18th Century Man-of-War

#81

I could use some feedback on the material. I’ve got two Mia shaders, one for the copper, and one for the wood. They’re mixed together, and the mask splits them apart on the mesh. I plugged the result of the color mix into the surface shader of the SG, but I don’t think this is the best way to go about this. I cant really get away with just cutting the mesh in half, as it messes up the shape of the hull, so I think I have to use some kind of mask.

      Things are pretty sloppy, and I've got a lot of evening up to do. (story of this model so far).
      
      click for fullsize
      
      
      [[img]http://media.use.com/images/s_1/dd537a24a1abebe0ee26.jpg[/img]](http://www.use.com/showoriginal.pl?set=dd537a24a1abebe0ee26&p=1)
      
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Hi Aj

This is another great thread here and a good learning curve for me as i am a Maya user.:smiley: the Details in model is stunning.

Just have a question as i didn’t use this mask technique above and i have seen many artist use masks in texturing but it just go above my head.could you explain this a bit how you are using this in texturing.

Thanks
Dushyant

#82

Re-edited post, read second one, more info added…

#83

Beautiful modelling, just beautiful… You might want to show this model, with all your renders over at: www.Military-Meshes.com … in the “Shipyard and Drydock” forum… I guarantee you, you will knock 'em dead with this model! One of the Admin/Moderators, has built insanely detailed ship models of the 64 gun, 2 decker, HMS Agamemnon, and the 74 gun, HMS Captain, as well as a few others. He is a naval history buff, and his models are as detailed as your own…

Even though you said you had a pile of books for reference, I picked up this book myself, for help on my USS Constitution 3D model I was building a few years ago (I still haven’t finished it): “HMS Victory, Her Construction, Career, and Restoration”, by Alan McGowan, Naval Institute Press, Jan. 2000… you can find it on Amazon.com… the first part of the book deals with her history. The second part, her building, and her restoration in the 1990s, with photos and isometric drawings that explode the objects into numerous parts: masts, yardarms, cannon, deadeyes, blocks, decks, etc. The drawings are EXTREMELY detailed… most vessels of a type, be they schooners, brigs, sloops of war, frigates, or Line of Battle ships, had very similar features when they were built. Masts, guns, rope, fittings, were pretty much universal in design, no matter what navy the ships served in… so, a book like the one I mention, could fill in details that might be sketchy for you and your model… it helped for me even on the Constitution model I was starting to build myself…

Anyway, check out the website, I mentioned, it might be a better place to show off your work, as well as get more reference material, etc…

#84

@Dimitris: Thanks man! :slight_smile:

@Chris: Thanks for being honest man, I really appreciate it. :) Things are getting sloppy on this model, and I really need to clean things up. :blush: I've put expansion on hold for now, and have been focused on cleaning things up for the past few weeks. 

 I don't think I've gone about the UV's in the most brilliant way, but I think I'm slowly digging my self out of the hole. The UV's are smoothed, and I'm using a variety of techniques to even things out, like creased edges, separating the UV's, and lining them up by hand.  Triangulating some of a quads would fix that polygon, but it would distort the one next to it. I did add some edge loops around the rear chase gun ports and creased them, and that really cleaned things up. Thanks for your continued feedback!

@Dushyant: Thank you sir! The mask is just a ramp on linear, and its got its own set of UV's. The shaders are mixed with a mib_color_mix node, with the result output from the mia shader in the 0 and 1 slot. The out blue color of the ramp is plugged into the 1 weight slot. Then, the out color from the mix node goes into the surface shader of the shading group. I really don't think this is ideal, so if anyone has any better ideas, I would really appreciate some thoughts on this. 

@FitArtistSF: Thanks man! Ill make an account on that site for sure! The books I've been using are:

Anatomy of a Ship: 74 gun ship Bellona - Really useful on this one, details fittings and sails. 
Anatomy of a Ship: 100 gun ship Victory - Hasn't helped much, not a lot on the rigging. Drawings are really detailed, but small. 
Rigging Period Ship Models - Best reference on the rigging I've found. 
The Masting and Rigging of English Ships of War - Hasn't helped much, bought it back in 08. 

