Boats and water.... AGAIN

[Cujo31]

Alright… back at it again…

I have decided to revisit a project I did back on 1997… back then I didn’t have the skills and Blender still needed more to make the project go… but things now are better and I have decided to give it a go again…

Project Overview

I am working on recreating the ill-fated ore carrier Edmund Fitzgerald. Working with copies of her actual blueprints, I am trying to reproduce as faithfuly as possible, as she would have looked from 1958 until late 1969.

Working from the prints, I started out modelling the mid-hull of the ship. Here you can see a cross-section of the cargo holds and ballast tanks along with the cargo hatches on the top deck. She had 21 of these cargo hatches and each hatch had 58 individual hatch clamps.

I am using a cartoon style texture effect at this time and the edge effect tool within Blender’s internal renderer. I tried for some time to understand Freestyle but never could get it to work for me with the large model so gave us and just resorted to the edge effect in Blender.

After modelling the mid-hull, I started moving forward modelling the forward sections of the boat and various other detail parts of the ship. The picture below shows the Fitz’ rear funnel with markings. I also included photos for reference.

I have nearly completed the forward hull and I am about 1/2 thru aft hull…

Phase 2

Phase 2 is to begin creating the water for my scene. the area would be the Great Lakes so ocean style water is not out of place. Creating the ship was a chore to get right… but water will be my biggest pain. I have tried all of the tutes I can find on the subject and most are very lacking. Yes… I have tried Cog’s tute (great tutorial … wish he would come back and write some more or update his site)… it is very long and has good results… but not exactly what I need. Yes… I have heard about the dynamic oceans in the Game Blender… this is not really for a game application…

So I am kinda stuck wanting nice water with wake fore and aft and the possibility of spray and foam… I suck at particles…

My Stupid Idea

What is I were to create a large shallow domain in the fluid sim…

create a inflow (off camera)

create a outflow (off camera)

Use the fluid flowing from the inflow to the outflow to keep the domain from filling completely…

Then use the ships hull as a obstacle… thus creating the actual wakes fore and aft of the boat and create a realistic wake effect and possibly even spray…

Just a thought… anyone ever tried this???

again…any insight, tutorials, sample blends, andything you can offer to help me with the idea would be most appreciated!

thank you for taking the time to read this and help

Cujo

[kbot]

I like your renders! I have always been fascinated with the transition of 3d into to 2d and you may have given me cause to pick up some some years old blender files.

[RickyBlender]

please don’t put big picture like that it’s annoying
it’s been said before many times

only when necessary otherwise use smaller pictures

but you got a good project here so wish you good luck

salutations

[Enriq766]

Keep making cool renders and you can make them as big as you want. RickyBlender take a chill pill.

Awesome project.

[Cujo31]

I thought I would paste up a few more updates of the project and let you see a few more details… And my apology if the picture size is large… a lot of details to show… sorry if your still using dial up…

Here is a multi-view of the Fitzgerald’s forward pilothouse. I have tried to recreate this with the correct colors and equipment that she would have had in 1969. This is the first render of it…

This render shows the pilthouse with equipment… only thing not shown here is here rudder controls and wheel… these were added a bit later.

Finally… a shot using Kia’s Blender. I used this so that I could use a HDRI and do some image based lighting for effect. This shows the aft section of the main pilothouse including the guest quarters observation windows. Also shown is the revamped and reworked radar mast and the deck stairs and handrailings… SO MANY handrailings on this ship… it was quite a chore to get them all correct…

again… I do apologize for the large images… however I do feel that it is necessary to show all the minor details that are being added…

Post note… I know I asked about how to create water in my scene… and have not gotten much feedback on that… the image above had water in the HDRI… I did not create that… so I am still searching for good water if anyone has any ideas…

Thanks for looking!

Cujo

[Atom]

Nice WIP. I like the cross-section stuff.

[dsmex]

Nice images. The cartoon style is very illustrative.

About water…
I’ve have tried a lot of different approaches to making water in blender. First of all… are you making images or animation? Making images with realistic water is difficult, but making water look right in animation is 10 times harder.

