I’ve noticed some other Weekend Challenge entries posted here under Finished Projects, so I thought I might share mine here as well especially with those of you who don’t necessarily follow the contest area of this forum. “Ghost Ship” was the challenge topic.
Here’s my entry, “Raiders of the Ghost Ship,” wherein the sea legend skeptic Captain Reel discovers a little too late that the tale of The Ghost Ship is indeed true…
This was built and rendered in Blender 2.28. The scene consists of three layers, particle effects for the water splash, and lots of little lamps to get the mood just right. I had also modelled a silhouette of Captain Reel fleeing from the skeletal Raiders, but the shadow didn’t project just right; as a cool side-effect, I got a cool black band across one eye of the main Raider, so I left that in there. I angled the camera as a final step to give the sense of being at sea.
While creating this, by accident I clicked on subdiv and popped it up to 12 while editing the first skeleton I made, totally locking up my system. So I got to build that part of the scene again… Well, I hope you enjoy it.
Thanks for the great feedback, JarrellSmith!! I couldn’t sleep much (noisy neighbors…) so I stood up extra late yesterday and worked in sort of a ghostly pirate ship captain in the background. I agree with all your excellent observations, and if the deadline wasn’t so soon I would have definitely spent time doing most of what you had suggested (and then gone back to do everything else you mentioned, plus make the captain look more captain like…) Considering the timetable, I’m happy with it, and, you’re right, I was going for more of a storybook quality than anything more realistic, although in the future I will definitely work towards realism as a goal. With every project I’m learning more about Blender and am enjoying the creative possibilities. It really is a lot of fun.
Its clear to me that you really put a lot of hard work into this. I really like the sense of chase that you get from the ship being so close behind. How did you build the rigging for your ship? My entry is a far away shot because I’m just awful at knowing what details to add and how to do it. Perhaps my technique needs work. I love your pulleys and ropes, and the crow’s nests. But I like my sails better
Thanks so much, Desoto-111! Having never built a ship before made this especially challenging, but after the F1 contest eariler this year I learned a ton of Blender techniques that definitely came in handy for this contest. The ship consists of numerous subsurfaced/reshaped/bevelled rectangles plus cylinders for the rails and posts. The sails were fractally subdivided then subsurfaced and folded. The ropes and pulleys are various sized cylinders.
Yeah, a lot of work, but I thoroughly enjoyed this project. Your ship is very well done, and yes your sails are very nice indeed! Excellent concept also to work Galileo into the story. Good luck!
Definately among my favorite entries. I like the fact that there is alot going on, and that it tells a story. Also, there is nothing wrong with ‘storybook style’. I like storybook style.
this is quite nice!
it really has the good old captain-of-the-ghost-ship-feeling to it.
i like it.
some notes:
the ship on the back, looks like it’s not IN the water, but ON the water. you could fix that by adding some extra waves … I think. and adjusting water texture, it’s now slightly streched, and makes water look solid.
skeleton has a bit too much emit-value. (or too little shadow)
you clip the scene just a bit funny… perhaps make it wider, move the boat little bit to the right, and let the moon show in full. but that will of course greate more empty space to the scene, and I’m not sure if that breaks the action packed feeling you have now there…
Thanks, Modron. I appreciate it. I often like pictures that tell a story, although I also like and create abstract stuff. At first when I heard the theme I wasn’t sure I could do something decent for the contest, but then things started falling into place once I conquered the ship model and starting working on the first skeleton. I had in mind what I wanted to do, and then I spent my all my free time during the weekend trying to make it happen.
basse, thank you for the excellent feedback. If I had more time I would have definitely redone the ocean. I spent about two hours on that part of the picture, moving vertices around, deleting, redoing, and what I really would have liked to do was model individual waves and work in a better texture. According to the initial concept, the waters were supposed to be fairly calm around the ghost ship but perhaps percolating to denote some supernatural quality about the area/ship, and Captain Reel’s ship (in the foreground) was approaching the gs.
When I lowered the emit/reflection on the skeleton the picture kind of dulled down, even though it would have been more realistic. For this scene I wanted to go with a lively/adventurous pallette, one that hinted at darkness and danger but at the same time illuminated the scene in an exciting and unique way. I went through many different lighting setups before I settled on this one, but if I had more time I definitely would have liked to bring the scene more in keeping with what you mentioned.
The scene cropping was another major decision that still has room for improvement. Containing the action and eliminating deadspace was a priority. After spending about a half hour on the moon alone I would have liked to feature it more prominently, but after managing the soft glow and getting the shadow lamps at a good angle on the ship I wasn’t too keen on moving it and redoing all that considering the deadline. There’s planning time, building time, rendering time, and tweaking time, and boy did I tweak Still plenty of that to do if I ever continue this scene.
