I’m trying to model a battleship hull and would like some feedback about the topology. This is really my first proper take on modelling something like this more seriously. I think I’ve learned some during this time I’ve been toying around with Blender every now and then but I’m still not quite sure if I’m doing this “right”.
I’m fairly happy with the front section but the rear is another thing. Especially the middle propeller hull area. Wires look a bit messy but it seems to be doing the trick without pinching or anything like that.
For a mechanical hard surface, the wires look fine and it is all about getting the model to render properly, right? If it were organic I would be concerned about preserving volume at joints, etc, but this isn’t the case. Looks clean enough, doesn’t have an insane number of edgeloops all over. Nice work.
Your model looks really clean and there’s probably all ok with propeller housing also. For a most of shots that little ‘oddity’ wont be visible anyways.
Now, the front part; depends on your chosen model’s blueprints of course, however from what i’ve seen, that bulgy part little below water line usually is more prominent if it is present at all. My only nitpicking ;).
I did some more work on the bow but it’s gonna need some extra tuning still. It’s fairly tricky part because the reference material isn’t that great. Basicly blueprints and pictures of scale models…Old poor quality black and white pictures aren’t great either but all of this is just a minor speed bump :yes:
Oh and yes, I will be starting a WIP thread about this project as soon as I feel confident enough about actually being able to finish this model. I’m aiming to make this model as detailed as possible and I’m not that certain do I have enough skills to pull that off at this moment.
Yup, the Bismarck is what I’m trying to model here.
Think I managed to nail the bow. I’m pretty happy with the current result. But any nitpicking would be welcome if there’s need for that.
The next on to-do list is to join side prop shaft fairings to the hull which might prove to be pretty tricky. The process itself isn’t really that hard. It’s keeping the end result clean looking what’s the hard part. Or maybe I’m just too obsessed about clean looking wires
I remember there was a great tutorial about this on military-meshes.com sometime ago but currently it’s missing the pictures…
The bottom ‘bulge’ seems alright, I just think it need to be widened and have it so it has more of a frontal face. Right now it looks like a teardrop, needs to look more like that image you posted.
Other then that, it’s great, nice and clean too. Keep it up.
I decided to leave the front section alone for the moment. It may take some patience and time but I’m fairly certain I’m able to finish that area right. It’s not much of a problem. Instead, the prop shaft fairings are completely another thing. After several attempts, I managed to join them to the hull. The current result looks a lot cleaner than my previous attempts and even managed to pull this off with much less loop cuts than before. Surface still seems smooth in the rear area so that’s fine I guess. Another thing is the wires. The current result looks pretty good I suppose but I’m sort of wondering that could it be better?
Your mesh is quite nice. Are you going to be rendering it in drydock or as a showoff portfolio piece? Unless you are, I’d leave the bottom alone and get on with modelling the part that will actually be visible and texturing. And don’t be too worried about the polycounts. Professional production modelers sure aren’t. A nice cheap mesh is nice to have but not when it takes you a whole day to produce it. CPU time is cheaper than artist time.
I did have some images saved from those tutorials but not a lot of it is relivent. I noticed a lot of people dont bother with the bulge on the bow, especially the ones for sale on turbosquid & such.
@ridix: That’s funny, I see the exact opposite, with the gray train representing technical perfection and the colorful one representing concentrating on the art. The artist should be free to concentrate on making the picture look good instead of optimizing every last polygon out of their meshes. That typically means heavier scenes and so more work for the CPUs.
@MadMinstrel: Pretty much my only goal with this project is to make it as detailed as possible. But yeah, being sensible about it might turn out to be a bit tricky. I know there’s no sense in modeling every single smaller rivet for example but at the same time, I’d like to model the very botton of the hull too as accurately as I can. Which probably would be a bit unnecessary even with possible drydock renders. Dunno, would be good practise at least.
