Kitty Hawk Class Aircraft Carriers

**DaveB** · July 29th, 2015, 08:10

Originally Posted by sketchy

You know me too well Dave! That was 826 yes?

I know we had 820 mate. Can't recall if they were a permanent fixture though?

EDIT: This link kinda confirms it was 820 mate.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/820_Naval_Air_Squadron
ATB
DaveB

**navy81** · July 29th, 2015, 13:40

Still painting and bringing Air Wing's to life for WombRaider 78's fleet of Supercarriers.
Completed Connie, Forrestal, and Saratoga air wings. Now to Ranger and Indy, with Kitty Hawk rounding out the group.

Here are a few of the Saratoga Air Wing (1975 time frame):

Deke

**Blood_Hawk23** · July 29th, 2015, 14:41

Originally Posted by navy81

Still painting and bringing Air Wing's to life for WombRaider 78's fleet of Supercarriers.Completed Connie, Forrestal, and Saratoga air wings. Now to Ranger and Indy, with Kitty Hawk rounding out the group.Here are a few of the Saratoga Air Wing (1975 time frame):

Deke

Any chance of the America?

**Blood_Hawk23** · July 29th, 2015, 23:42

Sketchup will model both sides of the poly. So for every 2 polys you actually will have 4. I noticed this when I used a few models I made and imported them into GMax. To see what I'm talking about just make a simple box in sku. Add the material to it. then import it into GMax. You will see the material inside the box as well as outside. Maybe I did something wrong when I made the models. Either way I started to learn GMax after I saw that.

**navy81** · July 30th, 2015, 18:49

Ranger Air Wing (CAG-2) 1974 time frame.
VF-21 F-4J
VA-145 A-6A
VA-113 A-7E

**DaveB** · July 31st, 2015, 00:55

Thick and fast.. just how we like em

ATB
DaveB

**WombRaider78** · August 1st, 2015, 09:42

I found a Weld tool for Sketchup. I ran it on both carriers. It took a long while, but it did finish. I will be exporting the models and bringing them up to speed for FSX soon. Any other tips to something I can do to make them even more frame friendly?

Navy81 made a request for more statics. I need help finding/painting some static models! I would like an A-4, F-8, Tracer, Vigilante, and a suitable 60s era plane tender. Any help acquiring/painting these would be appreciated.

**DaveB** · August 1st, 2015, 10:08

Hello Mate

Can't help with the static models I'm afraid but as a suggestion for the ship itself.. I still think it looks a little odd with the blast shield up all the time so I'd be happy to see that down. Not sure what the others might think though.
ATB
DaveB

***TARPSBird*** · August 1st, 2015, 12:00

I agree with DaveB about the raised blast deflector.

**Blood_Hawk23** · August 1st, 2015, 12:41

Originally Posted by WombRaider78

I found a Weld tool for Sketchup. I ran it on both carriers. It took a long while, but it did finish. I will be exporting the models and bringing them up to speed for FSX soon. Any other tips to something I can do to make them even more frame friendly?

Navy81 made a request for more statics. I need help finding/painting some static models! I would like an A-4, F-8, Tracer, Vigilante, and a suitable 60s era plane tender. Any help acquiring/painting these would be appreciated.

Take a look here...

http://www.freeflightdesign.org/military.html

Might be some models you can use as static. There are 2 A-4s, F-4s, A-6s, C-2a. Some are GMax and some are FSDS. All can be converted into any format you want. They may be lower quality then FSX but you did say you want them as static models.

If you look here...

http://www.virtavia.com/Freeware/index.php

you might find others.

**WombRaider78** · August 1st, 2015, 14:28

I removed the blast shield.

**Bjoern** · August 1st, 2015, 18:06

Originally Posted by WombRaider78

I found a Weld tool for Sketchup. I ran it on both carriers. It took a long while, but it did finish. I will be exporting the models and bringing them up to speed for FSX soon. Any other tips to something I can do to make them even more frame friendly?

How does SketchUp manage materials and mappings?

Normally, you go for as little materials on a model as possible by cramming as many parts on a single texture sheet as you can. If there's a plugin for SKU that improves material management, give it a try.

The vertex welding was a good start and might just help enough with framerates.

**WombRaider78** · August 1st, 2015, 18:58

It has the ability to use single sheets, but I am not skilled in the art of doing that.

