Titanic Honor and Glory

[Jay Ashby]

My Absence​

On May 23rd my father passed away at 71 after a month-long illness. Needless to say, there was much to take care of afterwards. I won't get too mushy, I'll just say that he was a good person. He was a retiree of the US Postal Service who knew every ZIP code by memory and was an encyclopedia of knowledge of local history as well as railroad history. He was a lifelong railfan who left behind a massive collection of model trains and an unfulfilled dream of one day building a model train layout, and he was also an amateur photographer who took countless photos of trains and sights across the USA. You can probably blame him for my interest in modeling and my constant perfectionism.

May was already tough, June was even tougher. I was completely exhausted and I don't think I did much at all through most of July. But I lived with my father, so I soon had to begin the massive process of organizing and cleaning the house, among other tasks. Boxing things up, extensive cleaning and repairs, things that were difficult to do before. It's a lot, and the process is still very far from done. I expect it'll take at least a couple more months, possibly more.

So very sorry to hear about the death of your father. Apart from the emotional aspect of losing a beloved family member, the follow up - the arrangement of your father's affairs, the packing up of the family home and so on is an appalling task and you have all my sympathy. So on this Christmas Eve I wish you all the best for a much happier 2024 and hope that things get better for you.

 

[Milos Grkovic]

It's been quite a silence from Kyle after his father's passing. But as he mentioned that there'll be an update from him, I'll make sure to post it. He did say next week or so, it depends when he can share it.

 

[Milos Grkovic]

THG/Kyle Update - December 2023​

A full update from Kyle is put in apostrophes with images added.

Season's Greetings!​

First off, Merry Christmas to those who celebrate and happy New Year!

Included here are 25 screenshots taken in the Belfast scene I made earlier this year, which itself stems from the Belfast scene we made for Demo 3 back in 2017. The gantry allows for lots of fun views of the ship as the structural model progresses. The scene can also be easily changed for weather conditions, so for these images I went with a snowy winter look. Most of the images show the latest progress on the THG structural model, some are just for fun.

2023 Recapped​

2023 has been a year of ups and downs for us. We've formed some amazing and fruitful partnerships with such organizations as RMS Titanic Inc. and Mike Brady's Oceanliner Designs and seen the graphics our team has created featured in big exhibitions and in numerous videos. Earlier in the year we released the 2.0 update of Demo 401 featuring 50% of Titanic (or to put it another way, virtually every space you'd really want to explore on the ship).

During the spring I built a model of the Arrol Gantry with an improved shipyard in which to show off the new ship model and, perhaps in the future, to be put to use in THG itself. And then there's Jack, who created our new real-time sinking animation and other awesome videos.

Of course recent months have been much slower. James was working as an entertainer on a cruise ship through the summer, Matt was in the process of packing and moving the last few months, and I've spent pretty much the last 6 months completely out of commission as I dealt with the aftermath of my dad's passing and the seemingly endless housework I had to do after.

With James returning to land, Matt completing his move, and my deciding to put off further house work until spring, things have finally started to pick up again. The biggest bit of news is that, for the last few weeks, I have been back to work on THG and the structural model. Specifically, I've been making the rest of the hull frames, a process that's nearly done.

A Side Note​

To reiterate what I've said previously, the goal with this model is to have a solid structural base in which to fit all the familiar parts of the ship we know and love, as well as to finally build out all those other spaces we've never seen or often ignore. While there are some aspects that are less important and visible, such as the double bottom, things like the frames are essential to the overall ship model, being visible in a great many spaces and affecting the rest in various ways.

While this method of making the ship may seem insane and unnecessary to some, it's important to keep in mind that almost every element, particularly above the double bottom, is a necessary part of the whole and would need to be made at some point. Creating the structure this way allows practically the entire ship to be built in a way that makes sense and brings many spaces to near-completion simply by having that structure in place.

Frames and Current Progress​

The frames are perhaps the most important part of the model. Numbering some 600 total, 300 pairs, and spaced 3 feet apart along most of the ship, the frames form the "ribs" of the hull and are the structural members up which most others in some way depend. Deck beams are attached to the frames via brackets, hull plating is riveted to the frames, and more. They're some of the most visible structural elements (aside from beams) in many interior spaces.

There are mainly two types of frames - channel and angle. Channel frames are single C-shaped steel "beams" used along most of the ship. Angle frames are each made of two L-shaped "beams" riveted together and make up the frames at the fore and aft ends of the ship where the steel tends to be thinner and much more curved. I've done both types so far, but when you see in the above images is only part of the process.

The frames done so far are all the same as a means of making it easier to figure out other things, but once these basic frames are done, I need to go back and change a bunch of them to even more complicated types of frames. The most prominent of those other types being web frames, which are made of larger steel plates and give more strength to the hull where there are large open spaces like boiler and engine rooms. There are also differences for frames located on watertight bulkheads and so on. For now, I just have basic frames for everything.

