3D Longboats in Blender

[3DShipWright]

Hey Folks,

 

I decided to flush out the longboat that features in my Rose and Confederacy projects. This 31-footer will be similar to my other endeavors in terms of realism and texture quality, and will have every single piece of wood, metal, and rope modelled individually. However, note that I’m using the generic term ‘longboat’ instead of referring to its specific type/function (barge, launch, pinnacle). The reason being, I’m going to attempt a one-size-fits-all approach. As a bonus, I will make the model and all of its components available for free and without restriction to anyone that wants it.

[Stepping onto my soapbox] Back to the one-size-fits-all thing – I know this may sound like a bad idea. Nearly everyone I know hates the use of ‘generic’ or ‘copy/paste’ models in CGI. And this goes far beyond the naval/nautical realm. In fact, the whole anti-CGI or practical effects only movement in Hollywood is a response to bad or lazy CGI. But therein lies the point: what audiences actually dislike isn’t CGI, it’s bad CGI. [Stepping back down now]

But what on Earth does any of that have to do with a simple longboat? Well, as I mentioned before, I ultimately want to use Rose, Confederacy, and a ship-of-the-line that I’ve not yet started to make photorealistic renderings and printable artwork. Specifically, I want to do justice to a complex harbor scene. So imagine Nassau circa 1715 or colonial Boston in the latter half of the 18th century. Both have bustling ports with hundreds of boats and ships. There have been a few films and tv shows that have attempted to bring these environments to life, some of which have even done a decent job of framing, lighting and perspective to make a brief fly-over shot look convincing. However – these are film, and they are counting on the audience having only a few seconds to absorb the imagery. This is why so many of these shots rely heavily on haze, fog, lensflare, low-light or backlighting conditions… these tricks tell your brain what you are seeing is real while obscuring the actual subject of the artwork. 

 

Just for fun sometime, pause the movie/show and look at the actual frame. Most CG boats and ships are not that detailed or well done. If there are numerous ships in the scene, it usually only takes a few seconds to realize that they are copies of one another, only posed slightly differently. And studios do it this way for good reason, the time and energy required to do it right would far outweigh the benefit.

 

But creating a realistic, static render is different. My audience will have time to focus on details. Sadly, even I don’t have time or desire to individually model 100 different ships, which brings me full circle to the crux of this endeavor:

 

How do I make a single longboat that can be cloned and easily tweaked to look like many, completely different boats in the same scene?

 

It’s not a rhetorical question, so I began by making a list of variables, in increasing order of complexity…

 

Variable #1: Shared Copies (identical mesh models) with Cosmetic Differences

1.    Pose the copies at different angles and direction, for example, if there are two at the same dock, one can face inland, the other seaward. Okay, so this one’s a no brainer. This is required to even build out the scene, and is also useless by itself.
2.    Shared copies could have different colors. So if the first longboat has blue trim, the second could have red, and yet another green, etc. This is a good start, but it should be taken a step further.
3.    Shared copies could have different skins. This involves changing not only the colors, but also the overall livery. In this scenario, the entire wale on one longboat may be painted whereas on another only the caprail and molding are painted. A third may have a decorative frieze running the wale or on the transom. The strakes on some may be entirely whitewashed, whitewashed only below the waterline on others, and perhaps not at all on a few of them. This method can add a lot of variety while still being fairly simple, as I will only need to tweak certain parts of my textures, and not rebuild the textures entirely – i.e. the underlying wood grain would still be the same on all copies of the longboat.
4.    Shared copies could have different textures. The final method of cosmetic variation is to use different texture sets for different copies. This will make each longboat appear to be constructed of different or somewhat different materials.

 

That’s it for this post, will continue in the next post of a discussion of the other two variables, which are -

 

Variable #2 Unique Copies with Differences in Components
Variable #3 Unique Copies with Differences in Configurations

 

 

-Nate
 

[ccoyle]

That's lovely work.

[chris watton]

Funny you mention copy and paste renders in films. If you pause on a certain shot in the film Midway (the newer one), you will see they pasted half a dozen or so Yamato class battleships in an overhead shot.

[ccoyle]

1 hour ago, chris watton said:

If you pause on a certain shot in the film Midway (the newer one), you will see they pasted half a dozen or so Yamato class battleships in an overhead shot.

 

What? You mean that film is historically inaccurate?? 😮😉

[druxey]

Interesting discussion! BTW, 3DSW, I think you meant 'pinnace', not 'pinnacle'. Worn paintwork looks great.

[3DShipWright]

7 hours ago, chris watton said:

If you pause on a certain shot in the film Midway (the newer one), you will see they pasted half a dozen or so Yamato class battleships in an overhead shot.

Haha - I know exactly the scene you're talking about! I think it's a little less egregious with more 'modern' ships because the ships in a WW2 fleet, in theory, would be more similar than say the Royal Navy's fleet at Trafalgar. Particularily bad is a certain shot in one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, where all the East India Co. ships are not only identical, but their yards trimmed to exactly the same angles and the sails' fluttering are completely synchronized... now that's lazy!

[3DShipWright]

@druxey - Thanks for the kind words.

 

Fun fact - The name Pinnace was derived and evolved from the original Pinnacle, and historical documentation shows that Pinnacle was still the 'official' name for this type of longboat, at least through the 18th century. Some elements of my 3D longboat model are based off of the AOTS H.M.S. Pandora's Pinnacle (pg. 126-127)

[3DShipWright]

@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

[3DShipWright]

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

 

[3DShipWright]

"Quite the contrary, ol' sport - it's those insignificant details that are by far the most important."

- Sherlock Homes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

[3DShipWright]

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.

 

[3DShipWright]

Sails completed!

[3DShipWright]

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

[CDR_Ret]

Wow!