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3DShipWright

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About 3DShipWright

  • Birthday 01/22/1988

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    Boston Metro Area, United States

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  1. @Arthur Goulart - BTW, I didn't mean to seem negative on Rhino.... still a good software, and I'm excited to follow your build.
  2. @Arthur Goulart No - most people here use Blender, especially as of late. @Loracs To each his own, but personally, I'd recommend Blender... Rhino may be easier to learn, but it doesn't come close to Blender in terms of features/functionality. I say that honestly and with no ego; it's simply a fact. Blenders' actual competitors are pro studio software like Maya or 3DS Max, but Blender is free. And as a newbie, don't you ultimately want a software you can grow into? Again, to each their own. Best of luck whatever you decide, -Nate
  3. @Gregory and @druxey - Thank you both! It was quite eye-opening to learn just how informal and variable stem construction was, especially compared with how precisely designed, documented and measured other components were. Scantling tables give us precise dimensions for gun ports, height above the decks, etc. One could write a novel on room and space calculations. But the stem pieces? 'Well, that depends largely on the shipyard and available timber.' Like, really??? Don't get me wrong, as a 3D artist, I enjoy modeling the parts where I have more creative leeway. I'm just surprised, is all. Anyway, that's not to suggest I'm going to go completely off the cuff. What I think I'll do is to study up on multiple types of stem construction for similar ships of that period, that way I can ensure all the small joint details of my version of Pandora are historically plausible, if not historically accurate. Thanks again, -N.
  4. G'day Friends, I have a couple questions regarding the joints of the keel and cutwater pieces. These pertain to my historically accurate build of the HMS Pandora, though for the most part these are very general questions: 1. Boxing of the Stem. I was led to believe that these pieces have this name because they actually clamp or 'box in' something - my question is what? Do they box in the back ends of the gripe, cutwater, stemson, gammoning piece, and gammoning knee? Or do they box in the front ends of the apron pieces? Or both? 2. Joint Between the Keel and Rising Wood. I know things become somewhat fuzzy when talking about the rising wood and various deadwood components atop the keel, so for simplicity's sake, I'm only asking about the wood inboard of the can't frames of the bow/stern; I'm talking about the rising wood that supports the perpendicular frames. It seems to me that the rising wood is a separate piece than the keel, but I don't know where that transition occurs - does the transition happen at the back rabbet line or at the inner (upper) rabbet line? I assume it's the latter but I would like to confirm. 3. Horseshoe and Dovetail Plates. How do the horseshoe and dovetail (a.k.a. fish) plates interact with the copper plating? Are these pieces later covered with copper link the rest of the ship that sits below the water line? If so, how is that done? Are the plates recessed into the pieces they hold together so they are essentially flush with the outer surface? Are they just very thin to begin with? Were they themselves made of copper on later vessels? Thank You!