What's Next?​

Once I have the main frames in place, I'll move on to some other elements. It'll depend on what's needed for a given area, but there are several possibilities. I may do the propeller bossing castings, or the brackets for the frames, or I may even get a start on some beams. Likely it'll be castings and brackets, but we'll see. Watertight Bulkheads are another possibility. Once these elements are in place, the structure will really start to look like it's getting filled in. Overall there's still plenty of work to do even on existing elements. Now that I'm back on the task, I should hopefully have more updates as things progress.

In general, things should pick up in the new year. James will be able to devote more time on his end, Matt is settled after his move and now has a dedicated office space for work, and overall more should happen as the year goes on. 2023 was tough, but we think 2024 will be much better.

Demo 401​

I was going to include a little update for Derek's work on the long-await Demo 401 update, but this post is big enough and I'd rather let him show his own work. I will say that due to the holidays, Derek has been unable to do a lot for a few weeks. He owns an organ-building business and this time of year demands near-constant travel and work for that sort of thing. However, the busy season is now over and, after a short holiday break, Derek hopes to jump fully back into his work with us and finally get that update done.

Thank You!​

On a final note, I'd like to thank everyone for their patience and their continued support. I know we've said that a lot, but the last half year or so has surely been taxing for anybody who's already been waiting eons to see progress. So thank you to our patrons; new, current, former and future! I am personally grateful as I am now living on my own and THG is pretty much my job going forward.

Again, thank you. I hope 2024 is a good year for all of you as well as us!"
Source to the post: Titanic: Honor and Glory Official Patreon page
Source to the images: Titanic: Honor and Glory Official Facebook page

 

[Milos Grkovic]

I'd also would like a bonus update by Jack Gibson - T:H&G media manager.

Jack's 2023 THG Update​

Hello all!

My first Patreon Update, and it comes after just over a year of being with the incredible team at Titanic: Honor and Glory! A year on and I’m just as happy to be here as I was the day I joined. I still remember the day Demo 1 first dropped (I was only 10 years old!) back in 2015 and now almost a decade on I’m still addicted to THG.

I came into THG as a media manager for our social media, our footage library, and essentially just the guy who records all the fancy visuals of the demos or the ship out at sea. I’m very glad to say that after a year I’ve managed to overhaul many of our old visuals of the ‘dollhouse’ model sailing across the North Atlantic, remastered much of our old library of interior footage inside our gorgeous Demo 401, and even snowballed an animated video or two… or five.

Within a month of being with THG I was begging for Kyle to send me the 'dollhouse' exterior model of Titanic (originally meant for an uncompleted sinking animation), and within about a week of receiving the model I was already starting to sink it (the team had no idea until I had already animated the plunge), and so that’s where the new Real Time Sinking came from.

I only wanted to keep going with videos like this and soon we had an animated Titanic Launch, an Olympic Launch, and eventually a whole host of Britannic animated visuals, many made in collaboration with Oceanliner Designs. I fully intend to keep animating several moments of the Titanic and her sisters from their eventful lives in the same detail you’ve seen this year and in even more detail as Unreal Engine, my animating capabilities, and our models improve.

It’s important to note that I have not and will never work on the actual game side of THG as I’ve never done so much as a day of game design before and my skillset lays in the animation/video department of THG. Any work you’ve seen from me such as the Real Time Sinking, Dollhouse Sailing Videos, Ocean Liner Designs Collaboration Videos, etc. have taken no time at all from the creation of ‘Titanic: Honor and Glory’ or ‘Titanic Demo/Project 401’. As such, I've essentially been given free reign to create these visuals and animations as part of the wider portfolio of work done under the Titanic: Honor and Glory and Vintage Digital Revival banners.

2024 is going to be a great year for the animations here at THG and I can’t wait for everyone to see the new videos and animations I have planned over the following months. Keep an eye out for some more Olympic and Britannic content as well from myself this year!

I also want to thank all of our amazing fans for the support and encouragement you have all personally given me and the team on these new animated videos. I read as many of the YouTube comments as I can and the support never goes unappreciated <3.

I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas, A Happy New Year and a prosperous 2024!

 

[Milos Grkovic]

Kyle's newly released update

Frame Update!​

"Kyle here:

Since my last update I've finished the initial run of hull frames, pretty much outline all the hull curvature and providing the main guidance I need to work on a bunch of other areas.

These last frames fill in the fore and aft ends of the hull and include the frames in the counter stern.

These are not all the final frames - some will be replaced at least in part with web frames and bulkheads. There are frames fore and aft that require extra work, too. Nevertheless, this will help to move ahead to other parts, and it's quite a relief since it's been pretty tedious making these frames.

Next I may start on any number of brackets for the frames or other related parts.

Happy New Year!"

Source to the images: Titanic Honor & Glory Patreon page

 

[Milos Grkovic]

Last Kyle Update of 2023​

"I know, no updates from me for months, now suddenly a bunch. I should be taking a couple days to enjoy the holidays, yet here I am, a couple hours before the ball drops, getting a start on one of the watertight bulkheads.

This bulkhead is WTB O at Frame 111 Aft, one of the furthest aft bulkheads. I need to experiment with the process of making these things, and at the same time I'd like to soon work out features of the aft structure around the propeller shaft tunnels, so I might as well try with this one.

