Complex modelling question - Ship Hull
Hello everyone,
I'm new here but I'm hoping to really get involved in the community and learn a lot.
I use 3DS max and I have the basics nailed down but I'm trying to do something quite advanced and I was hoping somebody could give me some advice. It may be the case that I'm trying something too complex for my skills but I thought I would learn a lot by having a go.
I'm trying to create a 1:1 scale model of the Titanic's hull. To this end I have bought scale plans and have been trying to work out the best way to use the tools in Max to model it. The plans give me a cross sections for the length of the ship and I was hoping I could lay these out and use a loft modifier but this created really ugly geometry as each cross section had a different number of vertexes. I see no way around this for the bow and stern as the cross sections are much smaller and different shaped.
To complicate matters further I want to be able to be able to model each individual shell plate on the ship by splitting the hull into the individual strakes. Would this affect the way I model the basic shape of the hull?
I appreciate this is a fairly complex task and I would really appreciate anyone who could take the time to help me.
To illustrate what I mean this is the level of detail I want to go for. The images are from Kyle Hudak.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=523666874312917&set=a.523666587646279.124758.230665940279680&type=3&theater
Thank you in anticipation!
Andy
I'm new here but I'm hoping to really get involved in the community and learn a lot.
I use 3DS max and I have the basics nailed down but I'm trying to do something quite advanced and I was hoping somebody could give me some advice. It may be the case that I'm trying something too complex for my skills but I thought I would learn a lot by having a go.
I'm trying to create a 1:1 scale model of the Titanic's hull. To this end I have bought scale plans and have been trying to work out the best way to use the tools in Max to model it. The plans give me a cross sections for the length of the ship and I was hoping I could lay these out and use a loft modifier but this created really ugly geometry as each cross section had a different number of vertexes. I see no way around this for the bow and stern as the cross sections are much smaller and different shaped.
To complicate matters further I want to be able to be able to model each individual shell plate on the ship by splitting the hull into the individual strakes. Would this affect the way I model the basic shape of the hull?
I appreciate this is a fairly complex task and I would really appreciate anyone who could take the time to help me.
To illustrate what I mean this is the level of detail I want to go for. The images are from Kyle Hudak.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=523666874312917&set=a.523666587646279.124758.230665940279680&type=3&theater
Thank you in anticipation!
Andy
Replies
Focus on the global shape before jumping on individual strakes. You could conform them over you base mesh.
A hell of a work if you want to match precisely anyway ^^
Paserby I've never used soft selection before. Just had a play with it now and I don't think that method will give me the accuracy I want. Plus the complexity of the stern of the ship would make it very difficult to get it to conform.
Noors I think that might be the way forward. The resulting mesh looked right in terms of shape last time I used loft but the geometry was horrible.
Here is my original loft....
As you can see...not very nice.
I'm trying to work out how I can model all the cross sections with the same number of verts.
I can do the bow sections fairly easily as they don't change much in height as shown below.
Here are the stern sections though. You can see how much they change over a short horizontal distance.
Start with low resolution and add a turbosmooth modifier. I'm not sure how many points you have there, but too many to manage obviously.
Search for titanic, or ship liner on turbosquid, you'll see some wireframes that may help you understand the logic.
http://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/3d-model-titanic-passenger-ship/517390