GWS-30 Seadart Missile Launcher

[pete.cook]

In a break from my T23 project, I'm exploring a way of helping me make meshes of RN ships a little easier. Many components are replicated across the fleet, so instead of rebuilding the same components for different classes, I'm looking at making myself a systems bank.

First up is the GWS-30 Seadart Anti-Air Missile system fitted to Type 42 and 82 destroyers and initially the Invincible class aircraft carriers, though they no longer carry the system.

So far I have most of the launcher pedestal progressed, just a little to add and finish. Next will be the launcher arms, and finally the missile itself.

For those not familiar with the system, I've included an image of the real thing.

[Pablo_nemesis]

Woah that looks nice XD (the reference photo) exelent modeling so far, maybe add some lil details like the real one has on the bottom, dunno what they are.

[cobra6]

interesting little gadget :)

You are very right about the bank though hehe

Cobra 6

[Lukem]

Nice and smooth so far.

I echo Cobra's comments about having a bank of model parts - sounds like a good idea.

[pete.cook]

Found a little time to come back to this. Finished the base and added the launcher arms. Next, the missiles......

Added a small anim of a script test to make the launcher train and elevate. Don't blink, you might miss it!

[pete.cook]

Found some time to do the missile.

[Martocticvs]

Looking good Pete. The good thing about doing these sorts of things as separate details is that when you finally get back to building the ship itself, you'll have all these pieces of kit pre-modelled in high detail ready to go. The bad thing is that you'll have to model the ship itself in an equal level of detail otherwise you won't be able to go close in anyway!

[pete.cook]

In a way that's my intention Paul. I've found that by doing these smaller items as individual pieces, I'm able to motivate myself better and pay more attention to how they look rather than trying to model the whole ship as one. Hopefully, by being so detailed on these parts I can have a really detailed ship to mount them on.

Overall the Sea Dart mounting and missiles are just about done. A little tweaking here and there, and to add suitable materials and maps. That should give me one detailed mounting that I can reuse on 3 classes of ship!

[Martocticvs]

Sounds like a good investment of time to me!

[Spinner]

Hmm, bite size chunks.
I'm doing a bit of that myself.
Modern navies seem to standardize so much, it should really pay off.
I saw a chap on the RC model forums who's job was installing water tight doors in the USN. He said you could rely on their dimensions to scale from pictures, such was the consistency. I'd assume the RN is the same.

[pete.cook]

In general that's true. The only problem is that the RN use 4 different types of upperdeck watertight doors, so not every door you see on the upperdeck would be the same type, but the dimensions of each type are standard, so in theory, you can create one of each door type for your mesh and replicate them them wherever necessary.