I have had this model kicking around for quite a while now, so I thought it was about time that I did something with it.
The main objective is to get it to a stage where it looks more realistic than it does at the moment. I intend to add a variation to the shields and maybe some kind of design on the sail.
Thought and comments are most welcome, thanks for dropping by.
Lighting is important, what type do you want? stormy clouds? sunset/sunrise? currently lighting and the sky is rather odd and unrealistic which lets down an otherwise nice scene.
Secondly the water is off, i like the foam effect its nicely done(maybe a little more splash but thats not 100% necessary) but the rest of the water needs work.
These should help get the image rolling and we can move on to more specific problems
Thanks for the comments, The HK, they’re much appreciated.
I will look into the lighting, It’s something I struggle to get right at the best of times. Currently using a HDR for it but a stormy sky might be a better look. I want there to be big waves so that I can keep the camera angle looking up at the boat, mainly because this helps to hide the fact that there is no crew on board.
I will see what else I can find to make the water look better.
Spam, spam, spam, spam - shut up, bloody Vikings!!! I would make the sail billow forwards to make it more realistic. Oh yes, for the Vikings, use an image as a plane to get some crew in place, then make the plane multi-vertexed so you can shape it to the crew, like I did with the traction engine on my Magnum Opus. It’s a quick way to get crew, without having to model them. You need oars too or is that 'ores on a longboat.
Let me know if you want any more background on the Vikings, I have loads of stuff, my ancestors were Jutes.
Cheers, Clock.
PS. the first part of this post will be a complete mystery other than to Brits of a certain age…
Cheers, clock.
Spam, spam, spam, Monty Python I’m guessing?
I have sorted the sail out. I appended the longboat from one file to another but forgot to append the force field, the sail looks better now.
I wasn’t sure about the oars as I’m thinking the boat is travelling at speed, so I guess they wouldn’t be able to use the oars. Having said that the boat does need at least to have the holes in the hull for the oars, which creates a bit of a problem when punching the holes through the mesh. Tried it once before using the Boolean modifier and it made a bit of a mess of things. Have to try a different approach on that one…
Thanks for the tip on adding a crew, I will give that a go, and for the offer of background info on the Vikings.
For the holes use the old black/white image trick to add a transparent node to the material. Black is hole white is solid, so easy, so fast, so clean. Unfortunately I am on my way to the Scilly Isles without my Mac so can’t post anything for a week or so till I get home.
Yes it’s Monty Python, search on YouTube for the clip…
Cheers, Clock.
Thanks, Clock. I didn’t know about the black/white image for making holes. I had some success using the Knife Projection method last night but your way sounds better so I will check that out.
I had a look at the video, old enough to remember it from first time round, my favourite will always be The Life Of Brian though. Such crazy brilliance.
Have a good time whilst away.
Take a look at the last post Witold made on his Navy Dauntlees WIP, he shows how to make nice holes with a mono image, I can do you a mockup when I get home next Thursday if you are still unsure of the technique.
Cheers from the Scillies, Clock.
PS. Flew over on a DH Twin Otter, very nice!
A Twin Otter by Viking Air, very apt. I had a look at a few images, I’ve never been in a plane that small, must be quite a different kind of flying experience to the big jets.
I have had some success with making the holes. At first I just deleted the holes from the texture, then I worked out how to apply the black and white image for transparency. I will have a look at the Dautless WIP though as it sounds interesting.
Bit of an update. I think the water looks better now, didn’t do much to it just changed the scale on the noise texture,I also changed the HDR for a sky texture. Will be working more on both of them.
I had added an image to the sail, but it all looks a bit dark at the moment and not terrible real looking. Still, I think I’m headed in the right direction so that’s cool.
Yea its coming along nicely, water looks good and rest should mainly be tweaking with lighting and compositing.
Some things i think could be improved:
Make the boat slightly tilted, right now it is perfectly straight on the sea and looks odd
Add imperfections such as dirt to the boat make it look much more battered , especially if ur going for a storm look.
Maybe add men, perhaps silhouettes if you are going for a dark stormy look to make the image shine.
Add some items visible around the boat to add variation, looks entirely plain and empty like a shell right now.
Thanks, The HK, for the ideas they’re much appreciated.
I will add some tilt to the boat, front of it dropping down a bit should be right for the sea swell, but I will do it as a last job as I want to keep the boat straight whilst I work on it.
