Hi all,
is there anyone interested in historical ships?
I’m working on a model of an eighteenth-century naval cutter. That is a 70 feet vessel used for hunting smugglers at the British coastline. These cutters were amongst the fastest vessels of their time.
As reference I use Lennarth Petersson’s book “Rigging Period Fore-and -Aft Craft” that provides fine drawings of a cutter.
Here is a scene with an older model to show the size relations between cutter and frigate.
A lot of details are still missing e.g. creases in sails and spray at the waterlines. Water is too smooth.
Hi all,
After a break I had to make due to my work, I would share some thoughts about finding a good material for sails.
I use a test scene with a sail, a mast like object to create a shadow, a blue background, and a sun object.
Cycles is used to render the scene.
The sail has an image texture and a bump map to create some wrinkles.
The left image shows the sail from the sunny side with the shadow from the mast.
A diffuse shader is used. Looks OK.
The second image shows the sail from the back, from the shaded side. That doesn’t look correct.
A sail is a thin fabric that lets some light pass. Therefore, the shadow of the mast should be visible. A diffuse shader does not work for the back side!
I have done some experiments with a transparent shader, but that didn’t look real either. A better alternative is a translucent shader. The render looks better from the back, but the sail is much to bright.
If we look at the sunny side : no shadow of the mast and the fabric is rather dark.
Therefore, a translucent shader does not work for sails.
Great job man. I am into ship modeling myself (did a few scenes). Sail… so far I was just setting shaders up for a scene (so I was avoiding most of troubles you are getting) but if I would have to do it- I’d go precisely the way you’ve choosen in last shot. Good luck and post more.
Hi all,
I would like to add some information on creating a more realistic sea render.
Starting point is a plane with the ocean modifier applied. Tile size is 60 m, repeated 3 times in x and y direction. Resolution is 15. That is good balance between detail, area covered, and vertex count. You would not want to have too many tiles as a repetitive pattern will become visible.
I use a glass shader with IOR 1.35 . Close below the surface is a second plane with a dark blue color.
The results looks like water but is much to smooth for the open sea.
To increase the ocean modifier resolution for a better look would create a mesh too big to handle. Therefore, I add a bump map to create more turbulence on the surface. As bump map I use the displacement map baked by the ocean modifier. The map is scaled down by 10 to get small bumps ( a kind of fractal approach). I add some foam using the foam map generated by the ocean modifier to push the rough sea effect.
Final ingredients for a nice sea scene are a photo of some clouds as background and some mist at the horizon generated in the compositor (based on the z-pass). The result still leaves a lot of room for improvement.
Here is a close-up of the hull. The lower part has a glossy shader to simulate the wet surface. The upper part is more diffuse. A bump map is used for the contour of the planks. Mast and bowsprit still look too glossy, need a better texture. Anyway, I’m not targeting close views but larger scenes.
The tricky part is to find reliable references for historical painting of these ships.
Very nice model! I think for realistic sails one would need SSS Also, it seems the wind direction indicated by the sails doesn’t match with the flags, I could be wrong though
Hi,
Here is a picture of the hull mesh. I started with a mesh based on a blueprint following the position of the frames. In a second step I retopologized the first mesh to create a second one with proper holes for the gun ports. I made some stupid mistakes in using too many vertices at the ports. Must have been late.
Here is a second picture showing part of the sail rigg. To have more flexibility in posing yards and sails, I have used an armature that is linked to the sail mesh as well as to vertex groups in the yard mesh. The sail has an upper, middle, and lower bone. Upper and lower bones are linked to the upper and lower yards. Moving the bones will pose the corresponding sail parts and the yard. The yard again is connected to several ropes (braces etc.). The ropes have fixed parts and moving parts belonging to the same vertex group as the yards. Therefore, moving the yard will also move the ropes.
That greatly improves the speed of changing the rigging and maybe will allow some animation in the future.
Also, it seems the wind direction indicated by the sails doesn’t match with the flags, I could be wrong though 
