Another evening of work on Monowai. My plan was to finish off a few modelling items, then start building scenery in various locations.
I am pretty comfortable that I have the model finished to a standard that I could release, so next up comes the ‘factory work’; Creating each variation of the basic model, then setting up the LOD’s (or ‘levels of detail’) for each variation, creating the scenery and finally writing the manual and packing it all up for upload.
I know, I know… another post about boats on an aviation site! But bear with me, there is at least a screenshot of a helicopter this time!
Development has been moving along nicely on Monowai with the addition of some ‘proper’ boats to replace the generic placeholders I had in early versions.
On the davits are two SMB (Survey Motor Boats), while on the foredeck is a Rotork Sea Truck… like a mini landing craft, which could carry a Landrover or Landcruiser ashore.
The main purpose of this project is to give the AI Wasps somewhere to operate from, and during the week I achieved just that; A small test scenery of Monowai with a Wasp operating from her helicopter deck.
Now that I have the process sorted for building working scenery around the ship I plan on placing multiple ‘copies’ of Monowai in various locations, with associated Waps flying meaningful survey or supply missions.
I’m pretty pleased with how Monowai is looking, and with a few final details I will be happy to draw a line under it and finalise the package and release it. I will be producing my complete package, as well as a ‘Scenery Library’ package for scenery designers to use.
So far this has been a cool project which I have really enjoyed. I am toying with the idea of continuing my ship modelling, and move on to HMNZS Endevour, but like anything in this hobby, that is likely to change!
I did a bit of fiddling around tonight to produce a ‘Static’ version of Monowai, with a ‘landable’ helipad. Regular visitors will notice that Monowai has lost her boats..after a long and informative discussion with a former Monowai crew member, I now have enough details to create new, and much more accurate boats, which is the next step!
As a quick test of the scenery object I added it to the RNZN Fleet in the Hauraki Gulf. The hardened helipad worked as expected, and Monowai looked great! (RNZN Frigates by Mike Hudson, available at all good FS sites)
This evenings task was to tidy up the texture sheet for Monowai. With all the various cobbled together features removed, and lots of nice new vector graphics she is looking pretty smart!
Monowai is making progress on her delivery voyage. Having left Glasgow on Sunday, she stopped in London for a brief visit, and has now made her way back down the Thames and is heading for her next port visit in Gibraltar.
It has been interesting comparing the relative rate of progress of Monowai, at 14 Knots, to Canterbury.. The trip ‘home’ in Monowai is going to be a long, long journey!
After Monowai had left the Thames, and was safely on Autopilot I headed up to the loft to try and sort a PC issue with the 737 sim. After a wee bit of tinkering I got it up and running, and even had a short flight. Motivation suitably restored, I am once again looking forward to getting it shifted to it’s new home and doing more flying!
Canterbury has arrived at Devonport, and since Monowai is at a stage where she is ready to sail, though not entirely finished, I thought it was time to replicate her delivery voyage from Greenock Dock, Glasgow to Devonport.
Another evening’s work on Monowai, and the details are starting to get filled in. The mission was to add the major structures to the fore deck and the various antennae around the top of the superstructure.
After completing the initial release of my AI Wasp, I started looking for places for them to fly… I have models of the Leander Class Frigates, but when I found out that Monowai also had an embarked Wasp I thought I’d have a go at modelling her. This is the first quick compile in the sim to have a look, and I think it is looking pretty good so far. Eventually I plan a static scenery object, to be part of the “destinations for the Wasps” but also as a pilot-able ship for my ‘Nautical Adventures’ series….
It’s been a long time coming, but this evening I uploaded the finished ‘version 1.0’ of my RNZAF_AI Wasp to Military AI Works. It is a long time since I spent any serious time in GMax, and the Wasp has been a great learning experience. I was surprised at how much easier GMax was after the hours and hours of work I’ve done in Fusion360. Despite GMax being from a much older generation of CAD, a huge amount of workflows I use daily in Fusion 360 transferred over pretty well. I am quite happy with this, my first complete AI Aircraft package in a very **very** long time!
The package will be available for download from the Military AI Works website soon!
Over the past few weeks I have spent some time in the evenings updating the visual model of F421, adding a virtual cockpit, hand rails and even a crew. The most exciting part of the upgrade has been the addition of animated parts, some simple, like spinning radar scanners and the flapping ensign, some a little more complex like the ‘lowering of the ships boat’….
Now, with the push of a button the ‘Captains Gig’ lowers to the surface, then disappears so that I can deploy my own copy of the ships’ boat… more of that Nautical Madness!
Many more animations have been added but more on those later, along with a rundown on the other improvements around the ship.
