Ships Parts for Everybody

[ccip]

Love it, the RJW ships are looking really great! Novik being one of my favourite ships, I often try to build "Novik equivalents". I may need to add a couple of new colour brushes for this scheme since it's a definite change. The bows and accessories look very much in the right place on these as well!

One thing I'm hoping to play around with today is to see if smaller portholes can look good - I noticed that while they look nice and clear, they sort of throw off the sense of scale, especially for larger ships. Especially now that they won't be showing up on DDs by default, might be a good time to look them over!

I also want to take a look at turrets today, not so much as replacement for auto-generating models, but more as accessories, just to get some of the less common shapes in there.

[davedave]

You are all totally, utterly mad, & this is (RTW itself aside) the single best thing ever.

Thank you all SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much.

[Bullethead]

I had to show this off.  With @nuno dos Santos making paintjobs and ccip making extra doo-dads, you can make even your generic 200-ton MS look decent.




Here, USS Massapequa is shown chugging along at her flank speed of 19 knots streaming minesweeping paravanes off the bow and the newly invented anti-submarine explosive sweeps off the stern, each leaving its own wake.  The vibrations from her hard-working VTE engines, plus the drag of the various sweeps, is shaking the fillings out of the teeth of her jolly crew.

[ccip]

Well I have to say, auxiliaries and minesweepers can be some of the most fun to design! (In good part because you have to get creative with them since the current picture generator isn't really geared towards them).

Meanwhile, I've finished my work on the next batch of parts - there's now replacement turrets, gun barrels, smaller portholes, railings, gangwalks and other such stuff. Unfortunately I still don't have internet at home, but I'll get it uploaded asap!

In the meantime, here's a quick preview of three new ships I whipped up with the new additions:

[Bullethead]

Sept 17, 2016 5:01:00 GMT -6 ccip said:

In the meantime, here's a quick preview of three new ships I whipped up with the new additions:

Very nice.  Quite a lot of detail in there, with the radio antennae and all.

[axe99]

Looking really good .

[Nuno dos Santos]

Hi, here is my update.
Bulethead's set8 Mountbatten Pink updated to the new format (own bows and sterns) and the new set 10, which I call Black russian (isn't that a drink, or something?)
Any way, its black hull, black turrets, black upperworks and white funnels, although I'm not sure if they shouldn't be buff instead. Its a simple matter of replacing for the ones in set 3 if you want.

I did try something diferent with this one: instead of creating another full set completly black for the german torpedo boats, i implemented black destroyer funnels on this one, so you can have larger ships with white funnels and smaller ones all black. In case you want to go all black even with the big ones I've added an extra folder with the black funnels, all you have to do is replace the ones in the set for theses ones (includes the tops and the larger bottoms as well.

I've zipped all the sets and acessories folders so far because I noticed some errors (one repeat stern on set2 , uncorrected ram bows on set7 and some other glitches) also added extra lines for the hull lines with darker color, you can see it in this example:

www.mediafire.com/view/4ohd8cd48rafahw/Evstafi1.bmp

Also notice the search lights on the masts.

And here is a german torpedo boat, full black, made with the same set.

www.mediafire.com/view/9jrp1wbwzmkkb7q/V30.bmp

and the download:

www.mediafire.com/download/f6zb6i8b5e3626y/ShipParts_up_to_Set10.rar

Have fun.

 

[axe99]

Nuno and ccip, you're both awesome, cheers . Will be sure to post up some pics as soon as I get back to RtW .

[galagagalaxian]

Every time I think I've made pretty ships, CCIP posts stuff like that and suddenly I feel like the ugliest girl at the ball! The detail on those new parts is great. Looking foward to them.

Anyways, here are some legacy ships I whipped up this weekend. They're all based loosely on existing ships from that time. Album Link

Linking because I don't want to clog the thread up too much, but I'll post the El Toucans, as I experimented with a sky-colored transparency layer over the funnel smoke in Paint.Net. I rather like how it turned out.




I hope the RtW2 side view designer is a bit more friendly to use though. Stuff like transparency options (use PNG files instead of BMP I guess?), being able to undo more than just the last change, further customizable toggles in the basic shape, etc.


Also, has anyone else noticed the picture generator doesn't handle AMCs very well? I had to use a cruiser to make the picture for an AMC I am proposing for an LP I'm participating in on another forum.

[joebob73]

Sept 18, 2016 16:33:04 GMT -6 galagagalaxian said:

Every time I think I've made pretty ships, CCIP posts stuff like that and suddenly I feel like the ugliest girl at the ball! The detail on those new parts is great. Looking foward to them.

Anyways, here are some legacy ships I whipped up this weekend. They're all based loosely on existing ships from that time. Album Link

Linking because I don't want to clog the thread up too much, but I'll post the El Toucans, as I experimented with a sky-colored transparency layer over the funnel smoke in Paint.Net. I rather like how it turned out.




I hope the RtW2 side view designer is a bit more friendly to use though. Stuff like transparency options (use PNG files instead of BMP I guess?), being able to undo more than just the last change, further customizable toggles in the basic shape, etc.


Also, has anyone else noticed the picture generator doesn't handle AMCs very well? I had to use a cruiser to make the picture for an AMC I am proposing for an LP I'm participating in on another forum.

Link to the LP?

[galagagalaxian]

Sure. I just hope you're not allergic to goons, or that the paywall isn't up.

forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3789048

Its a pretty novel concept. Participants join teams that are design firms competing to have their designs selected and built to score points.

[Bullethead]

Sept 18, 2016 16:33:04 GMT -6 galagagalaxian said:

Every time I think I've made pretty ships, CCIP posts stuff like that and suddenly I feel like the ugliest girl at the ball! The detail on those new parts is great. Looking foward to them.
...........
Also, has anyone else noticed the picture generator doesn't handle AMCs very well? I had to use a cruiser to make the picture for an AMC I am proposing for an LP I'm participating in on another forum.

Hmmm, when I ask my magic mirror on the wall who has the fairest ships of all, it's always a toss-up between you and the other artists of talent.  Definitely not my stuff.

I haven't tried doing an AMC because they belong to the mayfly genus Ephemera, here today, gone tomorrow.  But your cruiseship-cruiser is definitely a work of art, probably the only extant image of an AMC.  What size mesh did you use on your butterfly net to catch it?

Anyway, I don't spend nearly as much time on my ships as you and the other artists.  I think I put more time into the smoke and wake than the ship, trying to get one of those "high speed trials" pics.  So no boats or other actual in-service weights that weren't normally carried during the highly artificial trials of the period.  Here's my latest creation using Nuno's set 7, which is my favorite because BATMAN!!!!!  I need to make a Batman flag for ships of this color

[thaseus]

Well I have to say this is some impressive work and I am enjoying it so far to the point that I don't even wan't to play battles anymore.



For the record I wouldn't advise to make signal flags, especially the zulu that one simply won't look good.



I'm not sure about flag placement and what smoke colour I should use.

Do any of you know how clear the exhaust gas is dependent on engine type?
Does it change depending on how modern the engine is?
Is steam blown out through a seperate funnel or is it distributed equally?

[Nuno dos Santos]

Sept 19, 2016 14:32:40 GMT -6 thaseus said:

Do any of you know how clear the exhaust gas is dependent on engine type?
Does it change depending on how modern the engine is?
Is steam blown out through a seperate funnel or is it distributed equally?

I think the gas type depends more on the fuel than the engine, in as coal burners do much, much, much more smoke than oil driven ships.
I know that boiler uptakes are distributed equaly by the funnels, unless they are of unequal size: in the case of HMS Lion, the foward funnel served less boilers than the other two. I'm not sure about steam.

[Bullethead]

Sept 19, 2016 14:32:40 GMT -6 thaseus said:

Well I have to say this is some impressive work and I am enjoying it so far to the point that I don't even wan't to play battles anymore.

..............

I'm not sure about flag placement and what smoke colour I should use.

Do any of you know how clear the exhaust gas is dependent on engine type?
Does it change depending on how modern the engine is?
Is steam blown out through a seperate funnel or is it distributed equally?

Those are some pretty pics!

Anyway, as to smoke colors, the big change was going from coal to oil.  Coal-burners tend to make black smoke, oil-burners tend to not make much if any smoke.  Of course, some of this depends on situational things like how fast the ship was trying to go, the state of her boilers, the quality of her fuel, etc.  But in general, coal-burners make black smoke and oil burners don't make much if any smoke unless they want to.

Black smoke is black because of unburned carbon going up the stack.  In coal-burners, you have a bed of coals in the bottom of the boiler burning at different intensities from top to bottom of the stack depending on air penetration.  At forced draft, the extra air pumped into the boiler rooms mostly affected, and was consumed by, the top layer of the coal bed, but the heat from this pyrolysized the slower-burning coal below, causing it to break down and release vast quantities of flammable carbon dust/gas.  But because the oxygen was mostly being consumed by the raging fire on the top of the coal bed, much of this flammable gas went up the stack to be seen in a huge cloud of dense black smoke.  Unless the funnels were tall enough, this unburned fuel gas would still be hot enough to burn when it reached the top and encountered atmospheric oxygen, so you'd get flames at the top of the stack.  This and bow waves were the main reason coal-fired TBs and DDs attacked at night at idle speed, so as not to light themselves up.  But in general, more unburned gas was coming out than could burn so the faster the ship was trying to go, the bigger and denser and blacker the cloud of smoke she emitted, even if some burned at the tops of the stacks.

With oil-fired boilers, the oil comes out of little jets each tuned to burn cleanly.   Not only can the oil flow rate be varied per burner, but also individual burner jets can be turned off and on, so that regardless of the energy you're trying to release, you have complete combustion and little if any smoke.  Now, oil-burners can smoke intentionally by deviating from the optimal fuel-air mixture, and by spraying extra oil onto hot surfaces.  And they can burn uncleanly for a little while during throttle changes and burner lighting, but for the most part, they don't smoke unless you want them to.  But the main thing is, instead of a coal bed burning unevenly, you have a bunch of little jets all burning evenly, so there's not the vast generation of unburned fuel gases that you have with coal boilers.

The color of coal smoke, however, depends to some extent on the quality of the coal.  The blacker the smoke, the higher the carbon content, so the better the coal.  Inferior grades could have brownish or even greenish shades.

Both oil- and coal-fired boilers could "blow off steam".  This produced jets of white gas from the steam pipes mounted on the sides of the funnel.  Because steam has a 1500:1 expansion ratio at ambient pressure, the small steam pipes could produce large clouds of steam.  This was normally only done in emergencies, however, such as to slow down suddenly or prevent overpressure.  Venting steam meant you needed to replace it with feedwater, which had to be made by the evaporators and thus wasn't a fast process.  Plus, , the addition of fresh cold water into the boiler meant it would take a fair amount of time (maybe hours) to reach operating pressure again.  Thus, this wasn't done lightly.