Released Heavy Sloop of War, 1797

[Captain Armstrong]

So I thought it was about time to show this ship, seeing as the modeling work was finished several weeks ago. She is a heavy ship-sloop based off the French ship Volage, launched in 1797 and captured by the English frigate HMS Melampus in 1798. It is unclear if she was a privateer or a naval ship when captured, and this is discussed in detail here, along with an account of her capture: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~pbtyc/Naval_History/Vol_II/P_201.html
She was 119ft long, 31ft 6in wide and weighed 523 tons.
Anyways, I thought she had very nice lines and would make an excellent heavy sloop of war, and hopefully she can replace the ship-rigged heavy brig in POTC.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/64339105@N08/sets/72157628338460111/
I took a few minor liberties from the plan, but nothing really major or anachronistic, they were only to make her look more navy like and less like a privateer. I raised her chainplates from below the gunports to above the gunports, and shortened her forecastle slightly, so it doesn’t extend so far aft. It looked very strange to have a forecastle longer than the quarterdeck, and I think these features were meant to help her as a privateer. One favorite tactic of privateers was to board a potential prize as quickly as possible, overwhelming the crew by sheer numbers. The long forecastle would make a good place to gather the crew before boarding, and the low chainplates would allow crew to swarm onto them out of the gunports, and from there be much closer to the other ships side. Anyways it didn’t look proper for a navy ship and I based my changes off of other ship sloops from the same time period. I also added the railing on the quarterdeck which wasn’t in the plan, but I thought it was necessary and it seems to fit well. The final change I made was the headrails, which was purely an aesthetic decision. I built them using the plan of the HMS Dasher; a British 18 gun ship sloop also launched in 1797, and then tweaked them to fit the hull of the Volage.

The Volage has also been compared to the American privateer Franklin from the Aubrey/Maturin books( Aubrey useses her mainly in the Wine-Dark sea) more on that here: http://www.ctbasses.com/misc/BruceTrinque/aubrey3.html

At first I wanted to wait until at least the Prince de Neufchatel was in game to show this ship, but she is progressing very slowly (mostly my fault because of sloppy modeling on my first ship, going back and correcting things.) Plus I am having trouble with Maya and learning the conversion process and texturing and all doesn’t exactly seem simple. Anyways I really want to get the Revolutionnaire, the Prince, or this ship ingame before the end of the year, and ideally I would get all of them ingame by then. I am learning with the prince of course, but it would take less time if someone else could get either this ship or the Revolutionnaire ingame while I work on the Prince and the other one. If anyone is interested, please let me know which ship so I can get her into Maya first! It’s alright if no one can, it will just take a lot more time for me to do them all. From now on I will be waiting to start new ships until after my finished ones are ingame. :

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Nice model! A three-masted sloop-of-war? Of course I know the navy considers a "sloop" to be something else,
but playing the original PotC game still has me seeing a "sloop" as mainly being a tiny one-masted bath-tub.

What PotC ships were you thinking of her replacing? The regular PotC brigs are two-masted.

 

[Captain Armstrong]

Thanks Pieter! yep its confusing I know. :urgh all ships captained by a commander were called sloops of war (at least in the royal navy, american navy, and probably others) so there were brig sloops (think the HMS Vincejo/ Sophie is called this ingame) and ship sloops( they could be as small as the brigs but three masted, or as large as this ship) Though there may be slight differences in rig or something that I am unaware of, the single masted sloops like the stock ones were called cutters in the navy, to avoid confusion. The regular potc brigs are two masted, but there is also a three masted version somebaody made that I have seen ingame, and it is called a "ship -rigged heavy brig" in shipyards if I am not mistaken. it is slightly smaller than this ship, but ship-sloops were generally larger than brig-sloops, so it shouldnt matter.

 

[Armada]

She's beautiful, mate!

Two questions:
1) How many polygons are used, out of interest? I have some guns with fewer polygons if you need to reduce the total count.
2) Would you prefer to try and get this ship in-game first, rather than the Prince?
I know there have been problems with that ship in Maya, so maybe you could start converting this ship based on my advice for the Prince?

 

[Noriruru]

Nice model! A three-masted sloop-of-war? Of course I know the navy considers a "sloop" to be something else,
but playing the original PotC game still has me seeing a "sloop" as mainly being a tiny one-masted bath-tub.

LOL same here Pieter. Likewise when I think of sloops I too think of the Bermuda Sloop profile. (single mast, angled foresail with large square sail to the back)

I too have trouble wrapping my head around the concept of the square-rigged sloop of war, but they do exist.

At first glance I'd have taken this ship for a corvette or even a frigate.

Shows how much I have to learn about the world of tallships

But dang. I LOVE the ever increasing beauty of new ships for this game.

 

[Captain Armstrong]

Thanks guys! its always good to hear such compliments
@Noriruru, she mightve been called a corvette in the french navy, who often classified what the british called ship-sloops and 6th rates (very small frigates) as corvettes. to be a frigate she would need a full deck and guns on the quarterdeck and forcastle though.
@Armada
1) she has 95,009 tris. I was careful to keep it under 100,000
2) That is certainly a thought, I am definately more excited about sailing this ship. On the other hand, the prince is already in Maya, and I have made some progress on her after following your advice, the parts are all seperated as they should be, but there are still two gratings ive been trying to fix up, and she still wont save right after i fix them. 5-6 tries too, uggh and shes so close to the UVW mapping stage!

 

[Armada]

1) she has 95,009 tris. I was careful to keep it under 100,000
2) That is certainly a thought, I am definately more excited about sailing this ship. On the other hand, the prince is already in Maya, and I have made some progress on her after following your advice, the parts are all seperated as they should be, but there are still two gratings ive been trying to fix up, and she still wont save right after i fix them. 5-6 tries too, uggh and shes so close to the UVW mapping stage!

Woah, that's still quite a few polygons! Shouldn't be a problem though, and hopefully using the lower-poly cannons should save a few thousand.
I was thinking this ship might be better to try if the Prince continues to be a problem.
If you can't get the model to save properly, you could send it to me and explain what needs doing, and if that fails, then there's always this ship to try.

 

[Captain Armstrong]

Woah, that's still quite a few polygons! Shouldn't be a problem though, and hopefully using the lower-poly cannons should save a few thousand.
I was thinking this ship might be better to try if the Prince continues to be a problem.
If you can't get the model to save properly, you could send it to me and explain what needs doing, and if that fails, then there's always this ship to try.

I am using the lower poly cannons from pgargon's HMS sophie/ vincejo.... I dont want to downgrade to stock potc cannons for the sake of a few tris. :? Thanks for the offer! I might take you up on it if I still cant get it after a few more tries. All I am trying to do at this point is reduce the amount of polygons on the gratings. used two pieces end to end to form the port to starbard crosspieces on the gratings, and it looks far neater and is better if I can delete on piece from each and stretch the other over to complete the grating. I finished this for all but the two forwardmost hatches, and I'll post a pic to show what I mean when I have more time

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Armada doesn't use stock PotC cannons. Nobody wants THAT!

 

[Captain Armstrong]

Haha well I hoped not, but I made some cannons of my own I used on the revolutionnaire originally, and I think he was assuming i still used those, but I switched to some much lower poly ones I ported from the Vincejo model files. Anyways, that might not have been what he had in mind.

 

[Armada]

I am using the lower poly cannons from pgargon's HMS sophie/ vincejo.... I dont want to downgrade to stock potc cannons for the sake of a few tris. :?

I know exactly which cannons you're using just by looking at the images you posted above.
There's a similar version with fewer polygons, which Pgargon seems to have used on every ship after the Sophie. Look at the Speedy, for example, and you'll see what I mean.
I used them for the new bow chasers on the Corvette model recently. Let me know if you'd rather use those guns or the ones you currently have.

 

[Captain Armstrong]

Hmm, possibly, though they seem to have proportionally smaller barrels to the carriges. do you know how many tris they are?

 

[Armada]

With rope tethers, one cannon has 1210 triangles, and without them it has 530.
It makes quite a difference for large quantities of guns, but less of a difference for very few guns.

 

[Captain Armstrong]

well if i switched them out and kept ropes off the model would be 92129 tris, if i added ropes for the guns on the open deck it would be 104369 tris... i could replace them without ropes if you think the loss of 3000 tris or so will make a difference for performance, lag and whatever else is affected by tri count .

 

[Armada]

I'll leave it up to you to decide; she's your ship, after all.
It's only a small cosmetic change, but if it's only 3,000 triangles less, considering around 95,000 overall, then that's not going to make a noticeable difference to the game's performance.

Anyway, do you think you could start preparing the files for exporting with Maya sometime soon?
I'll be the first to admit your ships are taking far too long to get into the game, and that's partly my fault for not helping as much as I can.
I'd really like to get started on moving your models forward so I can guide you through the export process, and I'm sure you do too.

 

[Captain Armstrong]

I'll leave it up to you to decide; she's your ship, after all.
It's only a small cosmetic change, but if it's only 3,000 triangles less, considering around 95,000 overall, then that's not going to make a noticeable difference to the game's performance.

Anyway, do you think you could start preparing the files for exporting with Maya sometime soon?
I'll be the first to admit your ships are taking far too long to get into the game, and that's partly my fault for not helping as much as I can.
I'd really like to get started on moving your models forward so I can guide you through the export process, and I'm sure you do too.

Well I like how they look now, and it would just add more time on to the process to change them so I think Ill leave them as is. I still wouldnt mind the files though, for future ships.

I Know its really just the export process and me being intimidated by the unknowns of texturing and walk files and the like, along with not having as much free time as I once did. I really am becoming much faster with the modelling though! I built the hull of this ship in two weeks, and the masts and rigging took only one. : I'm growing impatient with it too, especially Mayas antics Ill give those gratings a few more tries, and hopefully I can get to UVW mapping after that! the thing with converting to maya is I need a solid block of time to copy and paste without interruption. I'll try convert this ship and the Revolutionnaire to Maya ASAP. Hopefully the prince can also move to the next stage and maybe into craiggo's hands pretty soon.

 

[Armada]

I'll upload the cannon model to the FTP later, along with a few other components I've extracted and modified from various ships. All in .mb format, if that's OK.

I Know its really just the export process and me being intimidated by the unknowns of texturing and walk files and the like, along with not having as much free time as I once did. I really am becoming much faster with the modelling though! I built the hull of this ship in two weeks, and the masts and rigging took only one. :

If it's any help, you don't need to worry about texturing at this stage.
Once the UV mapping is done (W is not involved), we can arrange them on a blank canvas and give Craiggo a copy of the UV map so he can accurately texture the ship for you.
(Assuming he's willing to do so, of course. If not, there's always Legendary_Spider... )
There are some existing textures, however, that I'll probably ask you to try to match the UVs to, such as desk.tga, because we need to cut down on the number of new textures!

Also, the path file is nothing special; it's literally just a copy of the ship's deck, but with gaps where you don't want the player to walk, and slopes rather than steps etc.
Sometimes the normals are also reversed, but often it's easier to apply a transparent texture to the path so it's not visible in-game.

As for modelling, I know you'll hate me for saying this, but do you reckon you'd be able to use Maya to model your future ships? :nk
It would help you immensely for the export process, especially because there's no hard work importing from another program, and the UVs are generated as you go.
It's not very difficult to use once you get used to it, and I've found it very useful for modifying existing ships.
I can't say how easy it is to create one from scratch, but hopefully that can't be much more difficult.

 

[Captain Armstrong]

Good to know! I will use whatever textures you need me to use, I wouldnt know where to find other ones! the path doesn't sound too bad either.
As for modelling in maya I'm afraid I will have to give you a resounding no for now. Im sorry, but i would have to relearn half of what I know how to do already in gmax, though modificatioins to exisiting ships are certainly do able. by the way I'm taking up your offer on the prince's gratings, and I went into detail about it in that thread. Haha its taken me weeks to do something that couldve been done in a half hour in gmax! With what Maya is putting me through to do that simple modelling it just doesnt seem like a viable option right now. much quicker to export from gmax!

 

[Armada]

Ah, that's too bad then.
If ever you change you're mind, there are plenty of modelling tutorials for Maya out there on the net.
From what I gather, they're almost all relevant to Maya 5, despite being for newer versions.

 

[Post Captain]

I took a few minor liberties from the plan, but nothing really major or anachronistic, they were only to make her look more navy like and less like a privateer. I raised her chainplates from below the gunports to above the gunports, and shortened her forecastle slightly, so it doesn’t extend so far aft. It looked very strange to have a forecastle longer than the quarterdeck, and I think these features were meant to help her as a privateer. One favorite tactic of privateers was to board a potential prize as quickly as possible, overwhelming the crew by sheer numbers. The long forecastle would make a good place to gather the crew before boarding, and the low chainplates would allow crew to swarm onto them out of the gunports, and from there be much closer to the other ships side. Anyways it didn’t look proper for a navy ship and I based my changes off of other ship sloops from the same time period. I also added the railing on the quarterdeck which wasn’t in the plan, but I thought it was necessary and it seems to fit well. The final change I made was the headrails, which was purely an aesthetic decision. I built them using the plan of the HMS Dasher; a British 18 gun ship sloop also launched in 1797, and then tweaked them to fit the hull of the Volage.

That's the most beautiful explanation I've ever seen. And on that note, you seem to be reading my mind. You're making all of the vessels I wanted to see ingame.