DOF would have come in handy here a bit. If I could ever get the Zplugin to work I would do more of it. I know how to attempt DOF with the tracking empty, but Blender 2.28 evidently still has a problem with not passing the Z buffer to the plugin. Even so, the ship in the background is so close only a faint amount of DOF would have been applied because I wouldn’t want to wash away all those details. If the ship had been lesser detailed I would have even considered post processing blur for DOF. After reading your post I did do just that, and the results weren’t bad. A willingness to sacrifice some details for an overall better scene is probably the better way to go in a lot of cases.
For this one though I wanted the viewer to be immediately immersed in the action and confront everything from Captain Reel’s perspective. He was just looking through his telescope and set it down after concluding the ship was abandoned when all of a sudden these skeletal raiders start climbing over the deck and the spirit of the Dark Captain floating off to the left, watching with arms folded as his grisly crew prepares to dispense with yet another nonbeliever…
Here’s a post-processed image I did tonight of the ship alone with some blur applied on the waves/background, colorization of the image, and some light noise added. The ship remains untouched. You just see it here at a slightly different angle:
Even though I don’t mind losing the Weekend Challenge if I do, especially if it’s to the ever incredible basse I would have liked to hear more comments concerning the overall ship design. I did have a lot of stuff going on in the foreground with “Raiders of the Ghost Ship,” but I hope people have noticed the work done on the ship.
I think if you had gone with that image right there, you’d have won hands down. Definitely. Thats a really good image. I think your sails need to be pointier in the corners, but other than that, I think that if you entered that, it’d have been the best entry by far. Just my opinion.
It’s almost hard to believe that’s the same ship. Lighting and colorization definitely change the mood. I’m noticing more now something that was mentioned earlier. The ship looks less like it’s sitting in the water and more like it’s sitting on it. I’m not sure how you did your water, but if you could deform it a bit to match the shape of the boat (like water conforms to shapes) rather than simply clipping the model through it, that might help.
Seriously? Now they tell me Thanks, Desoto-111!! Yes the sails still aren’t perfect. I’d like to redesigned them some day fully drawn. I think I could even animate them using the wave effect. That might be cool.
Maybe the post-processed version was the mood/look that more people might have liked. Most of my images tend to be bright and lively, but it seems a lot of people do prefer darker tones for whatever reason. Really great Blender artists like basse, X-Warrior, and @ndy could probably get these and better results without even resorting to post-processing. I’m not convinced though post-processing is something good in a contest like the WC, which I regard as a sort of showcase for natural Blender talent.
My image Rain, for example, which I alluded to in the contest thread in my post tonight, shows how a relatively bad blend can be elevated to not a halfway decent image with post-processing. I think it’s perfectly acceptable and even recommendable under normal circumstances, but where contests are concerned I like playing fields to be level and everyone to have a fair chance. So in that sense I consider post-processing, as well as elaborate backgrounds not created in Blender, potentials for unfair advantages under contest conditions. For now I’ll keep postp for stuff like this that looks good but doesn’t have to compete with something purely Blended.
Hi, Fweeb. The lighting change really seems to have a dramatic effect on the model. The waves definitely could use more deformation. The sea is a subsurfaced plane that was fractally divided (low fractal div #) two or three times. It’s wavy, but not as choppy as the water could be to match the tone of the scene. One thing I just realized I might want to try – lattice deformation. I wasn’t much concerned about it for the WC entry, because the water had a minimal/contextual presence, but with the lone ship the water becomes noticeable and therefore needs more attention.
i liked both i9mages, the only thing that can be improved in the second image (IMHO) is that she shadow of the ship should be rippled, since its in water… shouldnt it?
Yes for some reason my overhead shadowlamp wasn’t making nice with the ocean normap, which wasn’t normapping as well as I hoped, so I’ll have to go back and work on that too. Thanks for the feedback.
Robert
It’s really good man. I like the noise effect too. I think I’ll try GIMPing a couple of my blender renders. I also have never really done much in the way of post production, but these renderings with noise look pretty good.
Well, I hope you enjoy it.
Considering the timetable, I’m happy with it, and, you’re right, I was going for more of a storybook quality than anything more realistic, although in the future I will definitely work towards realism as a goal. With every project I’m learning more about Blender and am enjoying the creative possibilities. It really is a lot of fun.
Excellent concept also to work Galileo into the story. Good luck!
