Sky Pirate Airship

Axios

I'm excited to finally get to this project so I'll post it right here from the beginning. I will be making an airship inspired heavily by Skies of Arcadia, but rather than remaking one from the game, I really just wanted to have one of my own. Additionally, I want to try something just a touch more stylized than my usual stuff so here we go.

I'm working off of this fantastic concept by Michael Bills:


And my massout from tonight:


And a wood material I made in preparation of this. All use the same textures, just changing up some shader settings, and I plan to use this material as the main surface covering the ship.

DWalker

I think the venetral surfaces need to be taller to match the concept; the wing span should also be increased.

The bow - and especially the keel at the bow - could use more polygons' it's very angular now.

The angle of the bow spirit seems too shallow; in the concept it looks to be about 30 degrees.

Axios

Thanks, DWalker, some good points there. While most the geo is placeholder, my first challenge is wrangling perspective from the stylized concept.

First I stopped to plan out all my materials and textures and came up with a basic list of wood, gold, glass, sails, trims, and unique atlas. Next, I did some more work on the blockout, specifically the hull, and dropped it into UDK for some preliminary texture testing.

ayoub44

look great so far ; are you using a game engine ?

Alismuffin

That is a mighty fine wood texture you have there

Axios

Thanks, and yes I am using Unreal. The last two images as well as the wood picture in the first post are from UDK.

DavidBrumbley

I don't see any pirates

Klash-120

More wood plz.

S2Engine

Dat sky.

DavidBrumbley

A helpful paintover

Klash-120

Needs more Michael Bolton.

Axios

Thanks for the super helpful paintover. I can totally see how you got a banner now.

Anyways, some progress for today. Worked on the hull geo and a lot on the UVs. I think I'll try making a wood end trim texture to improve some of the awkward terminations.

sjuskadur

Looking good keep at it. Make sure the textures on the keel of the ship (The planks with the yellow stripes) line up with the back, its minor but its all I got right now!
Also this is the cleanest deck on a wooden ship I have ever seen. Maybe a vertex paintable shader might help to give you wear and tear on it.

dfinlay

That is one hell of a wood texture. Looks great!

DWalker

Actual sailing ships of the period sheethed the lower hull in copper to prevent teredo worms from destroying the hull and prevent other sea creatures from attaching the the wood and slowing down the ship. Anyway, just a thought that it might give you an excuse for an interesting non-wood texture on the hull.

TheTurner

This looks great!! I'm learning a lot for my own ship and seeing your progress helps me organize the madness haha

Can't wait to see more

Axios

sjuskadur: Thanks, for the wood I'm going to try out making a strip of plank ends to put along corners and such where the wood bending or intersecting doesn't make sense. I will certainly be trying a vertex blend if I need wear in places but I'm challenging myself to not over-grunge things as that would be uncharacteristic of my reference.

amile duan: Yep, that's an artifact from trying to match the concept. I'll certainly need to lengthen the cabin to fit windows and make any sense.

DWalker: Thanks for the suggestion, but I'm thinking that is one that I'll go without. Don't need it to be too realistic as this is an airship, and while there is a ton of wood going on right now, I think I'll have plenty of material variation in the final product.

TheTurner: Thanks, best of luck with your own ship. In case you're interested in my plan going forward, I'm going to try tiling textures with possible vertex blending or macro textures for the sails and gold area, and one-way tiling texture of various trims/ropes/etc, and a single map to contain the more unique stuff like cannons, anchor, barrel, etc.

Klash-120

Still rock'n a single tileable wood shader? Coloring it with material instances or vert colors embedded in the geo?

TheTurner

I will definitely be following your progress! This is my first time doing a low-poly project that is VERY heavy in hand painted textures, and just seeing your "color map" for deciding the amount of textures you need has inspired me to do one of my own. I'm not even done with it and I'm seeing things a little clearer :thumbup:

How large do you plan on making your larger "misc" texture sheet?

Thanks again and keep up the hard work

DavidBrumbley

It looks like this boat is made out of wood.

Axios

TheTurner: I'm authoring everything at 2k and I'll probably keep that map at that resolution. The assets I plan on putting on it are anchor, cannon, vent, porthole, helm wheel, rudder flaps, and a barrel.

Small update, spent some time reworking the wood shader for vertex blending and started a trim texture that I'll be able to use for the ends of wood planks. Still some work to do there to match the colors better and add a spec map. Didn't spend a ton of time painting the verts as I expect I'll need to redo it sometime anyways.

Axios

Pretending like I didn't abandon this project for over a year...

Did just a bit of modeling tonight.