My latest project

[Eric2575]

Last year I modeled a toy boat, the Santa Maria. Ever since then I had the itch to create a fairly realistic Pirate Galleon. It's almost finished, but I thought I'd share before heavy texturing starts. This project is for my portfolio. Thanks for looking...

 

Eric

[seancwall]

Wow! What a beautiful model! Can't wait to see it textured.

[Joe Gamblin]

Looks awesome! Great job!

[largento]

Wow, Eric! That looks fantastic!

[itsjustme]

Very cool, Eric!

[Jeetman]

Eric,

 

That looks awesome!!!!!

 

George

[petokosun]

so cool

[MJL]

The word Virtuoso comes to mind.

[KenH]

That'd done with splines!? The mind boggles. Most excellent. A contest winner.

[Eric2575]

Here's a wireframe, I know you guys want one

 

This is a pretty high res model, and the patch count is up there at 39007 patches. The model is made out of 8 components in order to keep the work flow managable. These parts are nicely put together in one action. This actually started out with the creation of a mermaid, which now graces the bow of the ship. The part with the highest patch count is the webbings going up to the masts, because I wanted to model those instead of just using "draw as lines". Modeling the webs will let me decal them later and actually have them look like ropes for subsequent close ups.

 

Your comments and critiques are always welcome. Thank you.

 

Eric

[thefreshestever]

amazing model eric... excited how it´ll look textured... are you going to put it on a water surface later? i´d love to see that..

[Paul Forwood]

Wow! A big applause from me, Eric. I love that model!

[DarkLimit]

-Lovely model well done..

[noewjook]

Perfect !

[adam&oliver]

Super Cool Model Eric. It will look amazing textured.

[Tai Shan]

Great job modelling! I can't wait to see more.

[Rodney]

Made of 8 components you say? Intriguing to say the least.

I'd love to see more images of details/close up of the ship.

 

I take it you had some decent reference to work from?

Or did you just jump in and create?

[Eric2575]

Thank you for all the support and positive comments.

 

Sebastian, yes I will put it on water and have already done some tests (classified for now). I'm going to do some renders in calm waters close to shore and some in a heaving sea - that will be a challenge. The tests look promising.

 

Rodney, the partitioning of the ship is really pretty straight forward. When I started to run into the usual bogging down of AM after laying down so many splines, I thought, why not take what's finished and export it into a new model. The key is not to move the splines or the bones in the new model or things won't line up. Not too big of a deal if they get moved around though, since I can just realign them in the action. As I complete more sections and export them, I just add the new model sections to the existing action. Pretty soon I have a complete ship in the action. There are some tricks involved when I have to model a part that depends on another part that has already been exported, but like I said, it's pretty straight forward.

 

Since the ships exterior is pretty much done, I'm spending most of my time on the details on deck and the rigging. It's really tedious, but the devil is in the details. I'm cooking a render for my desktop right now but will render more of the details when I feel they are ready. I'll post the desktop render. I do temporary desktop renders of each model I create to keep me motivated even when I'm not using AM.

 

On a side note: Way back in history, about two years ago I imagine, someone (?) did some testing with water in AM. He might have been programming a plugin for the most realistic water that I have ever seen in AM. I followed the post, but it ended without ever revealing what happened to the water plugin. Does anyone remember that post or the guy who was doing that? Even if the plug wasn't completed, I'd still like to know how he got the water to look so real.

[robcat2075]

That's a fine looking ship. I look forward to seeing more of it.

[Eric2575]

And here ya go

[NancyGormezano]

need I say gorgeous ship?

 

but you knew that.

 

Very impressive

[itsjustme]

I had to look for it, but I found an emoticon for "scary"....you are a very scary man, Eric!

[largento]

I take it you had some decent reference to work from?

Or did you just jump in and create?

 

She bears more than a passing resemblance to Captain Jack's own Black Pearl...

[Eric2575]

:blush:jl I feel the love.

 

David, I love that emoticom

 

Whenever I plan to model a subject based in reality, I try to find the best references that I can find. In the case of this ship, I was surprised to find that very little, as far as scaled graphical plans, survived from the time of the Galleons. Mind you, there was plenty of written evidence about the description of Galleons, their stores and such - the Spaniards were very bureaucratical about such matters - but actual visual references were scarce indeed. Many paintings of Galleons exist of the period, but if you've looked at 15th and 16th century art, you'll notice that it's very stylized and completely out of scale. According to Angus Konstam, Spanish Galleon 1530 - 1690, "shipbuilding was usually a matter of good eye and judgment, but after 1580 designs had to follow a set of mathematical principles, and shipwrights had to measure everything." But even after the period of tightening specifications, the old plans did not provide a workable visual reference.

