18th Century Man-of-War

#101

Hey guys,

Still couldn’t let this go. This has been a really fun modeling challenge, and I’ve been playing around with different techniques to get the frames modeled as quickly as possible. I think arraying all the parts in a flat plane and using a lattice to deform seems to be the way to go. I’ve got a lot of clean up work to do, but I think this should work. I’ve also found a way to cut the gun ports out, add the final paint job to the outside, and use booleans to show cutouts. I can also hide individual planks to show the insides.

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Any comments, thoughts, criticisms, ideas, or critiques are always much appreciated.

Thanks for having a look,
AJ

#102

WOW Amazing job… congratulations my friend :thumbsup:

#103

amazing details i love it

#104

@Alberto: Thank you sir!:slight_smile:

@Simy: Much appreciated! :stuck_out_tongue:

Well I think I’ve had my fun with the frames for now, and am going to get back to the final composition. I thought the frames would be pretty quick, but the more I studied the plans and modeled the parts out, the more I realized that they would take ages. At first glance, it looks like its just a bunch of similar planks that have been laid out in the shape of the boat, but most of them have different joints, tapers, bolts, and curvature. I also don’t have very accurate reference material, so its like trying to solve a very difficult puzzle with no correct solution. Maybe one day Ill get back into it, but I think I’ll put it to rest for now. I was more intrested in playing around with different modeling techniques than I was actually modeling the frames anyways. :wink:

Anyways, on to the final composition. I found a few paintings I really like, and am going to heavily reference them. I really need to get this locked down before I finish the sails, because I only plan to rig and simulate the ones you can see. There are a few more that I could add here (outlined in orange) but I think this seems to work as a starting point. I don’t think the additional sails would add much to the image, but if anyone has any thoughts on this, I’m all ears.

I could really use some feedback here, so any thoughts are as always much appreciated.


-AJ

#105

I’m with you add additional sails of a ship, I think gives it more beautiful to work :thumbsup:

#106

Why not show some of the sails as they are in process of being unfurled? That is, the untidy, seemingly wild look of some of the sails, flapping loose, instead of the perfect, all-sails-set look… Maybe as she is unfurling a few of the outer stuns’ls? Or tricing up the Royals or T’gan’s’ls…

#107

And here is another crazy beautiful project to follow. The ref links are broken man. Really eager to see more!

#108

@Simy: Thanks again man! Your missile launcher is really coming along. Can’t wait to see how it turns out!

@FitArtistSF: Thanks for the feedback! I think I agree. The stun sails on the side were meant to low wind, and were not very well attached. I’ve found a few nice paintings that show a gust of wind, with the stun sails getting tossed around. I really like that look, and I think ill try to base the sail pose from it. I can also maybe show one or two being taken down.

@Luis: Thanks man! Congrats on getting your Zonda on the front page! Are there any links on the thread that are broken? I checked, but I didn’t see any. I think you and I are kind of in the same place with our renders. I’m trying to find a nice pose and angle that’s both practical and realistic, but also aesthetically pleasing and artistic. I’ve really enjoyed following your thread and am looking forward to your new one!

Well I haven’t made much progress over the last month to be honest. Mostly been gathering reference materials. I came across this, which might help with the frames in the future.
http://www.dlumberyard.com/Plans/alfred.pdf
Things are still very wide open with the composition and colors, and I’m very open minded with any input you might have with this. I’m thinking I want it to look slightly stylized, with the sails stressed a little beyond what they would encounter in the real world for dramatic effect. I’m more drawn to the rim lit sails, as I think it makes them look rounder. Lighting it from the front shows more of the boat, but I think at the expense of the overall composition. I can maybe post several renders of the light from different angles if anyone’s interested.
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Thanks again for having a look,
AJ

#109

AJ1 if you want to integrate your boat on a mattpainting without the 1-2 pixels outlines

In photoshop, create a folder with a mask base on your alpha.

then You duplicate you beauty pass (the ship) 9 times, you select all the 10 beauty pass and merge them all in one.

then a other 9 times duplicate then merge.

Put that layer (100x the beauty pass) in the folder. It’s magic.

#110

I would put it on a bottle!

#111

Wow, stunning, it’s a pleasure to see and follow this!

#112

Hey, AJ1… Can you post a hi-rez version of the PDF of the Alfred??? I would love to have the plans so I could start a version myself… Or can you tell us where you got the plans, what site?

#113

Well the PDF is pretty good quality, if you want blueprints in high resolution you need the real sheets not a pdf

#114

@Samuel: Thanks man! Ill give that a go next time I do a test comp. I think lots of the issues from that last one were from the depth pass. I used Maya hardware, so none of the geometry got smoothed, and thus everything came out a little too big and clunky.

@Luis: Lol! I really loved that shot from the 4th Pirates of the Caribbean film. Maybe… :stuck_out_tongue:

@Mario: Thanks man!

@FitArtistSF:

You can get the first 60 pages of this book for free:
http://books.google.com/books?id=_I8AqFfhvn0C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=false
This guy is working on a really nice model of Alfred:
http://modelshipworld.com/index.php?/topic/459-hms-alfred-by-gary-b-74-gun-ship-built-in-1778-garyshipwright/
The plans came from here, and are a preview version of the prints you buy. They were hand drawn, and based on the original plants from the mid 1700’s. The prints cost around $400.
http://www.dlumberyard.com/shipkits.html
If your thinking about taking a crack at it, I’ve got around a gig of ref material I’m more than happy to share. :stuck_out_tongue:

Well here is what I spend my entire Wednesday evening doing. :blush: I took those plans, broke them up, and reassembled in Maya. They were distorted, but it wasn’t too hard to move everything back into place. My previous frame renders were just test, but If I ever want to model them for real, I would use these. Overall, this is only a small fraction of the frames, but it at least shows the major ones.
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Thanks again for having a look,
AJ

#115

How goes the battle AJ1? Any progress on this beast? Named her yet?

Cheers!

#116

Hey man,

  Haha, well, I honestly haven't made much progress over the past few months. :blush: I've been playing around with the frames for a few hours here and there. I've still been experimenting with different techniques for modeling them out. Right now, I've got a hierarchy of deformers to bend all the planks into shape. I can model everything out in a flat array, and use the sculpt geometry tool to shape everything into the hull. I'm kind of feeling the potential for some fancy peel away renders in the future, so I'm trying to modeling each plank as its own object.  Some of the joints between the planks are kind of weird and complex, and its takes some time to get the edge flow worked out so they deform smoothly. 
  
  But this whole project has been a complete mess. Its been mostly a bunch of scattered modeling experiments with the ropes, sails, carvings, and planks. I've easily got less than a 1/10th of the whole thing finished up at this point. Maybe in the next few years ill get things wrapped up. ;)

I’m also still not sure about the name. I’m kind of feeling Thunderer, but if you’ve got any ideas, feel free to chime in. :slight_smile:

  [img]http://i1339.photobucket.com/albums/o711/austinjohnson3d/boats_zpsc131b247.jpg[/img]
  [img]http://i1339.photobucket.com/albums/o711/austinjohnson3d/boats2_zpscddc7158.jpg[/img]
  
  
  
  Thanks for having a look,
  AJ
#117

Hey AJ, glad u’re back into this, i really hope u’ll find the time/motivation to finish the ship m8. That’s typical of complex project, with the time people usually loose interest in what they’re doing, but i just think this deserves to be finished. The work u did so far is great, so keep on please.
About technical aspects, i’m into NURBS only, so for sure i’d model the whole hull all together in one piece only, then i’d cut each frame.
About the name…i’d suggest ‘‘Winds In Progress’’…hehe

#118

This is truly one of the most amazing 3d models I’ve ever seen!
The amount of detail and dedication is just nuts.
Interesting how you deform the straight wooden wall into the hull’s shape. I can think of how do do it in max but it’s very wacky for sure. You should definitely make a small youtube vid showing this!

Cheers
Andre

#119

This model still inspires me. I think you’re well beyond the 1/10th mark as far as the model goes. I like the idea of the deformers to get the planks into place.

Names, I think HMS Centurion because it’s a warship, but the ‘cent’ part reminds me that this model looks like it’d take a hundred years to build!

I do love it though man. Forge on. Forge on until done. There is too much water under that keel to lose interest now!

#120

@Mario: Thanks for the kind words! Yea, I’ve defiantly gone a few weeks here and there without even touching the model. NURBS would really be the best way to go about this, but I had some weird issues trying to get the arrays of NURBs planks to deform smoothly over the NURBS deformer.
Here is a guy who’s using a CAD program to model a similar ship, and its nuts how sharp things look.

http://modelshipworld.com/index.php?/topic/1124-hms-pandora-1779-in-3d/page-3
(I think you might need to setup an account to see the images.)

@Andre: Thanks again for having a look Andre! As I’ve said many times before, your work has been a huge inspiration to get me to add more detail to my own work, so I greatly appropriate you continuing to take time to comment.

My computer is pretty slow, so I usually go between 1 and 0 on the deformer, and do the whole thing in parts. I’ve got it split into 12 segments, and the whole thing takes around 20 minutes to deform all the frames. The green selected mesh on the screen grabs in the base pose, and the white mesh is the frame deformer. I’ve got a blend shape setup between the two. I’ve been using a wrap deformer to bind the frames to the deformer. I’ve also got a lattice setup on each pair of frames below the wrap deformer, and I hope to use that to get rid of the shearing from the wrap deformer. I think I can also use the lattice to clean up any wobblyness.

@Pixanaut: Thanks man! Lol, at this rate, this really will take around 100 years to finish. I think I started this around 2008. Its nearly 2014 now, and I’m only a tiny fraction of the way done.

Sorry about taking over a month to reply. I really don’t like posting and bumping the thread without new images.

I’ve been trying to be more disciplined about my modeling, so I’ve been trying to stick with a top down approach. I’ve keel (sort of like what a spine is to a book) laid out, and have been working my way up from there. Things are still crazy wobbly. My hope is that once I get the mesh for the deformer worked out, I can use the sculpt geometry tool to really smooth things out. Right now, I’m still adding loops and changing things up, so the shape is always shifting a little.

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-AJ