This is my very first post here and I want to make sure you understand my level of knowledge about Blender.
Until now I did some blender projects but the only one I can say I nearly finished is a naval cannon of 1800. Nearly because I could not nail the rendering yet. (looks very amateur)
My render knowledge is basic but thats not for what I am here.
I started to make a Model of “Le Commerce de Marseille”, a French 1788 Ship of the Line (118 guns).
A 3d steering Forum (piratesahoy) helped me a lot with hull modeling and where to start. They have good tutorials. But they all model in Maya and I have no interest in totally learning a new modeling software. It still is a pain for me to remember certain shortcuts in Blender
So here is my problem:
My hull is finished. To model it I Used a plan where I can read all nessesary things I need. And it looks pretty good imo.
I modeled one side and plan to mirror it after its finished.
But now I have to cut out gunports. To make it easier I placed the verticals next to the gunports of where they will be.
It worked with all but two ports. So most lines wont interfer.
What I tried is to add new meches in the size of the gunports, place them over the blueprint lines using shrinkwrap.
Strg+J should make it one object and all I would have to do is to redefine surfaces.
But at some point it just wont work. I cannot explain it but I hope the attachment shows it clearly.
Another way I tried to cut gunports is described by a user in this forum. He made the HMS Victory.
His idea:
Make a flat copy of contour of the hull, cut out the gunports and retopo it onto the still shaped hull.
then simply delete the non-holed onject.
I tried this but the last step is not clear to me. “retopo”. I am using Blender2.66 and did not find any “retopo” button to push. I watched a tutorial on Youtube and tried to do all steps the tutor did but in the end I can not find the “retopo” button.
My preferences say I have all mods installed. (bsurfaces, mesh:F2, inset polygon, looptools and relax) all of them activated.
I tried the trick with shrinkwrap but blender produces crap out of it (at least imo)
Thats it for me now. I hope someone can help me out. That would be epic.
Im glad to see your sticking with Blender despite the difficult learning curve. I have to say though, that your starting on what is probably the worst project for a beginner. Putting square openings in a round sub-divided face is tricky even on the best days. The only project I can think of that would be worse for a beginner would be a car, so steer clear of those also. You really need a very good understanding of surface topology, enough that you could plan out the whole mesh’s topology just from looking at the reference image. The reason I say this is that a ship of the line is very complex, you have multiple gun ports of multiple size at varying levels of depth. Whats more, they are cut into a very complex compound curve making the placement of supporting edgeloops quite difficult.
My advice is this, let this project go. Instead, try modeling a coffee cup or a chair, or a vase etc. Start small, that way you have lots of successes to look back on. Starting big just fills your hard drive full of incomplete projects.
The mode in shrinkwrap is nearest surface point, while project might work a bit better for what you’re trying to do. Also, if the purpose is to make new objects follow the curvature on another object, they need geometry to do it.
You won’t find one. Old Blender had retopo button but that is long gone. It meant surface snapping in the old Blender and is integrated with the snapping tool in the new one.
Retopo is a short term for retopology, or remake topology. A term that is not spesific to Blender. https://www.google.com/search?q=blender|maya|modo+retopo
first one I forgot to undo subdivisions. 2nd one I deleted all mats to be rendered.
I hope this gives you an idea about my blender knowledge.
I chose this ship to have something to work for longer. To improve with the challenge
BungeeLemming, when using Shrinkwrap in Project Mode be sure to check both “Negative” and “Positive”, i notice you don’t have Negative checked on your screenshot
well i checked both boxes now but it still wont work as intended…
The errors are less but not gone. I extruded the outer parts of the hull and at least it gets better. still not perfect. Some of the vertices still wont fit
I then decided to go ahead and manually fit the edges to the right spot. I copied the y-axis position from one of the correct poly positions and copied it to the failed one. After realizing that I have to get the GLOBAL positions it actually works-- finally
But why does that error happen in the first place…?
And how do I now check if the hull can be rendered properly without errors?