 

So, believe it or not, modern recreations of just about all the ships from those days are based on liberal amounts of artistic interpretation. That's also the reason why depictions of even the most famous ships of the time will vary considerably from one model to the next.

 

My search then took me to plans created for and by Master model shipbuilders of these galleons. Although there were several plans to chose from, I did not want to spend a minimum of $40 for plans that were more detailed than I would ever need for this project. So, I went back to my trusty search engine and found some free plans that would serve nicely for my rotoscopes. Apart from those references, I also picked up a wealth of detailed photos of scale models and actual floating reproductions of Galleons from all over the world. For an historically accurate model - to the best of my current knowledge and ability - these pictorial references are invaluable. On a side note, Hollywood is largely responsible, unjustifiably so, for the way we imagine many of our interpretations of things we take for common knowledge.

 

Well, kinda got a bit long with this one, but it is interesting stuff. Oh, and no, I have no references of Cap'n Jack's ship, since I wanted to stay closer to reality. Although my ship borrows heavily from the Atocha, a Spanish Galleon that sank off the coast of Florida, near Key West, on September 6, 1622 during a strong hurricane, it's basically an amalgamation of different ships of that era.

 

Hope you enjoyed this little dissertation.

 

Eric

[KenH]

Nice render! I just saw the mermaid. I think she should be larger than life size.

[Eric2575]

Instead of modeling, I rendered the ship from several angles. It's still a work in progress, so if you look hard, you'll see some boo boo's.

Enjoy...

 

Eric

[robcat2075]

so if you look hard, you'll see some boo boo's.

 

ok... i'm going to say the barrels of the cannons are too long. The cannons can't roll back any further so the crew would have to hang over the edge to reload.

[Eric2575]

Yup, that's one

[williamgaylord]

Gorgeous work regardless of the "boo boos"! The rat lines on the shrouds do look like licorice strings glued onto them, especially since they stick out beyond the outermost shrouds. Amazing work as usual, Eric.

 

You probably have this reference by now, but if not, you might find it interesting (I'm sure you have more directly useful ones):

[Eric2575]

Thank you Bill. I don't have that one and will look it over carefully. And yes, the rat lines are another boo boo. After modeling them, I had to change the angle going to the mast head and haven't gotten to the spider lines yet.

[williamgaylord]

Glad you found it interesting. Didn't mean to clutter up your "thread" with large files.

 

Today I discovered a square-rigged ship type I'd never heard of before. Ever heard of a "jack-ass barque"? It's sort of a ship that can't make up it's mind whether to be a barque or a barquentine.

[steve392]

Great modeling ,very acurate and a real nice render .A treat to the eyes Eric

[Paul Forwood]

Just beautiful, Eric! Are you going to be rigging the rigging? I had to ask.

[Eric2575]

Argh! I'll make you walk the plank for that one

 

I'm almost done modeling the ship, now it's on to the ocean waves, then textures.

 

I'm glad y'all like the ship.

 

Eric

[Tralfaz]

Great modelling Eric. Really captures the look and feel of the old ships. I can hear the tapping of the Captain's wooden leg as he walks the deck of his ship, looking down on all the scurvy dogs he calls his crew. On his should perches a parrot. But wait, this parrot isn't moving. He is... dead. No he isn't, he's pining. Beautiful plumage the Norwegian Blue! Oh, wait a minute, that is a different story...

 

Al

[Eric2575]

Al,

 

I wondered when you'd peek in. Bein' from the ole country, you ought to know a bit about seefare and pirates, eh? Just kidding Judging from your post, you've been hangin out with Vern for too long...hmmm, me thinks Vern is rubbin off on us all in a good way

 

Now that Caroline has given you the super duper secret of applying decals, you have no reason not to finish your Walker in a spectacular way and animate that puppy. Here's to happy splining, CHEERS! Btw, you gonna enter your monster in this month's contest? Hmmm....???

 

Eric

[nino banano]

great model Eric...how many patches does it have?