On 28-10-2012 0:23, Sven Littkowski wrote:
> But seriously now: since eons I try to find someone who's good in ship hull
> development in POV-Ray. I am in maritime archaeology since over 25 years, and
> would like to start a cooperation with someone to make all my reconstructions of
> ancient Roman and Byzantine ships three-dimensional. Interested?
>
> I've attached one of my reconstructions (one of the dreadnoughts of the ancient
> Egyptian fleet of Cleopatra during the sea battle of Actium). Each of them would
> make amazing 3D models...
>

I know, and I have commented to you before about this. The best way to 
go, if from scratch, is to use one of the (commercial) nautical 
programs. The one I use is the free version of DelftShip 
http://www.delftship.net/ with which a hull is relatively easy to build. 
To do this correctly however, one needs measurements data about the ship 
over longitudinal sections and above all cross-sections, or better 
cross-section data, which can be put in a spreadsheet and imported into 
the program. This gives a rough hull which has then to be improved both 
in DelftShip as in any available modeller. And finally comes all the 
work needed to build the remainder of the ship...

As far as I am concerned, I would be interested, where it not that time 
is an issue. Already the TC-RTC Challenges and my own projects fill my 
days and, as you can see, ship or city building takes many months.

However, if you can provide me with a spreadsheet of raw data about a 
ship, I can see what I can possibly do. By raw data I mean the overall 
length, width and depth of the hull of course, but also several (at 
least 5 or 6) cross-section measurements across the hull (at least a 
dozen height vs width measures from the origin) and one centered 
longitudinal cross-section measurements (at least a dozen height vs 
length measures).

Taking the back-end of the ship as origin, the format would be in three 
columns: Length data | Width data | Height data

Example for a cross-section at origin:
0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00
0.00 | 0.25 | 0.50
0.00 | 0.50 | 1.00
0.00 | 0.80 | 1.50
etc

Example for a cross-section at 5 m from origin:
5.00 | 0.00 | 0.00
5.00 | 0.30 | 0.50
5.00 | 0.90 | 1.00
5.00 | 1.50 | 1.50
etc

Of course, the ancient did not publish ship plans ;-) so these sections 
would have first to be drawn by hand or in a program like Inkscape and 
then measured manually...

Thomas

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