I started working on Jonathan’s modeling tutorial (almost a month ago) and kind of got stuck working on just the corner fittings 
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(photo courtesy of Tandemloc)
Shipping Container Corner Fittings
In case anybody is interested, these cast corner fittings provide what one Tandemloc representative referred to as the “the backbone of the shipping container”. Indeed, these could even be called the backbone of the entire shipping industry as they play the pivotal role by which each shipping container is moved and stacked.
(photo of stacked containers courtesy of…
sorry, can’t find name of the photographer
of this wonderful image)
A little about my Blender image
New to new Blender - or any 3D modeling software - as of about 8 weeks ago, Jonathan’s beginner tutorial on modeling shipping containers helped to get my studies focused. Many others here on the forums (and elsewhere in the vast Blenderlands) also helped immensely by answering my many noobish queries as these simple cast hunks of steel evolved beyond modeling into explorations of topology, textures and my own Blender head. I am thankful to them all.
Weighing in around 25 pounds, these four fittings which are at each end of the shipping container all have the same outside dimensions (6.38x, 7.01y, 4.65z - inches) are asymmetrical. Once the bottom left corner fitting was (finally) modeled, the object was mirrored along the x axis allowing for a good basis for the remodeling of the upper left. The pair were then mirrored along the z producing their right side counterparts. Then it was a simple duplication and rotation to complete the set of eight blocks.
Probably the biggest hurdle after my topo studies was dealing with how to approach whittling down the numbers. The theoretical array of the 8-cluster block is 10 x 10 x 10, but many in that array fall outside of frame. Others within frame are obscured by closer objects. So one savings was only placing the clusters that needed to be seen in frame.
Then of course was the geometry. I had modeled and UV mapped both the outside and the inside of each corner fitting. In the final render; however, only the closest 8-block cluster retained the inside modeled and textured mesh (subsurf level 4). All the others in the scene were gutted of their inner mesh parts though still retained those returned inward portions of their openings. Also, only those clusters within the nearer 4 x 4 x 4 array were modified with a subsurf level 2, the balance used no subsurf modifier.
The final .blend file weighed in around 92 MB. The camera used a 44mm lens set at f16. The focus point was 1.5’. The 1600 x 1200 pixel final render was done in Cycles at 3000 samples and I think took something like 3 hours 40 minutes - or thereabouts. Lighting was done only with (4) emission plane meshes.
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