HMS Victory WIP - Now with HD flythrough tour, rendered turntable, AND tutorial!

_ben_

Flythrough tour (OpenGL Render

):
Vimeo

Rendered Turntable:
Vimeo

Tutorial/Making Of

Latest Renders:

Hey there
I've already done a couple of ships in blender - I just really enjoy building them. But this is my most ambitious so far, and the first where I've tried to recreate a specific ship rather than just going for a generic type. I just wanted to post some WIP images to show how it's coming along. No proper materials yet just colours, but proper UV Mapped textures will hopefully in time. For now I'm concentrating on getting the modelling going, and so far I have the main details there, i.e. the main hull, decks, the positions of the masts and portholes, as well as the prow and stern gallery in a bit more detail. Check out the wikipedia article for some references to see how I'm doing relative to the real thing. For any history buffs out there, I'm going for the Trafalgar period loadout of the ship, simply because a) the colour scheme is cooler, and b) theres more reference for this as it's still preserved in this condition today, so plenty of photos arournd as a result.

1. Fleshing out some rough guides from reference images.

By bens87 at 2008-11-09

2. More fleshing out, this time the hull.

By bens87 at 2008-11-09

3. The rear gallery - I just wanted to work on this first as it's pretty (must resist temptation to do that

- it caused me headaches when attaching it to the hull)

By bens87 at 2008-11-09

4. The hull was made by first using the guiedes to make a NURBS surface with the right shape, then Retopo-ing the a mesh with the right topology for the portholes and soforth onto that.

By bens87 at 2008-11-09

5. The current state of play.

By bens87 at 2008-11-09

Anyway, I'm thinking I'll make a tutorial on how to go about making a ship like this at some point too, so I'd be glad to answer questions.

_ben_

Comments? ...Anyone?

Dudebot13

The progress you have made is very impressive! I am thinking of making a ship like this too but I think I will learn more if I do it without a tutorial. I am sure other people would love it though! You should make the final image with good use of the particle system for the cannons and everything. Could look very cool! Good luck!

_ben_

Done a bit more, the masts and so forth are starting to go up, and the gereral layout of the inside is coming together. I've started messing around with materials too. Having decided I'm going to render a final image in indigo, I've tested some of the most frequently used materials in that:

By bens87 at 2008-11-13

zapman

very nice! keep it coming

_ben_

Noisy indigo render showing the upper gun deck. I'll update this when it's had some more time - the awesome thing about indigo is that whilst it might be slow, it doesn't stop me using blender while I render

By bens87 at 2008-11-13

_ben_

And another test:

By bens87 at 2008-11-13

Tedcase

this is very good.

Gonna put it on some realistic water?

_ben_

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tedcase

this is very good.

Gonna put it on some realistic water?

Yeah that's the plan. I'm going to have to do some research on how best to do that in indigo - something tells me it might be pretty slow to do it completely physically with SSS and so forth.

tcrazy

WOW! Looks great, though I think you should do this in vray

Faster but still great results. I love your textures, if you keep this up you should be in the gallery, You make me want to try this sometime, though I should probably finish my current project first.

Good luck man, keep this one going!

Dudebot13

Quote:

Originally Posted by tcrazy

You make me want to try this sometime, though I should probably finish my current project first.

My thoughts exactly! Those renders (although noisy) look awesome! Keep going with this, the textures and modeling are superb! Great work!

_ben_

Quote:

Originally Posted by tcrazy

WOW! Looks great, though I think you should do this in vray

I've looked at Vray and it does produce some nice looking renders, but indigo has the distinct advantage of being free, and just as good as long as your willing to wait a bit longer.

Godzilla123

http://www.ussconstitution.navy.mil/...reeGallery.htm

Perhaps that will be helpful ^

_ben_

Wow thanks Godzilla. There's loads of detail in there and it's a very similar ship. I was struggling for details like that as most photos I've found tend to be of the ship as a whole or of wooden models which don't have quite as much small scale detail.

Godzilla123

=)

I actually went on it a few weeks ago.

_ben_

Posting an update before I turn in for the night, just some viewport renders.
The whole ship at the moment:

By bens87 at 2008-11-14

The Inside of the hull, showing the mroe of the hull timbers:

By bens87 at 2008-11-14

The various cannons and cannonades, from left to right: 68 pounder cannonade, 32 pounder, 24 pounder, long, medium and short 12 pounders:

By bens87 at 2008-11-14

Various support boats:

By bens87 at 2008-11-14

The poly count is starting to make my comp chug along now, so at some point I'm going to have to start splitting this into separate files somehow, but not for a while yet.

_ben_

Found this HUGE aerial photo on http://www.webbaviation.co.uk/

Just thought it was cool.

_ben_

Slow progress over he past few days. Mostly a bit of rigging. On the bright side though I think I've achieved quite a nice water shader for the final render it even makes the other materials look like they need some work!
Here's a little test, apologies for the graininess, but it's still rendering so I should be able to update it later with a nicer pic.

By bens87 at 2008-11-21

Dudebot13

Very nice! The water looks great. The other materials could use some better textures but they are still great. Superb modeling. Can't wait to see a clearer image but these are still good!

Khell[PT]

It's great so far! About that ship tutorial for me it will be a must see!!!

Keep going!