Where you building a 3D or a real model of the Constitution? I've seen a few people who have modelled it in the state its in today, but I haven't seen a 1812 spec 3D model. The carvings and trim where much sharper, and the hull had more curve to it. It would be pretty neat if you could pull it off. ;)



I'm kind of mulling putting a hold on the rear rigging for now, and just getting the front done for a sea hero shot. This is the painting that caught my eye the most, and I might base the composition of the shot off this. What do you guys think of this painting?

[img]http://s7.postimage.org/ov640fz6j/p_tall_ships064sss.jpg[/img]

Not a huge update here, but I've got some of the UV's cleaned up. This is still a bit of a mess, and If anyone could offer some tips or additional feedback on this, I would greatly appreciate it. 

[[img]http://media.use.com/images/s_1/552e6890ee24fd60aa8f.jpg[/img]](http://www.use.com/showoriginal.pl?set=552e6890ee24fd60aa8f&p=1)

Thanks again for having a look,
AJ
#85

Hi Aj,
Thanks for Explanation…:slight_smile:
and don’t call me sir…:stuck_out_tongue: I donn think i am sir here where there are so so many Artists doing some Epic work.

another ques:
whats the uv resolution for textures that you are going to use?
and what you are planing for your lighting?

Looking forward for bit to bit progress…:smiley:

#86

Hey Dushyan,

Haha, no problem. :stuck_out_tongue:

For the textures, I’ve got all kinds of things going on. The base diffuse texture is around 5X3K, and isn’t tiled. The dirt is the same resolution, but gets tiled. The bump is around 3K, and is tiled.

The ropes have a small texture I got from http://www.filterforge.com/filters/9129.html

Here are some of the textures, excluding the rope, that I’ve made so far.
click for fullsize

-AJ

#87

Hi AJ,

glad you took it the right way. :slight_smile:

1st up, i can see that creases will work, but there is an issue with them, ie subd’s get a hard edge, so always (which you probably do) check them, but i’m glad to hear your working your way out of the hole.

Yes while trangulating an individual face can cause problems, if you know how and where the ones (ie plural) are pulling it can be a life saver, but it depends on the triangulation method.

In fact you mentioned xsi, that to me is probably one of the best modeling progs out there, as it has many tools to handle this situation well. Generally i never see a bad model made with it, probably because it “forces” you to do it right, which irks some. Shame it’s not more popular.

Anyway, wanted to offer help if the hull gets to hard, and the creases etc dont work out, just pm.

found this for you…http://naldzgraphics.net/textures/high-quality-rope-texture/

#88

@Chris - Thanks man! Sorry for not getting back to you sooner. Thanks again for your continued support. Ill be adding a few of those rope images to my growing collection of texture references.

Hey everyone!

Sorry I haven’t updated in a while. To be honest, I really haven’t gotten much done with the model over the past few months. I’ve mostly been playing around with the 2 front staysails and the jib. Their mostly rigged up, and the whole thing is driven by a Ncloth simulation. I’ve also redone the rope rig so it behaves more realistic.

Here is a side shot showing the front two staysails and the jib inflated. I ran the simulation in another scene file, and then exported the deformed mesh into the main scene. I then used shape deformers to apply the pose to the main mesh of the sail. All of the ropes and various fittings are attached to the sail via a point on poly constraint. The edge rope was made by selecting the edges, and converting them to a curve. I extruded a circle along the curve, and it seems to stay with the edge of the sail nicely.
Click for fullsize

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Here’s what the jib sail rig looks like, both inflated and flat. Still a bit of cleaning up to do, and the sail pose looks a bit wavy, but I think the overall function is in the ballpark.
Click for fullsize

This is my new rope rig. Any comments or crits on this would be grealy appreciated. This thing will get cloned a lot, so it needs to be right. I wrote a simple expression to control the angle of the block based on the ratio of the lengths between the block and the end points. This seems to keep it pointed in the right direction even when the ends are very far apart. I was having some problems when using the base aim constraint.
Click for fullsize

Here are a few gratuitous screen grabs of the fore ropes with the new rig attached.
Click for fullsize

I also need to get the named worked out. Does anyone have any recommendations? From my research, it could be anything from this list.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ships_of_the_line_of_the_Royal_Navy#List_of_ships-of-the-line_of_the_Royal_Navy_.281755.E2.80.931785.29
A few of my favourites:
Colossus
Thunderer
Vanguard
Invincible
Illustrious
Arrogant

Thanks again for having a look,
AJ

#89

Two words: so sick!