I also need to dirty thing up and add some clutter as suggested. It amazes me how these small projects just grow and grow, more the fun though.
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Bit of an update. I changed the scale of the sea, it was rather mountainous before, and changed the sky. I am using the Free Sky from Wolf. Started to play around with the settings and found what I thought looked like sheet lightning, so I added a lightning bolt for good measure.
I have got one guy standing at the front of the boat, I will be adding some more crew members, but I can’t decide if he is too small or if the shields are too big, the proportions of the two look at bit off to me. I also need to add some variation to the shields.
Nice render, you are getting there! Viking shields are between 80 cm and 1 m in diameter, maybe that helps. I think the colors of the shields is too bright though.
Thanks, Speedthriller, for the comment and info on the shield size, it is very useful. I just had a quick check and it appears that the average size of a Viking was 5ft 9" to 5 ft 11" so it seems that the shield would cover roughly about half of the body. Don’t think I am too far of with the sizes of the shields and the crew.
I agree, the colours on the shield and the sail are too bright. I need to dirty them up so they don’t look so new.
Paints and dyes were fairly primitive and dark, for all “Nordic” tribes, I am not sure yet which tribe you are aiming at. I bet you didn’t think this would get so complicated when you thought “I will make a longboat” - “Viking” is a terrible generic term BTW…
Keep up the excellent work!
Cheers, Clock.
another think i can suggest is the sail , perhaps make it torn and and ragged , it would really help the image as the sail takes up a large chunk of the image
@ Clockmender. Cheers, much appreciated.
I think the look I am going for, type of tribe, is pretty much the same as the Danes in ‘The Last Kingdom.’ The colours on their clothes and boats appear in the series to be quite muted, lots of dark and not much bright colour, must pay more attention this week. One thing I have noticed in the series is that Viking has not been mentioned, I think the closest they came was to talk about the Norsemen. Anyway bit of track there.
Still struggling to put a crew together, I’m going to have to start a press gang operation fairly soon at this rate.
@ The HK. Thank you, good idea. The sail is quite dominant in the image so it does need working on. Not sure about the best way to make it torn and ragged so I will have a look into that. I will also change the colour to something darker, less bright.
Give me a day or so, I will do a quick mockup of a crew member from an image. The technique is not so hard, just finding the right image may be an issue. Suggestion, get a recording of Last Kingdom, see if you can find a frame with a view of a suitable character, you just need torso upwards, then keep that, I hope what I do will show an easy technique.
Cheers, Clock.
EDIT:
See this: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4179452/ there are 49 photos, some very useful, especially the clothes and shields, etc. and not a horned hat in sight (these were figments of Hollywood’s imagination)
OK, here is my quick method to get some crew on-board. First a picture, these I like as you may know by now:
Method:
Get a picture of the Dane and add it as “Image as Plane” object. Go to Edit Mode, set view type to “Material”, so you can see the picture.
Duplicate one vertex and move it to the start of the outline you want. Extrude this vertex repeatedly until you have drawn around the bit you want - close the vertices, select the new loop of vertices and make it a polygon (key F).
Select all polygons, including the original Quad (this is important) and then UV map them to the image (“Project from View Bounds”).
Duplicate the outline polygon and part it from the mesh (key P). Exit Edit mode and move the new mesh away so you can see it properly.
Repeat for as many crew members as you need and position them where they should be on the boat. Bear in mind these are 2D planes, so you may need to rotate them sightly depending where the camera is. I also sometimes distort them to get perspective nadirs and zeniths correct.
Here’s the blend file for this exercise: dane.blend (1.05 MB)
You can also make the new outline a white polygon on a black background and use this to mix a Transparent Node into the material to cut out the bit you want, I also use this technique a lot, like the cast brackets on my Magnum Opus thread, you can also make a bump image as well to get some 3D effect.
Have fun and cheers, Clock. 
EDIT:
Using the Transparent Node method is good if you want to blur the outline of the image, you can add a Gaussian blur to the B/W image used to mix in the Transparent Node to blur the edges.
the method should definitely be useful in a scene like this.
Cheers, clock, this is very much appreciated. 
I will have a good look at the method over the weekend and see what I can come up with. I also have a good idea of how the shields should look after watching last nights episode so will be working on that too.
I have done a lot of work on the sail as The H K suggested and I think it looks a lot better now.
It’s all coming together. :RocknRoll:
