3DShipWright

Hey folks, haven't posted in a while, so here it is... Frames are still progressing. Sadly, I don't have the same amount of time these days to dedicate to modelling as I used to, but I hope to complete the internal frames within the next two weeks, at which point I can move on to cutting out the internal planking. Building the frames - or at least the incredibly accurate way in which I'm doing them - is very tedious and slow. The good news is that once I'm past this step the rest of the build should pick up in terms of pace. And here's a screen shot showing how well my modelled frames align with the plans. Note - the height of the gun/sweep ports is correct. There is actually a very rare distortion in the AOTS book that caused the images to get squished vertically, whereas my modelling conforms perfectly to the RMG plans, as well as the scanting tables from The Shipbuilder's Repository. Best, -Nate

That Shipyard and Drydock combo looks fantastic! On the topic of which ship to do next, the obvious answer is that it is 100% your choice. My Personal preference, for selfish reasons, is that you continue with your Pandora. I don't look at it as competition at all, as I never intend to sell mine, and from what I've seen the group projects on this site tend to foster the best results among all participants. I think it be really cool to have two 3D artists reconstructing the same ship with the same software. On the flip side, if you did construct the Bounty, my Pandora could be there when your crew inevitably mutinies. Excited to watch whatever you decide, -Nate

This is absolutely awesome The lines are soooo clean and precise. Keep it up, can't wait to see more!

Pandora's framing, still very early stages. I have about 2/3 of the perpendiculars modelled, and now I'm working on the fore cant frames. Each futtock is extremely precise from the floor timers up through the top timbers, and each dither and bend mathematically in accordance with the scantling data in The Ship Builder's Repository This applies to: The room and space calculations provided The siding and gap dimensions taken from the 15in deadflat at midship, the other waist/midship stations (stations '5' to 'N') and outer perpendicular sections (5 in total). The dithering with each futtock above the floor - 5/6ths and 2/3rds, respectively The pattern of offsets and frame staggering and perhaps more importantly the specific points on the ship where these general rules were broken. Note: All chocks not currently modelled. They will be cut out from the existing frames and modelled later. And a couple screen grabs... Till the Next, -N.

Hey Folks, Happy New Year! I'm excited to be back at the table on Pandora and now have new resources at my disposal that I hope will make Pandora my best project yet. The keen observer among you may have noticed that while I began this project in the traditional manner - that is, gathering/lofting plans, building the keel/stem/stern assemblies, and getting the moulded breadth 'shell' built in 3D - I then jumped straight into making the exterior planking and fittings. This probably leaves many to wonder what, if any, internal details I plan on modelling... Well, I'm happy to say that even in its digital form, this Pandora will be a 100% built up model. Every individual frame, beam, plank, nail, bolt, and sheet of copper will be captured in excrusiating detail. It is for that reason that I needed more books in my library. Now, thanks to my family, friends, and loving wife, I have acquired 4 new (old) titles that should help me do justice to this famous piece of Naval history. Among these, the famous Ship Builder's Repository of 1788, shall be indispensable for construction, dimensions, and put plainly: how it all fits together. With all that said, the reason I was working on the outside hull and fittings was precisely because I could work on these parts with relative confidence while awaiting the reference material to do better justice to the frames and interior of the ship. I've nearly finished the external planking and am pleased with the results for the most part. The 3-2-1 Pattern and the Rule of 4 The external planking on Pandora conforms almost exactly to the plans. Including the garboard strake, there are 21 'standard' strakes that follow the 3-2-1 pattern I pointed out in my Confederacy project. I know this confused some folks, so I'll do my best to explain how I interpret this pattern: There are a series of vertical cuts that separate each strake along the hull into individual planks (duh!) On Pandora and many other ships I've seen, these cuts are made almost exactly where the station lines are. Except where the planking is sheared off at the bow and stern, each plank is exactly 4 stations long Now, the 3-2-1 pattern, as I call it, refers to how the planking is staggered between strakes. It should actually be called the 'Alternating 3-2-1 Repeat-as-you-go-down' pattern. Yuck! But not to worry, it's simple enough to understand: Starting at the foremost cut in each section, move aft 3 station lines to get the location of the next cut in the strake below the one you started on. Next, move forward 2 station lines to cut the strake below that. Finally, move aft 1 station line and cut the plank below that. That's it! Just repeat the process until the whole hull or hull section is complete, using the same station line you started with, only 4 strakes down. This works out well, as every plank is 4 stations long, and every vertical cut in the planking is made 4 strakes above the last one. Hence, the Rule of 4. Hull Plank Sections: Section #1: Garboard -> Tuck -> Bottom of the Lower Counter The planking for the first 21 strakes on Pandora follow the method I described above, but even within this first section, the planks are not evenly spaced (i.e. equal siding width) across all station lines. The reason is the tuck The tuck at the stern is at the top of the16th strake. The 16 strakes are evenly spaced from the keel to the tuck... As are the 5 strakes that extend outward from the tuck to the diagonal scarfs that make up the next section of planking. Note that though equal in width to each other, these last 5 strakes are considerably narrower than the 16 that preceded them. Upon reaching the deadflat at midship, all 21 strakes are evenly distributed and continue that way all the way forward. When viewed from behind, the cuts from the sternpost and lower counter to their respective place at midship appear more or less as straight lines. FYI - right now the topology is only able to change at the stations, half-stations, and the FP/AP, so more subdivision between these lines will be required to get the strakes to delicately 'curve' as they approach the tuck and lower counter. I do plan on fixing this later - as I will also need this shape to be more accurate when I add the transoms. Section #2: Diagonal Scarfs -> Elm Stringer or lower Thick Part Next comes a series of 3, double-wide strakes (each being the width of 2 normal strakes, or 6 strakes in total). This part of the ship has the sharpest changes in inflection points along the station lines, so for structural reasons, each double-wide strake is cut into nibbed triangles (and inverted triangles), with each apex being 2/3rds the width of the total strake. The apex of each plank is also offset, so that one diagonal cut to the apex is 1 station long, whereas the other is 3 stations long. This way each plank is still 4 stations long. The direction of the offset also alternates between the three double-wide strakes. Note that there is also a 'washout' at the bow and stern where the cuts once again simply split the strakes in half. For the sake of simplicity, I set the washout points to align with the foremost and aftmost cuts on the rest of the planking which is at stations 'R' and '23', respectively. To be continued in next post...

@Robska - Certainly! So the first thing to note - in case you missed it - is that the planks on Confederacy are actually 3D modelled (refer to pg. 1, post #27 of this thread to see how I made the actual planks). Basic Texturing Flow Pick a PBR texture you want to use, download the images, and setup your material node(s). [Not sure what your level of knowledge is with texture node setup in Blender, so feel free to ask myself or any number of the other Blender users on here to get you started if need be] For all the painted portions on Confederacy, I used the Worn Wood 3 texture from Textures.com Link: Worn Wood Surface - PBR0609 Ideally, you want a texture of a solid wood surface without planks already depicted in the texture itself. Conversely, if you are not modelling each individual plank or strake, then you may want to go with a texture that simulates the planking for you - just be aware that UV unwrapping the entire hull as a single island is going to be tricky if you want to minimize distortion. Next, UV unwrap the planks. I think for Confederacy I actually just used 'smart UV project' because I wanted more randomization and didn't want to mess with manually dragging them around the U editor window. However, manually marking the seams gives a cleaner result and is what I would suggest for a smaller boat/ship like yours. After you do the UV unwrap, scale the UV islands to their approx. real-world scale (tip - most PBR websites will indicate the scale of the texture on the download page). To get the painted look, simply replace the color file with an RGB input. That way, the texture retains all the AO, roughness, normal, and bump data from the wood texture, but you can easily make it any color you want. It also saves memory when you duplicate the material to get different colored wood, because the same images underpin all painted wood textures on my boat. This greatly reduces the workload because now the only time you need to use other PBR textures is for any non-painted wood, metal parts, and ropes. Once you get your basic textures setup and applied, let me know and I can give you more pro-tips, like edge wear, peeling looking paint, water/rust streaks, etc. Hope this helps, -Nate

Here's the latest from pandora. The billboard needs to come in at a sharper angle so I'll have to fix that. Thing is - the plans show two of the chain plates affixed to the hull behind the billboard, yet the plans also show the first three planks of said billboard affixed to the outer planking. That seems like a physical impossibility - am I missing something??? Are there vertical grooves cut into the inside of the first three strakes of the billboard to allow for the chain plates? Thanks in advance

Outer planking nearly complete. I have one more rail on the forecastle to model, then its on to the channels, fenders, quarter deck cut-outs, and so-on.

Add additional vertices to your pin group, or just bite the bullet and set up the ropes as collision objects - that's what I did. I hate to say it, given that the rest of your model is so impressive, but to my eyes your sails are a bit of a let down. The textures and subsurface effects are good, but they don't behave like real sails. Here's a few tips: Make sure your sails are high poly (remember to use simple SS, not catmil-clark) and add the solidify mod after you run the simulations Run a different cloth simulation for each sail, or at the very least, apply the physics simulation at a different point on the timeline for each sail Animate the force field - real wind is not constant, changes both direction and speed. For extra realism, I added a low value to the verts in front of the bunt lines so that the sail billowed out around the lines somewhat. Note that this will require you model the ropes on each side independently (no more mirror mod, sadly, but the result is worth the extra effort. Finally, consider modelling the course sails as furled, Not only will this add to the realism, It also allows more of the actual ship to be seen in renders

Current state of the project - I will bridge the gap in an upcoming post, but presently, I'm finishing the external planking.