What you see here is the very early stages of the bulkhead as I figure out the layout of the plating, their boundaries and where they overlap and how. To use a cliché in the world of Titanic replicas: I am using Titanic's original blueprints for this. There are plans for every watertight bulkhead and bunker bulkhead, so it should be too difficult to make all of these as I eventually work my way through the lower levels of the structure.

Hopefully 2024 will see some really cool parts of the ship being brought to your screens!

Happy New Year!!!"​

Note from me: This update I received today as I've recently begun getting the public updates from the Patreon page a day later.

 

[Milos Grkovic]

The first Kyle Update of 2024​

Brackets, Bulkheads, & Beams!​

"
The first Kyle Update of 2024! Happy New Year to all, I hope this year has been good to you so far!
Now that I have basic frames in place, I've been working on some stuff in the aft part of the ship. Specifically, the shaft tunnels.
The shaft tunnels were compartments at the stern of the ship, located between the Electric Engine Room and the aft peak water tank, which housed essentially nothing but the propeller shafts. The three shafts ran through these spaces, sitting on bearings, on their way to the propellers proper.
The center propeller was powered by the the Turbine, and its shaft (along with the entire engine) was angled downward. The two wing propellers, powered by the Reciprocating Engines, were level but angled or "spread" outwards, running outside the normal lines of the hull were the plating and framing "bossed" out to enclose the shafts.



Towards the aft ends of the wing shafts there were two sets of brackets of "boss arms" which held the shafts in place. These were huge objects cast in steel as halves that were bolted together on the ship.
The boss arms are now pretty much done aside from polish, though I anticipate minor adjustments later on when I do the plating around the bossings. These boss arms were actually made many months ago by one of our volunteers, but I ended up having to remake them due to changes in the shape of the bossings and other aspects of the surrounding structure I didn't get to until now. This speaks to the difficulty of making something as complex as this and why, for the most part, it's mainly going to be me doing all this structural work. There are just too many unknowns and curveballs these ships like to throw at you.

Before I could really finish the brackets, I had to start putting some beams in place. I started with the beams over the aft shaft tunnel space, making up a section of the Orlop Deck. This part of the deck was dropped a couple of feet at Watertight Bulkhead O and had a considerable slant towards the aft end due to its need to clear the bossings. Figuring this aspect of the structure out helps to make the rest of the structure in this part of the ship.
Fun fact: It turns out Britannic had to go and be different from Olympic and Titanic in this area. Britannic's wing propellers had a slightly wider spread, so the bossings were also a bit higher up where they met the hull, which then necessitated changes to the Orlop Deck's elevation. It was very annoying to dig through all this.
With the basic beams in place, I also added the brackets that held the beams to the vertical hull frames. Pretty much every beam was connected to the frames this way, so there will be many brackets to make or adjust going forward. And yes, the beams have camber which amounts to 3 inches over 92 feet.


To make the boss arms properly, I also had to figure out the angles of the propeller shafts. Once that was done and I had the other stuff in place, I could then finalize the boss arms and do a couple other things.
As seen in my previous update, I also got a start on the watertight bulkheads, with WTB O being the first one up. So far I only have the plating and will add all the stiffeners later. Making the bulkheads will be a little tedious but not impossible. We have iron plans for every single watertight bulkhead as well as every bunker bulkhead, and these plans show the sizes and layout of all the steel plates and all of the stiffeners, even the thickness of the plates. Making all these bulkheads will be a fairly simple matter of following the plans.
Next I will continue working on this aft part of the ship. My screenshots so far are deceiving; there are actually way more structural elements of various types and sizes here, such as large web frames, more brackets, and frames for the bossings. I used to say that I started with the most difficult part of the ship with the double bottom, but this may be the new most difficult part due to just how much is going on structurally.
Once this area is more or less done (aside from hull and deck plating for now), it will give a good idea of how these shaft tunnels looked on Titanic. It's space not depicted often, at least not accurately. You'd be surprised just how much volume was given over to some shafts.
In the end, this is one of the reasons for building the ship this way. As I always say, the steelwork IS the ship more often than not. When you're standing in the shaft tunnel of the finished ship, every frame, beam, plate, web, angle, stiffener, and bracket is visible. Even from the outside you can see some of the boss arms. There was a time when we considered not bothering to make this part of the ship because we didn't have the plans we do now and it felt too mysterious and complex. Now we're tackling it head-on."

 

[Milos Grkovic]

This update has just been released as it was two days prior available for the members of the T:H&G Patreon.

Another update from Kyle for this month reads as follows:

"Framing the Boss"​

"Not much to say at the moment since I still have a lot to do in this area, but I'm making progress in the more complicated structural elements for the shaft tunnel. There are a lot of web frames and bracing to take into account. I've also made good progress on the boss frames, which are special short sections of framing that bend round the inside of the propeller bossings and attach to the main frames.

While we have lots of great iron plans that show this area, the best of them is a frame-by-frame plan of Britannic which has many differences from Titanic and Olympic. As a result, I've had to reinterpret some parts to fit Titanic.

I'm very much looking forward to working on the more conventional areas more amidships and on upper decks. This area is going far slower due to how much stuff needs to be figured out and the complexity of that stuff. The curves alone are a nightmare."

