Roter Lowe

Hey guys. I’m fairly new to Blender, been watching the forums for a little bit, posted once or twice. This is my first real project, it’s a ship called the Roter Lowe. I’ve spent a while on it (I’m pretty slow, so it’s not much dispite the effort) and I think I’ve got the hull just about done. It’s kinda high poly, but I like high poly because I get high detail, and as long as I don’t end up with insane amounts of verts I think my computer will be able to handel it.

Anyhow, here are my current screenshots. I put the vertex one in because I’m wondering how I’m going to handle the change in the way the vertices (spelling?) are arranged near the bow. And other little details like if I should avoid triangles in that area or what. I realise not all the vertices are connected the way they will be, I have yet to make the edges. Also, I don’t have faces in yet.

So, I realize there isn’t much to C&C, but if you have any, feel free.

Edit: I don’t think my angles are very good, but anything that would show a different part creates visual problems with the edges crossing due to the lack of faces.

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Errr, wow, you modeled this vertex after vertex?
Why that? Why didn’t you start with a plane, then you’d have no problems with faces.

Well, I think it’s because of the problems I’m having with the faces… I’d’ve had to do all this weird editing to the plane. At the time, it felt easier just to place the verts where they needed to be. And it’s not like I just plopped the verts in space, I used some ship plans.

But yea, I guess that might have been a better way to go about it:(

Oh boy, you’re going to have a lot of trouble to fill those faces in properly (shift f is going to make something real real ugly if you try it)

The faces. They can only be tri’s or quads and some parts would require more that that…Your going to have to make cuts (K) to sort this problem. Its unecceray modeling difficulties though.

I’d really recommend starting anew with a plane. You seem to already have a good grasp of how your model should look and it shouldn’t be too difficult.
I recently modeled a boat and this technique worked well for me.

Well, I decided before I completely trash this wire, I’ll at least try to make the faces. I figure I’ll end up with similar problems trying to make the rectangular mesh of a plane fit the ship’s curves. The problems are only so bad because I’m so picky about how the curves look. They’d be there either way, but I make them worse :wink:

Anywhom, I filled in most of what I consider to be the problem, subdivided a couple places, and tweaked. I think it looks pretty clean, but there are still some noticable problems. Will a texture cover things like this up? I might tweak a bit more, but I think I’m going to finish filling the mesh in first though.

Edit: I think I’ve got another idea for filling the area in, and I’m going to give it a shot and compare side-by-side

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Try using subdivision surfaces. That way, you can edit it with a cube with the top cut off, and basically subdivide it and edit only 14 vertices, and still get a decent shape. Then you could apply the subsurf, and that would make all the individual verts and faces for you, and you can edit them individualy after that if you need to.

Well, that’s an idea for low-poly, but that’s not really a concern of mine.

I think I’ve managed to clean up the bow though, I had a bit of trouble clearing the top up, but I think it looks really good now. Here it is, going to add two (small) wire renders so you can see the mesh in a minute.

Wires added. If you ask me, the second wins hands-down, dispite the fact that the normals are all whacked right now.

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Last edit for now:

Finished filling faces, mirrored hull, make keel and started bow.

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Actually, there is a tutorial on making a boat hull using a tool called “Skinning”. I think it’s also referred to as Nurbs Surface. I used it to make a guitar neck that kept changing curves all the way up. You can then convert it to a mesh if you want. Low poly or not, that was the ONLY way I could figure out to do this and do it right. I’m sure there are others. I’m still new at this too.

Try this link:
http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/Tutorials/Curves/Surfaces/Skinning

Or just search for tutorials on Blender’s “Skinning Tool”

Yea, I’ve seen that, but I’ve tried to convert curves into normal mesh and it doesn’t work very well, but there could be a difference depending on the type of curve you use. This worked fine for now, perhaps I’ll use something else next time.

First off, interesting concept. I like the fact that you are going for this kind of project. An Age of Sail ship.
About your mesh: Getting a “decently” smooth surface is not the only thing you have to keep in mind in 3d modelling. The flow of your edges and the shape of your polygons is very important to the final outcome of your model.
If you leave your mesh as you have shown it to currently be you will never be able to texture it even half-way decently. Except for some isolated areas, you want to keep your mesh all quad polygons (four-sided). A triangle here and there (especially in less visible places) won’t kill the model, but what you have there is pretty bad tri-wise. It is perfectly possible to create nicely curving surfaces with all quads. One other thing is that it is just fine to have high poly models. It’s just that you should try to start out with pretty low poly rough shapes and add edge loops, extrude, add vertices, etc. If you start out too high at the beginning, the mesh will become really difficult to work with just to get a rough shape and you will be tired of it before you even get to actual details. Once you get to a point that you feel you have the over all shape there but just can’t add any more details into the already correctly-flowing mesh, you can convert the subsurfaced mesh (I’d recommend starting with a level of 1) to a real mesh and add more detail with your now much finer mesh.
Again, I really like the goal, your mesh needs a serious overhaul.

Didn’t know the mesh effected the texture like that. I guess I’ll have to try some stuff out. My methods on this project could end up seriously strange as I try to bypass my initial failures. But hey, that’s what noobs are for.

Edit: Actually, I just threw something on it, and it doesn’t seem to be doing anything bad. I have no idea how to texture, so it was really quick and REALLY dirty, but it seems to be working fairly well…

I apologize for my lack of clarity. For me, texturing is synonomous with UV Map textures.

Well, I don’t really know what that is… Basically all I know how to do at this point is model. I think I’m somewhat decent at it too, if rather slow.

I suppose I should learn some more about that before I take on projects like this : \

Holy smokes Batman!

I’m modeling the very same ship, and by the looks of your mesh from the very same blueprint… I’m modeling mine plank by plank (like the real wooden model the plans are for) as this is going to be a ghost ship type of thing with moonlight shining through the interstices and stuff.

Had a mesh somewhat like yours at the beginning but trashed it as it became very difficult to add detail like the ports for cannons and the like…

Let me know how you do.