  5. @druxey - Thank you so much! Yeah, I agree. Good news is I started this build using RMG plans wherever possible. However, I didn't in this case because I wasn't sure how much internal variation can exist between ships in the same class (i.e. Porcupine vs. Pandora) and I thought the RMG only had the Porcupine on their site - I might've just missed Pandora's though. Regardless, I'll use the image you provided. It's also got the benefit of being a continuous plan, so I don't have to worry about scaling and accounting for distortion separately on both halves of the ship (a true nightmare lol). Thanks again, -Nate
  6. Hey folks, Super simple question here that I probably should, but don't, know the answer to: On the plan below (HMS Pandora), are the dashed deck lines represent the middle of the decks, or the point at which the decks meet the inner hull/planking? I know the decks are crowned slightly and have a cross-fall out to the waterways, so I'm asking if the lines represent the crowning of each deck or the cross-fall. I'm guessing the crowning, but just want to confirm. Thank you all, -Nate
  7. Very well done, Denis! I don't know if you are a professional 3D artist or a hobbyist, but your skills are clearly at the pro level, so the critique/feedback I will give you is the same that I would give to someone in the industry: Tip #1: Drive your Edgewear with the Material's Normal Map I recently found out that in addition to plugging in a noise texture to your bevel node(s), you can also plug in the normal map. This is especially powerful on woods as now the edgewear will not only appear on the edges of physical geometry, but also on baked geometry (i.e. the wood grain). This works on metal as well to a lesser extent. I'll give you a quick before and after comparison in a moment, but first, here's a shot of the edgewear portion from the dark blue wood material as seen on both my Confederacy and 3D Longboats projects. Note that there are two methods of edgewear. One just uses a single bevel node, whereas the other uses two bevel nodes, set to different samples mixed with a MixColor node set to 'difference'. I'm using a hybrid, but what I'm about to show does require two bevel nodes with the Normal plugged into only the higher sample node. Figure #1: My edgewear node setup Here's what the bevel nodes look like with/ without normal map comparison: Example a. without normal input Example b. with normal input Now obviously, I am going for a far more 'beat up' look than you are, but you get the idea. Tip #2: Bake your Bolts Specifically in terms of the U-boat, I would go ahead and bake any bolts/screws along the hull into the normal map, even if you plan on keeping them as part of the 3D mesh. In conjunction with tip #1, this will allow you to add minute amounts of rust/warp/damage to everywhere there is a bolt on the hull. Use sparingly, but its an awesome effect. No picture here, as this is really an extension of tip #1.... Tip #3: Add Wet and Standing Water OR Caustics (situation depending) From a texturing perspective, the drawback of a submarine is that it can be depicted as both floating on the surface or submerged. And the special effects that will really bring your model to life, can only exist in one stage or the other, not simultaneously. These effects are standing water or underwater caustics. Example a. Standing puddles and wet spots on wood. I've deliberately overdone it here to demonstrate. Blender Guru has a great tutorial on this, in fact, I'm guessing you've already seen it or already know how to do this, but here's the link if you need it: Example b. Caustics on the top of the hull when submerged. A bit hard to see from the image, but caustics on the hull is going to be key. The trick is to NOT have the caustics as an emission shader in the actual hull shader. I tried this once and it failed miserably. Blender's caustics systems also don't function well with EXR/HDR setups. My solution gets into lighting and environment artist pro-tips, so I won't go over it here. But if you're interested, DM me and I'll be happy to share. I spent weeks figuring out how to get the caustics, god-rays, murkiness and particle systems and water plane to all play nicely together, and I think what I learned would really help to showcase your submarine beautifully. Summary Regardless of whether or not you implement any of these, your U-Boat is outstanding. I continue to be blown away by the quality of your work. In fact, got a couple questions of my own. Feel free to DM me so as not to derail your thread here if you want, I just figured other artists may want to know this as well: At the beginning of the materials thread, you spoke of a 'mask' on where the various paint colors were applied. Am I correct to assume that means your texturing work is being done in an external application like Adobe Substance Design/Painter or the Marmoset Tools? If not, are using the RGBA channel method inside of Blender? A general answer will suffice, I'm familiar with both. You appear to be a bit of an Enigma (U-Boat pun intended) in that the way you talk about texturing I would peg you as a real-time application artist - Unreal or Unity (though let's be honest, Unity may not be around much longer following the runtime license fee model they had to walk-back). Yet, you've managed to make what is essentially a giant capsule into a 4million vertex model that I'm pretty sure would smoke even a RTX4090... Lol, Just curious. Once again, awesome stuff! -Nate
  8. If anyone's interested, I'm about 1 month into a new 3D Pandora build as well, just haven't started a topic on it just yet...