 

[Milos Grkovic]

Earlier today, Kyle posted another update of his progress. Also, I'll share 4 from the Facebook page, as there are 10 more on T:H&G's Patreon.

So Many Webs​

"Quick Kyle update this time:

I've made more progress on the aft structure, mainly for the boss frames and the web frames located between the two wing propeller brackets/castings. Due to the propeller shafts and the need for extra strength, the steelwork is far more substantial here than in other parts of the ship, with a lot of web frames and other parts.

A lot of the bigger stuff is more or less done, blocked out at least, but there's plenty of tiny stuff to do or adjust. But so I don't get stuck here, next I may head upwards and do more deck beams and brackets, or even forward to plate the next watertight bulkhead and add more Orlop beams."

 

[Michael Shakesby]

I love the team at Honor & Glory and have followed them for many years. Back then demo 1 blow me away with just what details can be put into a recreation. The work now being done by Kyle on the hull is breath taking. I have seen many a CGI model of Titanic over the years, but this is the finest its like being in the yard. I hope at some point when Project 401 & Honor & Glory are done the team look back and realise just what they manged to do because its truly is amazing.

All the best

 

[Milos Grkovic]

This one is another update from Kyle that was posted on the official THG Patreon and it's about 'D-D-D-D-D-D-D-Digitize!' For more context, I'll post the entire update here.

D-D-D-D-D-D-D-Digitize!​

"Hi folks, Kyle here. I was hoping to have more structural progress to show, but for the last week or so I've been involved in an ongoing effort with the team to finally, after all these years, get our research material and references into some semblance of real organization. For my part, I've mainly been scanning a ton of stuff that needed digitizing. I wasn't planning on doing it this soon, but it's become rather urgent for the wider team's needs.

We've gotten plenty of material from difference sources over the years, but we've admittedly often been bad at keeping it organized in a way where things can be found quickly and easily. For example: If we needed all photo references of a particular cabin item, we'd have to crawl through who knows how many weirdly-named folders in our own archives or on a drive to find that stuff, usually in files without actual names beyond IMG434hg53u745h39867. It was very easy to miss things. Upon going through the archives more thoroughly, there's stuff most of us never knew was there. It's been a mess, but a mess that has generally not done us much harm since it's usually just been a couple of us lately doing most of the modeling.

But now that we're really finding our feet with a workflow for making the ship and the things on it, and especially now that we're looking to expand our volunteer team, it's more important than ever to get things in order. It'll be helpful to myself and the rest of the core team as well. This effort consists mainly of trawling through our existing archives and organizing by class, room/type of space, type of object, and object. The idea is that once the archive is done, we'll essentially have a list (backed up by spreadsheets) of every single thing that needs to be made on the ship. Rooms, styles, furnishings, fittings, machinery, systems, and props with whatever's needed to make those things. It'll make it a bit easier for me and others to find things, but more importantly it'll make the task of assigning objects to volunteers far better. It's a necessary step that admittedly should have been taken a while back, but better late than never.



On top of all that, we recently acquired a sizeable cache of reference material (seen above) for our own collection; some 360+ photos of the Olympic Class Liners. There will be plenty of opportunities to use that material from the game itself to videos and other things, but it all needs to be digitized, which has been my task.

Some of the images are pretty interesting and really great to have in high-resolution. Over the course of this entire project, we've always been hunting for this kind of stuff, but only in more recent years have we been able to get it. Sometimes even the smallest resolution bump or change in the source material (book vs. negative print) can make a huge difference. For once example, take a look at the difference between an older copy of a photo we had from a book print (left) vs. a print from our new collection (right):



With all that said, it's really made me think about how far we've come in regard to what we know about Titanic and what's available to us to help digitally rebuild the ship, and how that compares to when we first individually started this crazy journey. So the last few nights between scans, I had been typing up a post about that. It snowballed, as all things do.

For a while now I've been wanting to tell the story of how we've been trying to recreate the ship from the time before THG to the present, complete with never-before-seen and old images of WIPs and old models to illustrate that journey, as well as going into more detail about the challenges of doing all this and the way our picture of the ship and our knowledge have changed over time. I've wanted to do it in video form and may still do in the future, but for now I'll just make it as a post here on Patreon. Maybe a series of posts as it's clear it'll be pretty long, especially once images are added. If I go that route, I may make it Patreon-exclusive for a while, at least until the last segment is up. I already have much of the writing done and will probably finish that while I work on more scans and between other organizing.

Other than that, work on the new archive we're building has been going well. Once these scans are done (they nearly are now) and we've done a bit more on the archive, I will just jump right back into the structural model. I want to get away from the tunnel space for a bit and expand into adding more beams and brackets over more of the decks, along with more bulkhead plating."


I decided to include Kyle's question that's in the quote below

"Comment here on what you might be most interested in hearing more about in terms of our process of making the ship, and what you might like to see. The pre-THG Lost in the Darkness days? Early THG? Demo 3 development? Megademo? Old imagery that's hard to find now, throwbacks? And would you prefer it as shorter (and perhaps more image-filled) and more digestible posts in a series, perhaps every few days?"

 

[Michael H. Standart]

I met these guys at TitaniCon 2018 in Pigeon Forge and I was blown away at just how vivid and realistic the recreation was. Once I put on that oculus, I wasn't *just* seeing an image. I was there, ON the Titanic, in Belfast in 1912, roaming the ship, and getting a better feel for the Titanic as an operational passenger vessel.

I really hope they can complete this project.

 

[Milos Grkovic]

Rebuilding Titanic: Part 1 - Early Titanic Projects​

By Kyle Hudak​

A Quick Note​

Some of us have spent years recreating Titanic, much of that time with Titanic: Honor and Glory. This is the story of how we got here, from my perspective. It will focus primarily on the process of building the ship, research and mistakes made along the way, key events of project and on the paths that led some of us on the team to THG, and a few diversions into related areas. I'll also briefly discuss some of what led up to THG, including Titanic: Lost in the Darkness. I'll try to include a good deal of work-in-progress and otherwise rare or unseen images from the course of the project. I'll be glossing over a ton of stuff, but I hope to at least paint a map of the project from before its inception and into the future. I will post this in parts, with those after the first couple being early access for Patrons.

So What's All This About?​

People have been obsessed with Titanic since the day it sank. Much ink has been spilled about why, so I won't bother with that. Suffice to say, there are a lot of odd folks out there with a strange obsession over an old liner. But there's a subset of Titanorak that's obsessed with on thing in particular: Exploring Titanic. We want to explore every room, try all the knobs, walk all the decks. This despite the fact that, at the end of the day, Titanic was just an ocean liner. A boring one to boot.
Similarly-styled rooms on the Oceanic (left) and Olympic (right).

Titanic was part of a long line of Harland and Wolff ships that tended not to buck the system. Titanic's Lounge was just a copy of ones from previous vessels. Same for the Smoke Room. The Dining Saloon chairs and tiles could be found on other ships that were arguably even fancier. Most of the corridors and cabins had standard, simple white paneling and exposed steel ceilings. And then there was Olympic, the nearly identical sister of Titanic. Titanic doesn't even rank near the top for some ocean liner enthusiasts.
And yet, some of us are completely enamored with this ship. Even before 1997, before 1985 even, before the world of digital modeling, there were those looking to recreate the ship in some way. Library archives which held the original blueprints of the Olympic Class ships were practically plundered by modelers and researchers of all sorts looking to be the ones with the most authentic recreations, to the point that some of those plans today can't even be properly digitized due to their fragility. Others just made do with that they could find, some building giant models. One such person is Father Roberto Pirrone, who spent 5 years as a teenager building a huge cutaway model of Titanic which is now on display aboard the Queen Mary. Decades later, Fr. Pirrone would start building a whole new Titanic model.
www.occatholic.com/master-shipbuilder/ - Father Pirrone with his Normandie model.
So why do we care so much about running around this vessel, and why do some of us obsess over every detail? Why do we debate the colors of fabrics and carpets and woods, even the color white? Why do we do this? Well... who knows. What can be said for sure is that many of us on the THG team grew up with this interest, from the post-wreck-discovery rush of new information to the effect that one 1997 film had on the Titanic world. We grew up playing the one good game that was available, watching the documentaries, building the model kits, and wanting to wander the ship. Maybe even watch it sink. What I want to try to do here is answer one simple question: How did we get here? Maybe the "why" will also become clear.

1996 - CyberFlix Started It​

In the mid-1990s, Knoxville-based game studio CyberFlix began working on the tentatively-titled “Titanic: A Journey Out of Time” with the goal of creating a game like no other. Set on the doomed liner with a sinking that played out in real time, the game would feature a vast swath of Titanic for the player to explore, as well as a gripping story with world-changing stakes and a host of odd (and sometimes creepy) characters.
While perhaps not as obsessed as certain others are about accuracy, CyberFlix wanted a reasonably accurate Titanic. They enlisted the help of William Broyles, Jr., screenwriter for Apollo 13, to dig up research material for the game. Later on, CyberFlix would also bring in Titanic historian Bill Sauder (who would later go on to help with Titanic: Honor and Glory for a time) to assist with accuracy. Photos found online, primarily through the Library of Congress, were a major part of what they had to work with.

Still, the Titanic of what would become Adventure Out of Time was imperfect and incomplete. In one instance, they had copied the design of Olympic’s Turkish Bath, not knowing it greatly differed from Titanic. It was already far too late to change when this was discovered - they had to get the game done sometime, after all. And while there were some photos available, there certainly would have been a lack of material on the lesser-known and photographed parts of the ship. Paired with artistic license, this would result in a ship that was a bit fancier than the real thing. Corridors with velvet wallpaper, a carpeted Scotland Road, and other very odd locations.
A Typical 1st Class corridor in AooT with velvet walls and carpeted floors.
There was also a sense that things were missing. Absent dining saloons, a Lounge you could only access during the sinking, a Library whose sign you could see but which you could never enter. Countless doors with jiggling knobs. Most noticeably, the game was effectively in 2D with pre-rendered environments. This on-rails approach was necessary for computers of the time, but it limited your ability to get a good look at things. As amazing as the game was (I spent many nights at a family friend’s house using their ancient PC to play the game while eating PB&J sandwiches), it left you wanting more as a Titanic explorer.
AooT's representation of an E Deck staircase.
But in 1996, just before Cameron’s Titanic swept the world, it was pretty much the best Titanic experience you could get, one that’s still great today, and one which would inspire many more projects as computers got more powerful and the tools to create things virtually became more widely available.