**Bjoern** · August 2nd, 2015, 04:10

From what I could see, lots of elements of the carrier models are simply models with colors assigned instead of textures (e.g. runway markings and island numbers). Those would have to be texture mapped and added to the main texture sheet. This is very work intensive and also depends on whaether SKU can do this or not.

Did the vertex welding help in terms of performance?

**gp183601** · August 2nd, 2015, 05:37

Originally Posted by Bjoern

From what I could see, lots of elements of the carrier models are simply models with colors assigned instead of textures (e.g. runway markings and island numbers). Those would have to be texture mapped and added to the main texture sheet. This is very work intensive and also depends on whaether SKU can do this or not.

Sketchup is pretty limited in its texturing capabilities. It doesn't have the ability to create a UVWMap nor perform texture unwrapping. Womb raider has hit the same issues I found for some of my early sketchup ships (such as oriskany and invincible) that due to sketchups limitations I would end up with over 95 materials which were applied individually to each part/component of the ship and had serious impacts on frame rates.

The trick I've found (and am testing out for my Ark Royal V model) is to manually create a texture sheet in Photoshop and then use sketchups capabilities to stretch a texture over the component to perform a crude texture map to a surface. It requires lots of trial and error though and isn't ideal.

Long term I've started experimenting with Blender as if I'm serious about producing models with animations it's the only way to go. (GMAX/Blender/3DS Max)

cheers
Gary

**Blood_Hawk23** · August 2nd, 2015, 08:10

While Sketchup can create some nice looking models, allow me to show you one of the biggest problems.

I took a SKU model of a F-4 Phantom II. Exported it as a .dae. then with modelconverterx, exported it as a .3ds model. From there I imported it into GMax.

Just the engine nozels alone have over 5000 polys.

The whole model is over 64000 polys. You can imagine the number of verts.

Here is the material list. Note that none of them have textures mapped. This is common with all Sketchup models. Not to mention the double polys as I stated earlier.

It is a shame that it works in this manor because it is so easy to use. It realy does make excellent looking models. The time it would take me to do those nozels like that in GMax would be ten fold the time it takes in sketchup.

Just thought I'd pass it along.

**WombRaider78** · August 2nd, 2015, 13:07

Just welding the model did the trick. I also cleaned up a lot of lines in the raw file. The framerate issue is gone! I get a solid locked 30FPS. Even with the fleet and the crowded deck. I also painted the anchors to the hull color.

Here is a pic that I just snapped after re-launch...

**DaveB** · August 2nd, 2015, 13:34

Well done mate and thanks for looking into the problem. Can't wait to get the new model and Deke's squadron repaints

ATB
DaveB

**Blood_Hawk23** · August 2nd, 2015, 14:08

Originally Posted by WombRaider78

Just welding the model did the trick. I also cleaned up a lot of lines in the raw file. The framerate issue is gone! I get a solid locked 30FPS. Even with the fleet and the crowded deck. I also painted the anchors to the hull color.

Here is a pic that I just snapped after re-launch...

Awesome!!

**WombRaider78** · August 2nd, 2015, 15:05

What I really want to do is make a single texture for the decks. But for now, here is what I have so far...

http://www.filedropper.com/kittyhawkclassv150
** click the "Download this file" box and a captcha will pop up. The other Download clicks are frauds.

If someone would like my source files, so they can polish/mod this project better than I can, let me know. I will post the source files.

**Bjoern** · August 2nd, 2015, 17:23

From Gary's and BloodHawk's inputs, it looks like the most sensible thing is to convert SKU objects for some thorough reworking in Blender. Welding vertices, proper texture mapping and animations.
This, of course, increases the workload by quite a bit.

Originally Posted by WombRaider78

Just welding the model did the trick. I also cleaned up a lot of lines in the raw file. The framerate issue is gone! I get a solid locked 30FPS. Even with the fleet and the crowded deck. I also painted the anchors to the hull color.

Well done!

Originally Posted by WombRaider78

What I really want to do is make a single texture for the decks. But for now, here is what I have so far...

http://www.filedropper.com/kittyhawkclassv150
** click the "Download this file" box and a captcha will pop up. The other Download clicks are frauds.

If someone would like my source files, so they can polish/mod this project better than I can, let me know. I will post the source files.

You can upload the source files at FSDeveloper, if you want. Or get in touch with the guys at fs-shipyards for hosting.

**WombRaider78** · August 2nd, 2015, 17:59

Oh, delete the VEH_CV63 & VEH_CV64 folders before you install. Don't know if these new files will be corrupted with the old. So delete the folders, there will be no problems.