676/hulls.bmp

New bows and sterns:

ww.mediafire.com/view/fv8wnookr3w5lh3/bows.bmp


Say something if you need or if I need to explain myself better.

PS- the Mounbatten Pink set was obtained by BulletHead from one of my sets using a diferent process, You can read about it on an earlier post. His process may be easier, but I could not understand how it works. Maybe because I'm using an older version of paint. You may want to check that.

Thank you, I'll have to take a look! One of my problems so far is my lack of internet access at home (which I hope will change next week), and my lack of much in the way of software for this at the office. For some of my accessories like turrets, I did actually use a batch colour adjustment - but you can also probably tell, the results on some of them are so-so (not an exact colour match for some sets). But I will see what I can do - actually, I think for creating this "easy superstructure" project, I might just need to go to an outside editor (Gimp or Paint or Photoshop) and work there, since that would save me a lot of time. I have to say though, for some strange reason, I actually find it more fun to design things in-game, because the limits of what you can do somehow make it more satisfying. Go figure!

[Nuno dos Santos]

Oct 13, 2016 19:10:09 GMT -6 dang said:

Hello cool men:

would it be possible to make a tumblehome hull accessory that just makes a waterline bulge type looking thing?

    THUMBLEHOMES!!!!, well, sorta.

I've been trying to do tumblehomes but I don't think they are looking very good. They look more like bulges.
As you look so keen about them, maybe you'll like to try and give me some feed back.

I made this for set2 and set10 (black hull, red waterline).
There are three versions, each with three parts: front end, center and back end.

One example has the armoured belt, the other one doesn't, and the third one is just the sloped armored belt.

Here are some examples:
With belt and casemates.

www.mediafire.com/view/ywb03zgq69nyq4z/Tumb_expermnt_1.bmp


No casemates, protuding center:

www.mediafire.com/view/zfbbmze0n1qha19/Tumb_expermnt_2.bmp

no armored belt, center acessory protuding most of the lenght.

www.mediafire.com/view/w36o2tuvftfi4b8/Tumb_expermnt_3.bmp

Just the armored belt, sloping in the ends.

www.mediafire.com/view/b0ssb3bbkrf68z8/Tumb_expermnt_4.bmp

And here are they, just add them to set2 or set10, the numbers are compatible, unless you've been adding acessories.

www.mediafire.com/file/tnaupqn050b9f4f/ThumblehomesV1.0.rar

Tell me which looks less bad, and try to do something with it.

[flyingtoaster]

Yeah, they look more like bulges to me. Perhaps if the tumblehome 'piece' is put at the top of the hull, instead of the bottom, and shaded appropriately?

[boogabooga]

Hello, thanks for these parts.

Could you keep a link to the latest version in the first post? Right now, all 12 sets are difficult to find in the 11 pages of this thread.

[Nuno dos Santos]

Oct 17, 2016 18:36:02 GMT -6 boogabooga said:

Hello, thanks for these parts.

Could you keep a link to the latest version in the first post? Right now, all 12 sets are difficult to find in the 11 pages of this thread.

Done.

Also corrected a quarterdeck stern on Set 11 that was one pixel short and so did not look good on the ship designer.

[ikahime]

Would it be possible to make good looking dazzle cammo?

[galagagalaxian]

On the actual parts? Probably not. I did give a try at using layers in paint.net to overlay a dazzle scheme. Didn't find it too satisfying though.

[ikahime]

I like that effect, it would be cool if the option to add a dazzle layer was available in RTW2.

[bcoopactual]

Oct 22, 2016 10:12:05 GMT -6 galagagalaxian said:

On the actual parts? Probably not. I did give a try at using layers in paint.net to overlay a dazzle scheme. Didn't find it too satisfying though.

I think that came out pretty well also.  There's some noticeable aliasing on the more horizontal diagonals but that's just the resolution of the picture.  Overall looks good to me. 

[ccip]

I think that does look nice!

The only thing you'd run into with it, possibly, is some vertical "seams" in the camo where the bow/center/stern part meet, but even that would be hard to notice in dazzle, I think. Worth pursuing if you ask me


***

Meanwhile, I've been working on a brand new project! Might take me a bit to get it ready... and I will likely start a new thread for it as it's not designed to be compatible with the current parts etc., but here's a preview of what I'm going for:




(generated right out of the editor)

These are profile pictures taken right out of Brassey's Naval Annual, with all parts directly extracted from scans of the original books, with some obvious adjustments (namely the much smaller scale, and the ships facing opposite way from how they are in the original).

I'm working on 3 sets for it simultaneously, so it might take a bit! 

Here, for example, is a CA made with an early template (meant mostly for pre-1900 designs):



And here is a BC put together with the same:




One limitation for now is that with the vertical rescaling, it's not possible for casemates to be automatically added, so you'd have to put them in by hand. That said, the way I'm setting these up should make these profiles a fair bit less labour-intensive to actually crank out completed ships

[jwsmith26]

Wow, ccip!  Those images are very cool.