I’ve begun work on modelling the ships for the group project. It’s been quite a learning curve as I have had little experience in modelling hard surface objects. Previously my main focus has been on modelling organic characters.

For my first attempt I simply used image planes to rough out the shape of the hull, but this ended badly with the topology not working how I wanted. In fairness, I rushed into it and didn’t plan ahead or gather enough reference material. So I went back to square one and began gathering as much reference as I could.

During my internet browsing, I came across a wood modelling website that specialised in making sailing ships. It was the perfect reference as they had “cut out” sheets for all the individual parts of the ship, which meant I could model and piece together all the parts in Maya and build an accurate model. Another added benefit is that by creating all the different parts I now understand how a ship is actually built and created, and it has added a sense of weight to the model.

As you can see above, I created the hull ribs of the ship, which allows me to model around them to create the exact shape of the hull. I did this by drawing curves along the hull and used the loft tool to create a nurbs surface between. I went through a few stages of redrawing the curves to get it exactly correct, but finally ended with an acceptable result.

As Chun, a group member, was wanting to create a pre-viz, the next step was to quickly block out the deck, masts and sails of the ship so that he had a roughed out version he could use, with the end result shown below.

Its still early days and plenty will change, but for a blocking out model I’m pretty happy with the results.

In the meantime, my other group members have been working on storyboards and researching the various elements of the project. We’ve had some good results with the cloud research; Chun has come up with some amazing looking renders. We’re aiming to add a lot more colour into them, but for a first result we’re happy, have a peek!