Yeah, you can paint flat color along the shell edges, which will eliminate some of the seams. Some info here http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Normal_Map_Modeling#Mirroring
@dirigible, That artifacting caused by a hardened normal will be practically erased with the splitting of the uvs, just a few pixels gap between the shells will fix it. Edit: ZackF says it better :P
This is nicely done but the wood on the boat is all wrong. Boats aren't just shells of wrapped wood, they have two sides that connect at the bow, like what Snader said.
I didn't use an online reference for the scratches. I used a gameboy that a friend gave me, it had seen some action in it's time and was badly scratched on the screen and shell.
Run regedit.exe, and look in HKEY_CLASS_ROOT\ for MayaAsciiFile & MayaBinaryFile and change the path in shell/open/command. That should do the trick but you may have to restart windows for changes to happen.
Finished all the details and I'm like 80% done with the UVs. I also decided to add some shells to the side of it. I'm happy with this project as a whole so far!
It'd be more easier to stitch the shells together say with the body for one as there lots of unused spaces and kind of messy faces around... But I like the color applied to it as of now....
You could duplicate the glass dome and scale it, visually it would work, but i don't know how your engine will react to two shell of semi transparent material.
Update! Let me know what you guys think. I solved the foxglove problem by putting a shell modifier on the models! : ) Been trying to push the mood as well.