#90

The wireframe renders look great - what’s the plug-in you used?

#91

@Steve: Thanks man!

@Harj: Thanks! I used the contour plugin from Ticket01. The guy seems to have changed is pricing and site since I got it, but it should be the same plugin. http://ticket01.com/

Well I don’t like posting without images, so here is a bad illustration showing the sail plan. Maybe this will shed some light on why there are so many hovering ropes, and give an overall impression of scale.

Thanks again for having a look,
AJ

#92

Hey guys,

I spent a few hours putting together a concept as to what the frames might look like, and how long it would take to model. I guess you could call it a feasibility study. It would definitely be possible to model all the frames, but It would take a while. :wink:

I’ve also played around a bit with the composition for the beauty shot. I need to get this blocked out so I know what sails I need to model. I’m thinking Ill just rig and pose only the ones that need to be done for the purposes of the still image for the time being.

Any comments or crits on this is always greatly appreciated.

Click for fullsize

Click for fullsize

Thanks,
AJ

#93

This has been breathtaking…excellent job :bounce:

#94

Hi,
just wanted to say this looks great. Only by looking at the wireframes makes me want to start a project.
Hope you make some more beauty renders.
Edit: more than 1

#95

@EBOLI: Thank you very much sir!

@Oliver: Thanks man! Hopefully I can get that sailing shot done soon. :wink:

Well I chewed away at the frames for another few hours, but I think Ill need to put them to rest and get back to the rigging. I was inspired by this thread I came across:
http://modelshipworld.com/index.php?/topic/1124-hms-pandora-1779-in-3d/page-2

I gave it a shot, but I think I’m using the wrong tool. :shrug:That guy is a Solidworks wizard, and it looks like he’s using some techniques that I just cant match in Maya. My frames come out far more wobbly and take longer to make. Although the wobbliness does make it look realistic.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/35/Hermione_Reconstruction_4.JPG
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/Hermione2006_2.JPG

Click for fullsize

Thanks again for having a look,
AJ

#96

Your thread is so inspiring… your work here is AMAZING!

I’m folowing this and can’t w8 for you to make another WIP!

Cheers from Croatia!

#97

Personally I would’ve named her HMS Complicated! :slight_smile:

#98

This is just amazing.
A real feast for the eye. Looking forward to the end shots and great to see the wip process here.

#99

I love your attention to every detail, AJ.

Stunning work!

#100

@Goran: Thank you sir! :bowdown: Cheers from America!

@Matt: Lol! I’m leaning towards Thunderer right now I think. The figure head will be Zeus, and I think I’ll put a few thunderbolts in his hand. But yea, my rig is a mess. I haven’t put any other ropes in yet because I want to make sure all is well and it wont break. I think the scene size is causing some issues with the constraints, and I have to squib the time slider to get everything to snap into shape when I open the scene. Once I get the front mast done, its just a matter of cloning the whole thing, and moving it back to fit the next mast. The patterns for each sail are almost the same.

@Chris: Thanks man! Congrats on winning the HMC! You model was fantastic!

@Daniel: Much appreciated! I don’t think I’ve even got half the possible details though. Check this out. http://modelshipworld.com/index.php…79-in-3d/page-2. :wink:

Well I couldn’t just let this go, so I spent a few more hours playing around with the frames. I think I’ve got a decent technique of working with the thousands of planks easily. I made a low poly lattice, and then key framed the verts in a flat pose, and then conformed to the hull. I can array a bunch of frames or planks, and then wrap deform them to the lattice. It seems to work well as I can adjust the planks when their in perfect alignment, and then just squib the slider to see how they would wrap around the hull. Its kind of a tough challenge as all the planks are really similar, but all slightly different. I’m trying to keep things as flexible as possible, so If I suddenly dig up some new reference material, I can tweak the model quickly.

click for fullsize

Thanks again for having a look,
AJ