2003 - “The Complete Titanic Walkthrough Project”​

There's probably no shortage of digital Titanic projects that have been attempted since Adventure Out of Time. Some may have been just exterior models, or limited interiors. Some may have been for specific purposes besides exploration, or personal projects not meant for public consumption. Other projects were more ambitious, with goals along the lines of creating the entire ship. There may be countless old projects that most of us will never know about, either because they went unseen, never progressed far, or were lost to the electronic ether where even Wayback Machine cannot reach. Of these projects, an early one I happened across had popped up (as many of these projects do) on Encyclopedia Titanica.
Early images from Krinn's project, including a mock-up of an intended information display system.

On March 15th, 2003, Encyclopedia Titanica forum user Kevin Krinn posted a thread about their new work-on-progress Half-Life mod, a Titanic walkthrough project with a stated goal to “map out every room so you can explore the whole ship.” It featured only a few images, but Krinn would continue to post updates over the next months. After a year-long hiatus (apparently due to taking up a career as a truck driver), Krinn briefly returned at the end of 2004 to continue work on the project, which was apparently now being developed as a mod for the new Half-Life 2.

After another year-long absence, Krinn returned again in early 2006 to state that they had restarted the project from scratch, taking advantage of the Source Engine’s various graphical features like lighting and reflections, though a sinking was off the table due to concerns about how the engine would handle that. However, the project seems to have never been finished (Krinn’s last post was in May 2006), though a website still exists showcasing a few images from the project.

2005 - Titanic 3D​

Titanic 3D's Grand Staircase, complete with a theater.

In 2005, an online 3D chat platform called ActiveWorlds Europe (a contender for what one may call the early “metaverse”) added a virtual Titanic to their lineup of worlds. It consisted of a pretty basic exterior model with low-resolution textures, a simple (and very inaccurate) Grand Staircase, and a whole ballroom complete with a movie theater. The virtual ship also had a few other spaces that, of course, had no resemblance at all to the real thing, mainly serving as either places to walk around or as a shop and a museum. Despite this, it was still one of the first experiences available for free online that people like me would end up using.

ActiveWorlds Europe would go on to launch a new version of Titanic 3D in 2012 with some heavy involvement from yours truly, which I'll talk about a little more in a later post.

Early 2006 - Titanic-Story​

https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/discus/messages/5919/132777.html?1220280936

In January 2006, Daniel Mechling revealed Titanic-Story, a project that promised to let you explore the ship along with a story whose premise wasn’t obvious. Mechling stated that they were working on modeling Titanic’s interiors while someone else was making the exterior.
The project seemed to have crawled along for some time, with some demo releases and a handful of trailers and soundtrack videos going up over the years.

A memorable 2007 trailer promised "the most detailed Titanic in 3D ever made." It's unclear to what extent Mechling was looking to recreate the ship, but it was clearly being done with a certain attention to detail, albeit with a few liberties in lesser-documented locations.
https://www.tumblr.com/titanic-story-blog
The project was eventually put online as a point-and-click Flash game allowing you to “walk” around a limited part of the ship, though the version that’s online seems like it’s missing some content.

Mid 2006 - Ship Simulator​

In August 2006, Dutch developer VSTEP released Ship Simulator. The game was by no means a Titanic one, featuring a number of different vessels, but Titanic was included. The model was a moderately-detailed exterior with an extremely barren (and textureless) 2nd Class Staircase allowing access to the aft decks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8PDtlSwTAs
There was a basic Bridge with the usual instruments, but you couldn’t really sink it and there just wasn’t much to do or see once you did a few rounds on-deck. Still, it was probably the best playable model of the ship you were going to get in full 3D for the time. The 2008 sequel also featured the same model with no real improvements aside from a new deck texture.

Late 2006 - The Mafia Titanic Mod​

On September 11th, 2006, another ambitious Titanic project would begin: Robin Bongaarts’ Mafia Titanic Mod, a mod for the 2002 game Mafia. Bongaarts had been pining for an explorable Titanic for some time. Not satisfied with what had been on offer so far, he decided to start building something himself with the goal of building the entire ship.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcpaMXCUxsA
The Mod underwent a lot of improvements in quality as it progressed over the years, with more people joining the effort later on. Even I would end up becoming involved for a few years. The models always seemed to be changing, with many different iterations of exterior and interior models. There were several versions of the Grand Staircase (including one made by me), and gradual updates to assets as research and skills improved. In the Mod's later years this would happen less, with spaces finally being finished to a satisfactory level.
https://www.moddb.com/mods/mafia-titanic-mod/images
As far as early Titanic projects go, the Mafia Mod is probably the most impressive and has gotten the farthest. It’s in 3D, it has NPCs (who all start to fight each other with chairs across the ship if you engage a certain Easter egg), and it features a whole bunch of rooms across the ship. There’s even a bit of a story there. For being based in a game from 2002, it also has a pretty decent level of detail.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgDdQ4oc8Pw

The Mafia Titanic Mod saw its first release in 2021, 15 years after development began, and can be downloaded and played now, so long as you have a copy of Mafia (the Steam version will do just fine). Bongaarts and the team really managed to pull off something special with this project. And the best part is that now, over 2 years after the first release and 17 years since it began, it’s still being worked on with the hope that more of the ship and additional features can be added in the coming years.