And yes, I know that is not Pandora Executive Summary After deliberation, I am taking on the HMS Pandora as my next project. Pandora will be a digital build using multiple software packages, and will be optimized for printed artwork or film. The model will also be rigged for animation for use in film, though I myself do not plan on animating it. The model will be high-poly, and of high historical fidelity which is why it will be documented as comprehensively as possible here on the Model Ship World website. The targeted accuracy is a less than 1% deviation from any credible historical source across all conceivable metrics. This applies to all components modelled About this Build Log I think my biggest asset and greatest hope of completing Pandora is you – the MSW community and the overwhelming knowledge you guys (and gals) have of ship building. I received excellent feedback on all three of my previous builds, yet I am chronically at fault of two things, namely: a. Not seeking out advice when I have a question or run into issues during the build. and… b. Not sticking to the topic or theme of the build log. The latter is especially bad. For example: with Confederacy, I began the build log as an actual step-by-step tutorial of 3D ship modelling in blender, then when that became unsustainable, I moved to posting screenshots of my progress accompanied by short update logs and upcoming tasks. Towards the end I didn’t even finish posts that were supposed to be a ‘part 1 of 2’ or something similar. With my 3D longboat, I am proud to say that I have at least finished the project (gallery photos coming soon! No, really, I promise. Lol). However, I opened that topic thinking I would turn it into a showcase of how to correctly turn a single model into multiple boats in a 3D render and have them look convincing. But it turns out that doing just one was hard enough. Fact is, I simply need more overall discipline in my work. And Pandora is going to be an absolute BEAST to model correctly. I don’t expect her to be perfect – that would be an impossible standard – but I do expect myself to be far more patient than in the past. Framework The theme and structure of this log will be simple: A 3D PANDORA build log. I will still talk at length about how I achieved certain results within the software and call out a few features by name, but I’m going to shy away from anything that is more step-by-step. Not guarding any trade secrets here, it’s just that as my skill has improved, so have the complexity of my workflows. At this point I fear my methods won’t be understood by anyone unless I make a video tutorial. Most of this project will be done in Blender. The final product will be digital, and I find blender to be the best intermediary software between. However, as I’m intending this to be a comprehensive, historically accurate build, I will attempt to be ‘software agnostic’ especially in the early stages of the build. As far as my pre- and post-production needs are concerned, Adobe pretty much corners the market. And even within Blender, I’m making extensive use of 3rd party CAD addons that will allow blender to do 90% of what DelftShip does on the hull front. Margin of Error The allowable margin of error for this project is 1% across all metrics. This is not intended to shield me from mistakes. I will make plenty of mistakes along the way. When I do, call them/me out. Full stop. This is important, not only from an educational perspective, but because unchecked mistakes compound and in extreme cases can even break the project. Rather, this buffer will serve the inevitable reconciliation between imported plans. Even after hours removing distortion in a highly capable software like Photoshop, then further hours spent positioning the images in Blender, there will inevitably be things that won’t line up properly. Excited to get into it with y'all. Stay tuned!!!

Thanks Thukydides. With regards to your comment above can you be more specific? Are you talking about... The overall profile of the cutwater? (See below) [Also note: model is a work in progress, Apron net yet complete] OR Are you talking about the arrangement of the pieces themselves? (see below) I've seen plenty of examples where the general shape of the cutwater/knee of the head looks as depicted on Pandora (Swan and Porcupine class post ships almost all have the same profile) so I'm guessing you are talking about how the particular pieces are arranged, correct? Assuming you are talking about the latter, where do you think the error lies? I'm of the general assumption that - where possible - fewer overall pieces are preferred from a stability standpoint - which is why the lacing/mainpiece is a single piece of wood, and also why the bobstay holes were cut there and not in a dedicated bobstay piece. Also, remember that these are small ships, and it is perfectly plausible to get each of the components above from the trunk of an oak tree. Anyway, please elaborate on which line you believe was marked off incorrectly, and how you think that might affect the design. Happy to take any feedback under consideration. If it helps, my initial question was if there is any 'sandwiching' that occurs between the boxing of the stem and the gripe, lacing, chock, and gammoning piece? Thanks again, -N

@Arthur Goulart - BTW, I didn't mean to seem negative on Rhino.... still a good software, and I'm excited to follow your build.

@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

@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.

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!

@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

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

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

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...

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

Sails completed!

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

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.

"Quite the contrary, ol' sport - it's those insignificant details that are by far the most important." - Sherlock Homes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle