Second Rate Battleship

[Moderator]

20:39, 27th Mar 2012
shamanyouranus: Same as others.

 

[Fingolfin]

I really think you need to practice on how to model ship hulls. A good idea is to download ship plans from the National Maritime Museum's webpage and use them as a base for modeling, there is a very good tutorial here.

 

[SirFranc]

I really think you need to practice on how to model ship hulls. A good idea is to download ship plans from the National Maritime Museum's webpage and use them as a base for modeling, there is a very good tutorial here.

I have done many HD ships, the problem is, i can't follow the ship shape that closely when it comes to low poly, take as example the curves that get from the middle of the hull back to the rear, where the keel goes up to the rudder line, that's quite difficult to do into low poly

but i will practice for sure!

 

[Fingolfin]

I still feel like the proportions are a bit off. First of all, the foremast is way too short, second, ships of this era were tall and thin, yours is too broad in my opinion. Also, the increasing levels on the stern end should be sloping upwards. You should accenturate the angle of the stern and the aft galleries, in games, and low poly models in particular, lifting out theese notable features will make the ship feel more genuine. Finally, i think you can afford to add another segement to the forecastle and make the front of it square and then lowered, as you can see here, not to mention add the little piece of prow that supports the foremast (the one that the figurehead sits on).

Another important hint i should give you, that will not increase filesize, is to make the filter mode of the material of the ratlines blend instead of transparent, this will cause them to render at longer distances, and remove that sharp, paper-like feel they have.


Now, i know it is not in any way fair to compare a 1800 poly ship with a 10000 poly one, but if we compare the silhouettes of my fourth rate model and your ship, perhaps you will understand what i mean:

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And here is how i meant you should do the aft, with just a few extra polies:

Image

 

[SirFranc]

I still feel like the proportions are a bit off. First of all, the foremast is way too short, second, ships of this era were tall and thin, yours is too broad in my opinion. Also, the increasing levels on the stern end should be sloping upwards. You should accenturate the angle of the stern and the aft galleries, in games, and low poly models in particular, lifting out theese notable features will make the ship feel more genuine. Finally, i think you can afford to add another segement to the forecastle and make the front of it square and then lowered, as you can see here, not to mention add the little piece of prow that supports the foremast (the one that the figurehead sits on).

Another important hint i should give you, that will not increase filesize, is to make the filter mode of the material of the ratlines blend instead of transparent, this will cause them to render at longer distances, and remove that sharp, paper-like feel they have.


Now, i know it is not in any way fair to compare a 1800 poly ship with a 10000 poly one, but if we compare the silhouettes of my fourth rate model and your ship, perhaps you will understand what i mean:

Profile

Top

And here is how i meant you should do the aft, with just a few extra polies:

Image

Thanks for the imput! i really like your work, i was going to do a model of the HMS victory (or a custom third rate), i just need some decent plans to use as reference and i haven't found anything good.

Btw take in count i made those ships by memory, and i didn't do the front part on purpose to save the polycount, at the end of the day, when you play in Wc3, you can't really tell much those details, but well, i can always tweak them as i get some time

Btw i was taking a look on the website you posted me, do you believe i love ship games but i never heard of Akella?

 

[Fingolfin]

Frankly, i don't play akella games either, my main experience of ship battle games is from napoleon total war

Anyhow, the national maritime museum is a very good page to find ship plans on, otherwise it is usually rather simple to just google "ship plans" or something alike and you will get many nice references.

I attached one that i used for another ship of mine, a third rate, in which i inverted the colors (to make edges easier to make out in 3ds max) and added red dots and lines to mark the ribs and where the seams would go.

Basically, you do just like in the tutorial and start with a plane on the back/front image, then pull every level out to it's according rib.

 

[SirFranc]

Frankly, i don't play akella games either, my main experience of ship battle games is from napoleon total war

Anyhow, the national maritime museum is a very good page to find ship plans on, otherwise it is usually rather simple to just google "ship plans" or something alike and you will get many nice references.

I attached one that i used for another ship of mine, a third rate, in which i inverted the colors (to make edges easier to make out in 3ds max) and added red dots and lines to mark the ribs and where the seams would go.

Basically, you do just like in the tutorial and start with a plane on the back/front image, then pull every level out to it's according rib.

Ye i was reading it, what i did previouslty (from my IRL experience with ship modelling) was to make a plane for each section of the hull and then join the outer husk, but the result wasn't as good as this method suggests, i'm trying right now but the plans i got are really low res and it's hard to follow, i had to make like 50% of the vertices on my own, still, looks decent.
I will check, i didn't had much luck on google about ship plans (most needed to pay)

 

[Fingolfin]

Oh, another thing i would like to note: if you was planning on making a low-poly model, why did you choose to use 8-sided cylinders for the masts? Judging by the polycounts of the different models, the most poly-heavy part is with no doubth the masts as it is of now. You will do perfectly fine with 4 sided cylinders for the masts and 3-sided ones for the yards.

By the way, i found a nice list of ship plans here. Only 16th century, but still nice.

 

[SirFranc]

Oh, another thing i would like to note: if you was planning on making a low-poly model, why did you choose to use 8-sided cylinders for the masts? Judging by the polycounts of the different models, the most poly-heavy part is with no doubth the masts as it is of now. You will do perfectly fine with 4 sided cylinders for the masts and 3-sided ones for the yards.

By the way, i found a nice list of ship plans here. Only 16th century, but still nice.

Thanks for the link!
I will try to redo those ships if i will have some time then