But by the time people were crashing Titanic into things in Ship Simulator and Robin Bongaarts was starting work on his mod, someone else with a Titanic hankering was just getting started on something that would help lead to where we are today…

End of Part 1.

 

[Milos Grkovic]

Rebuilding Titanic: Part 2 - Two Beginnings​

By Kyle Hudak​

Sketching Decks​

One of Matt's early models from 2007-2008. You're looking at, essentially, the beginnings of Titanic: Honor and Glory.

From the age of 6, Matt DeWinkeleer has been obsessed with Titanic. Originally manifesting as forcing friends and family to attend Titanic attractions, locations, and exhibitions with him, his obsession turned to model kits. Titanic model kits have never been particularly detailed (if you wanted detail and accuracy, you needed scratch-built modifications and expensive photo-etch), and there’s also the little problem of size and the fact that they didn’t show you what was inside the ship. There had to be a better option.
After high school, Matt would go on to earn degrees in film and business, but it was early on in all of that when he decided to start experimenting with 3D modeling. And so, in 2006, Matt installed Google SketchUp with the goal of digitally recreating Titanic as a walkable model. The entire ship, top to bottom, bow to stern.

F Deck of Matt's original deck layout models.


B Deck aft, with the Restaurant Galley and crude representations of the Aft Grand Staircase and Restaurant.


D Deck with the 1st and 2nd Class Pantry and the Saloon.

This was not initially as gargantuan an effort as Titanic: Honor and Glory, with the models being extremely simple. This would be no easy task as he was fairly new to this and reference material was pretty low in supply for the average Titanorak on the internet. It was still going to be two more years before Titanic: The Ship Magnificent would be published. About the best Matt had to work with were some G/A plans, a few books, low-resolution photos found online, and a copy of James Cameron’s Titanic Explorer.

An early model of the Grand Staircase, B Deck. The wall panel textures were merely screenshots from Titanic Explorer.


B Deck amidships staterooms. The bones of the different styles/color schemes are there, but it's still a far cry from anything resembling detail.


Under the Forecastle Deck. All of the walls in these early models were one-sided faces and would not have rendered properly in game engines.

Matt’s earliest models through 2007 were extremely simple deck layouts with crude walls and doors, textured in part with screenshots from James Cameron’s Titanic Explorer. There was very little in the way of real detail at this point. The goal was less "world's most detailed model" and more a way to visualize General Arrangement plans and the deck layouts. Almost nothing had actual depth, and there were innumerable errors.

C Deck aft with the 2nd Class Library and staircases.


Under the Poop Deck.


Aft E Deck around the Engine Rooms. Compare to this area in Demo 401 today.

Work on these deck models continued well into 2008 with almost every deck represented in this simple way. Matt also started making some exterior models as his skills grew, with a focus on various individual objects such as windows and cranes.

An early model of the A Deck Promenade with Lounge windows.


An early model of the refrigerated food stores and aft 3rd Class.


One of Matt's earliest tries at an exterior model. No sheer, naturally.

Needs More Detail​

By the end of 2008, Matt had transitioned to making more detailed interior models. Some of the earliest included cabins on A Deck and cargo holds, though both were still extremely crude by today’s standards. By this time Matt would have had some more references along with a copy of Titanic: The Ship Magnificent, so that also allowed him to start adding more detail.

Areas such as the Turkish Bath almost demanded more detail.

As Matt started to up-detail his models, the walls gained depth and became double-sided. But in this early period, things like wall paneling were still lacking, even after that also started getting upgraded.

Some of the earliest attempts at cabin furniture.

An early attempt at a cargo hold. Without detailed iron plans (which would not become available to Matt/us for over 10 years yet), areas like this can be extremely difficult to make properly, especially if you're still new to modeling and have yet to learn a lot about the ship's structure.

Matt had also made somewhat more detailed versions of the Grand Staircase and other areas by early 2009. Since this was not being done for any particular project and nothing was going into a game engine, there wasn't a whole lot to do with the models, and so Matt uploaded them to the SketchUp Warehouse where anybody could download them.

Playing with Glue​

Like Matt, I had been mysteriously obsessed with Titanic from an early age. I think it started when I was living in Arizona and glimpsed bits of marketing for Cameron’s film. It would be a couple of years before I’d actually see it, but that big pointy bow on cardboard cutouts and posters stood out to me. Over time I would grow more curious about Titanic, checking out books from libraries and drawing or painting pictures of the ship, usually instead of doing school work. Occasionally I would hijack time on school computers to make digital Titanic drawings. Imagine my happiness when I finally got my own PC!