The best approach I have found is to subdivide a plane and use a displace modifier to make the waves. You could use the cloud texture for the displacement map. The following tutorial shows how to set up the textures. If i remember correctly the tutorial only maps the texture to the normal. This looks OK in most cases. However, you might want to use displacement at least around the ship to avoid a straight line where the hull intercepts the water.
http://www.pekaro.de/blender/water/water_tutorial.html

For creating better looking waves that work well even in animation, you might want to look into the ocean texture. Promotion studios made this patch for the lighthouse animation (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJA0Q6J905w). However, it has never made it into the main branch of blender. You should be able to find unofficial blender versions at graphicall.org that have the ocean texture included. You need to spend a lot of time playing around with the settings, but it gives great results.

I used the ocean texture (blender 2.4x) to make this animation:
http://vimeo.com/10104346

When it comes to material for the ocean, the most important things to keep in mind are:

• The ocean is not blue. It’s just a mirror. It is blue only if the sky is blue.
• The important settings are all in the mirror tab (RayMir and Fresnel especially)
• You should have a correct sky colour or image to colour the ocean.

I normally don’t make water transparent. If you look at pictures of boats you will see that you normally don’t see the hull below water. The exception is when you see the ship from almost directly above. If you find a good way to solve it, let me know. But as I mentioned, in most cases you can forget about transparency.

Hope this helps…

[ionee]

very detailed start, keep it up!

[Cujo31]

@dsmex

Nice images. The cartoon style is very illustrative.

I used the ocean texture (blender 2.4x) to make this animation:
http://vimeo.com/10104346

Hope this helps…

Ok DSMEX you got me… I understand creating the water now… but what I don’t get is exactly what youhave in your video… WAKE… How did you create the wake and foam behind your ship… that is exactly what I am looking for…

Care to explain or show a example???

Thanks man!

Cujo

[LoopyShane]

Something that may help here.
About 3/4 of the way down the page there is a tutorial showing a 4wd leaving tracks in the sand and a lawn mower after it.

[Cujo31]

Thanks for the thoughts and input!

Keep 'em coming…

While gathering ideas for the wake etc… I continue to work on the Fitz…again I apologize for the large nature of the images…but with a ship this large you need it to see the details…

Here is a look at her forward sections:

and a view looking at her aft area. Still most of the work to be done in this area…

I aapreciate your critiques and input…

She’ll be out of drydock and into the water soon…I hope

thank for looking…

Cujo

[craigsnedeker]

WOW! Looks real good!

[Cujo31]

Ok…this is a lil late coming…but here is a few previews of what I have so far…

Wake test…

Now combining that with some water… I did add the entire boat model… just some of the hull and stuff to get a good idea…

Whatya think so far?

Critiques and input appreciated!!!

Cujo

[breakerh]

wow, thats quite nice.
The only thing is that when a boat cruises threw the water, on the sides of the boat you will see a sort of strokes like here:

succes

[RH2]

I donno…

The wake is a step in the right direction, but the specularity isn’t noisy enough to make me believe it’s foamy.

would particles help?

[Sidcom]

I love that project :yes:

Buuut:

I think it should have a much bigger bow wave. It looks like the wave doesn’t really “come out of the water” - if you know what i mean.
I guess you could make it a even bigger than necessary and let the ship cover the excess part.

Looking forward to the next update

[DDD]

waaaaw, that looks nice, nice but not perfect though. interesting, you seem to have the right shape for the waves and the foam, but you change it when you but the freighter in. the foam should go along the ship i believe. and while the foam looks fine, it could definately be improved. Good job on the water! i like it

[Alterscape]

This may be a tiny quibble, but do you have any references for the font used for the ship’s name in your textures? That font looks very 90s/00s, and not so much like one that would’ve been used in a 50s/60s painter’s template. I know it’s a small thing, but since you’re working so hard on all the other details…

[Cujo31]

Alterscape:

The lettering on here hull has always been pretty plain…

As far as the water…

I am mish mashing a lot of tutes into the water concept… Using some of the things from Cog’s tutorial and others… The foam itself doesn’t come thru very well because there are 2 stencils that control the wake foam and wave foam… and then don’t seem to be playing together well… so I may drop the wave foam… which is very faint anyway… and retry…

I also have several ideas on seperating the boat and water to give it more foamy look… and yes there will be some bow particles as well… just haven’t gotten to it at this spoint

I will continue to update this…

Cujo

[DarkLimit]

-Really lovely work! would you mind sharing your toon settings?