  9. I must say, I've gotten far more enjoyment from doing a small boat than I ever thought I would. My initial thought around the ships' boats was that they were going to be merely one of the fittings (speaking in terms of time and energy I planned to spend on them). While I definitely put TLC into things like the anchors, capstans, helm, etc. I don't look at those as stand alone renders, and I keep the overall level of detail congruent with that of the entire vessel. That said, I've always dreamt of doing a ship model that would hold water (pun intended) whether you were looking at it from a distance of 2 feet or 200 feet. At that's what made the longboat so rewarding. What I like about this project is that it was the perfect amount to 'bite off'. It was just big enough to justify all the little texturing hacks like: edgewear and scrapes along the hull vector displacement in the individual rope textures standing water on the cockpit and floorboards 3d trunnels along the entire outer hull simultaneous transparency, translucency, subsurface scattering realistic sheen and anisotropic distortion on the sails people! At the same time, because it is a small vessel overall, I have a realistic chance of actually finishing the dang thing lol. Anyway, I hope y'all enjoy - I look forward to posting full resolution images when I complete the longboat in a few weeks' time. Best, -Nate
  10. Hey folks, I hope this is the correct place to post this question. So I've been working on a fully rigged longboat under sail, and have run into a couple logistical issues I was hoping to get some help with: 1. It looks like the foresail is 'looped' (via fairleads?) around the forestay so that when raised, the stay provides the luff of the foresail additional stability. However, the sheave through which the foresail halyard runs appears to be higher on the mast than where the forestay is secured. My question is: Do I have the general configuration correct, and if so, how does the foresail halyard block not conflict with the forestay when the foresail is raised (See picture)? 2. Simpler question: When raised, where does the clew of the foresail belay to on the boat? I ask because once I model the flag halyard, all four pins on the waist thwart will already be in use, and the foresail/flying jib halyards belay to the shrouds above the deadeyes... so there doesn't seem to be much room left unless a pin is used twice or the clew belays around a thwart or the lower mast itself. Thanks in advance, -Nate
  11. Trying out some improved sail and sail rigging techniques... It's nice to have a small vessel like this longboat to use as a staging environment before starting the mammoth project that will be rigging Confederacy.
  12. "Quite the contrary, ol' sport - it's those insignificant details that are by far the most important." - Sherlock Homes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
  13. Part 2: Components Hey folks, Picking up where I left off, the second and (I believe) the most important way to add variances to the long boats is by changing up the components that make up each copy to make different versions of the boat. A pre-requisite to this of course, is to build the model in pieces that can later be swapped and altered. The initial version will be insipred by, but not pirated from, Chuck's Medway project. To that end, I have actually sourced my own versions of royalty-free plans online, and while there are definately some similarities, there are also some fundamental differences which include: 1. Overall Length of the Boat: (31 feet compared with Medway's 28 ft longboat 2. Thwart and Frame construction: The plans I found call for the same split thwart style along the waist, but actually call for cant frames near the bow and cockpit. I carefully verified this, as angled frames are/were unusual on longboats 3. Cockpit configuration: On the Medway boat, the aft-most bench touches or nearly touches the cockpit bench/seat (name?), and on my model, there is a more pronounced gap 4. Rudder: My longboat has a shorter rudder paddle 5. Spar dimensions: Plans for the mast, bowsprit, spanker boom, and spanker gaff were all taken from the AOTS book, and modified to suit a cutter-rigged boat. And now for a photo montage... a. Keel assembly (ignore the texturing on the knee - I will fix later) b. + Thwarts and Frames c. + Risers and Transom d. + Floorboards and Cockpit Floor (note the standing puddles - I had fun with that visual effect ) e. + Seats, Cockpit Bench, Windlass, and Bolsters f. + All Strakes, Wales, Mouldings, Caprails, Oarlocks, and Angle Braces g. + Rudder (with tiller and gudgeon/pintle straps), Chainplates, and Grapple f + Lucky Jack! Getting ahead of myself here, but this model will also include detailed character models when finished That's all for now, smooth seas lads (and lasses) -Nate
  14. @druxey - I was curious, however, later 18th century longboats often seem to be twin masted and lateen-rigged as opposed to the earlier cutter rigged. Do you happen to know the reason for the change? Thank you Sir, -Nate
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