My attempts at being Ken Marschall 2.0 around the age of 10-11. Nobody look! I certainly didn't look at any source material when I painted them at my grandma's house after excitedly buying canvases and paint from a local Ben Franklin.

My later attempts at art were a bit more successful, though I never did finish the Britannic painting.

By the 2000s, I had begun several attempts to scratch-build large scale models of Titanic, including a bow wreck model complete with a gutted Grand Staircase. I used paper, cardboard, foam board, balsa wood, and a lot of hot glue. There was a huge model made of poster-board and construction paper. There was an attempt at a hull made of balsa wood. There was another attempt made from paper. At a later point I even tried to build a foam-board model of the Queen Mary 2. Towards the end of 2008, I had built my last model kit (as of 2024).

This 1/350 scale kit in 2008/2009 was my last attempt at building a scale model, at least until I get around to building one of my Trumpeter kits in the next decade or so...

Of all of those models, I never fully finished any of them. I just never had the space or everything that was needed. To this day I have an unfinished 10-foot foam-board Titanic hull in my storage room, a giant hulk of nonsense I’ll never finish and which I'm currently debating whether to scrap or give to someone else. Physical models had simply proven too expensive, too difficult, often too big or too small, or too tedious to make. I could only do so much with such models. Even 2D art started getting boring.

The 10-foot foam-board hull, never finished, that's now languishing atop a shelf in my back room.

Something Something Right Ahead​

It was in June of 2008 when, fresh out of high school with nothing to do, I decided to tinker with 3D modeling. I settled on Autodesk Maya as its interface seemed much easier for me to use, though it would take a long time to learn even basic functions, let alone how to make a good model. My earliest models were not Titanic. Instead they were random shapes and simple objects that I rendered with different materials. It wasn’t until a bit later that I attempted slightly more complex objects and other models with textures made from household objects that I had taken photos of.

My first 3D models and renderings, if you don't count a couple of even earlier, even lower-effort attempts in G-Max around the mid-2000s.

After my initial attempts at digital modeling, I gave up for a few months. But something would happen in early 2009 that caused me to try again. I wanted some new way to see Titanic that wasn’t the same old models or the same old games and, much like Matt a couple of years before me, I felt I had to do it myself. For both of us (and consequently others), this would prove to be a life-altering decision.
End of Part 2...

 

[Milos Grkovic]

Just as I logged off from the forum, a Patreon update from Kyle popped up.

Small Update - February 2024​

"Hi all, Kyle here

Not much to update on since my last non-story post, as we're still working on the internal team reference archive. After spending some time gathering up material and dividing it into folders for objects, we've taken some of that and started plugging it into another application which we'll use for actually working with other modelers/volunteers.

And a quick note to be clear: This archive is NOT for public release, this is purely for THG's internal team use. We've gotten research material from many sources over the years. Some are very secretive about their stuff, some may have been under NDA, some they just spent a lot of money on, others would prefer not to give things away, and a lot of stuff is just outright under some form of copyright. People may disagree with this - it's been a longstanding point of debate in the Titanic community - but we have to respect collectors' wishes and err on the side of caution.

We actually tried something similar back in 2021, albeit without the organization on the research side. We did also try some limited form of an organized archive for when we had worked with Ferris. It was those two experiences that ultimately led to the decision to try this kind of organization again, but for the whole ship and using a different application that's a bit easier to use for more of the team.

Once it's all set up, it should be trivial to get things assigned to people so they can work on those objects, with everything they need reference-wise, and then run through the process from modeling and polish to final checks and imports.

It's probably shocking this wasn't set up sooner, but there wasn't much call before. For most of THG's time, it was pretty much only ever the few of us making stuff, so there wasn't much need for a central organized archive. 2021 and later saw only limited efforts to do something like this, a lot of trial and error. With the prospect of more people being brought on in the future, this organization is sorely needed, especially considering the size of the ship and how much is on it.

Meanwhile, I've finally finished scanning our new photo collection. I'm now well into processing the scans into finished images. It'll probably be a few days or so yet before that's done (there are a bunch I'll need to digitally stitch together), and then I'll probably do a bit more work on the archive before jumping back to the structural model.

I'll also continue to post more parts for the THG story. These first few parts are leading up to Lost in the Darkness, and it'll be a good few parts before we reach THG proper. The later the parts get, the more I'll have to decide what to include image-wise. I know there might be a lot of fun stuff for what will probably be an entire post just for Demo 3 development. I will probably post the next part pretty soon!

Finally, there have been many questions about the Demo 401 update. Of course, it's been a long, long time since that was announced. There are a lot of reasons it's taken so long, among them being that there's been a ton of work to optimize and polish it - not just a few bug fixes. More recently, Derek's PC stopped working (apparently a faulty CPU) and then his brand new monitor decided to also break itself. Honestly just the worst luck with technology. But that's all been fixed now and work is again continuing, including some QA testing.

I cannot say when this update will be out - that's up to Derek to announce when he's ready to. I would caution against any speculation. I'm sure Derek is very eager to get it done so he can really devote himself to Project 401. (As a reminder, work on THG is purely modeling for the time being, so our engine team will be free for a good while to work on Project 401.)

I suppose the spirit of some of this can be summed up by one GIF:


"