welcome back to this installment of Ship Designs with your host, museumofcognitiveart.
One of the preliminary exercises in LDD was to design a model of the cruise liner, RMS TITANIC. the initial design was rushed, with the main goal of facilitating a prototype and how it would come together and appear with a working color scheme. We eventually returned to the design and began to take a deeper look into rendering a detailed model.
The following noteworthy features that needed improvement were the cranes, the crows nest, the lifeboats, the promenades, and the overhanging A deck superstructure, the poopdeck, the rudder, the gold trim along the hull separating the white and black, the sloping funnels, and as much of the top deck as possible since these features would be the most distinguishable from the rest of the ship.
In the initial model we experimented with adding portholes for C deck and windows on A and B decks however, with the staggered and random nature of the porthole and window frequency, the scale did not offer a working solution, so these features were omitted.
The major issue with the prototype was its scale and dimensions. Titanic really is special, not only for the sinking and tragic loss of life but it really was an engineering and design marvel. The ship is surprisingly large and like most ships designed in the UK, it had a wide beam compared to ships built in the US, and yet in all this, the ship has a strikingly balanced profile above the waterline. Cruise liners nowadays are massive, practically double the width and height of the titanic. Titanic’s profile in comparison becomes so tame looking to the point of being easily forgettable.
Adding another layer of perspective, we’ve been working on designs that are primarily warships. We’ve rendered Bismarck and Yamato, some of the largest battleships ever built. And to change gears and begin rendering the titanic, the titanic is surprisingly longer in and larger comparison. Yamato and Bismarck are 263m and 251m respectively while Titanic is 269m. Titanic’s beam is a bit over 28m and more flush throughout while Yamato’s is just under 39 meters but has an overall bottle shape due to the armor protection so it’s beam isnt uniformed as much as Titanic - differences in protection over accommodation.
So, why did it take so long to update the hull? The redesign project started in January of 2019 but i was immediately hit with executive dysfunction, and I could already tell i had an insufficient amount of research for the redesign. I was also in the middle of looking for another job and I was making preparations to move back to Chicago. By the summer, i was working on several other designs that were more appealing and Titanic kept falling wayside. Things would not be right for Titanic until January of 2020.
By far, the largest issue was the hull. It was completely inadequate in every dimension. It needed to be taller, wider, and longer than previously rendered and yet maintain a level of faithfulness to the balanced profile of the ship. To date, in my experience there seems to be an ongoing trend in the difficulty of rendering the bows of British ships, both civilian and military. The steep angle at which their bows are designed is tricky to render properly at this scale and titanic is no exception. What makes the feature more challenging is the addition of the hawsepipe that breaks up the profile edge of the bow. I wanted to make the hawsepipe visible but not too large and it had to fit under the white and gold trim of the forcastle deck. The other issue was finding a way to fit the pipe without breaking the attachment integrity of the bow edge to the rest of the hull.
The next design hurdle was the A deck, where it sits wider than the hull beam width. With lessons learned rendering the Myoko, we were able to render the width base at 10 studs and increasing it to 11 studs. The jump from 10 to 12 would’ve been too much and the front profile would end up looking too disproportionate. Unlike the Myoko, portions of A and B deck are open promenades which meant that the 3794 plates had to be reorganized to accommodate plates wide enough to anchor to the rest of the hull while showing the promenade. With 4-stud-width plates on either side, we ended up with a 4 + 3 + 4 configuration sitting on top of a 2 stud row of four 3794 plates paired with a special row of (2)3794s + 34103 + 3070 + 3794 to anchor the middle row of plates above.
The stern was one of the first portions we started to redesign and in retrospect this was a mistake because there were so many other issues that needed to be sorted out beforehand. The Titanic’s stern has a high and round counter shape to it and it took several renditions to get it right. There was an additional challenge in keeping a kinetically functional rudder which meant the stern had to be firmly anchored to the hull without impeding the movement of the rudder while tapering gradually to the very end of the stern. The stern sits high and further away from the rest of the hull - a feature with little practice in exercising. I was able to use one 2622 hull brick as a way of solidifying the stern and to give it a gradual slope toward the sharper slopes below D deck.
With the hull built, we were able to move on to the boat deck, the funnels, and the electric cranes. The boat deck is interesting because portions of the structures are full deck in height, while others are the raised ceilings from the major rooms on A deck to allow natural light. The boat deck includes the few lifeboats and rafts as well, some of the vent shafts and pipes and last but not least, the funnels. Initially, I wanted to import the older funnels however with the larger scale, the 6143s proved to be too skinny looking with their circular tube shape and the titanic had wider/elliptical shaped funnels. The redesign now utilizes a series of 6575s held by two 8mm axles and angled on a 4697 t-piece joint.
The final minor details included bollards, the masts, the sidelights, the red notice signs, and canvas hold covers. I can finally rest a little easier with a better looking render of the RMS Titanic
