Progress

As you can see from the above screenshot, I've moved onto the 'fiddly bits'. The shape of the hull is finished, with only the detail work like the copper plating and 'cannon flaps' to put in.

I've started working on the windowed area at the back of the ship, which I'm mostly having to bodge from the photographic evidence i have managed to find, as well as detailing the visible decks, which it's really all that much of a complicated job, just a time consuming one. I think that i should be able to get the ship finished for Friday, possibly without rigging, but the bulk of it should be done.


Something I've thought about from the beginning, is the fact that we are not going to need all of the ship in shot all the time, which could become problematic if the entire ship is modeled, since although t it won't increase rendering time since the unused parts are out of shot, it will take up processing power and slow down the animators while altering the scene, to solve this problem i'm building this ship to break into smaller more manageable chunks.

I'll do this by just grouping objects together rather than attaching them, so the masts and rigging might be one group, the front of the ship another, as well as the top decks being separate, so that depending on the camera angle, you can remove unwanted parts of the scene and speed up animation.

And so it begins...

Well on friday we managed to bash out the storyboard for the animation and split into the various teams we would be in to get started with the work. I ended up on the modelling and mapping teams, and the modelling i got assigned to do included the Spanish and French ships, as well as the small arms and a seagull.

Well since a ship is a big thing to be making, i decided to plough head first into it that night, looking for visual reference and if possible, plans for a ship that i could use. I figured i was going to need 2 different ships, since if there is too much variation then it may be difficult to see who is fighting who in the animation.

Luckily i managed to find plans for a Spanish ship that was actually in the battle, the Sanísima Trinidad, which at the time, was the biggest battle ship in the world, with 4 gun decks containing over 135 guns (cannons).



The plans i found for this ship were absolutely complete, i even have instructions for what joins would be used for different areas in the hull, as well as dimensions for the rigging, which will be very helpful later on. You can see my current progress below:


As you can see, I've ribbed out the shape of the hull, which was the easiest way to get the shape, since i managed to find, along with the technical plans, instructions for building a balsa wood model of the ship. With the images stuck onto a plane in max, i was able to draw around them then extrude them to create each of the 'ribs' and arrange them along the 'spine', the shape of which came with the rest of it. Unfortunatly for me that was all the 'cut out and use' parts that i could find, so the rest it all going to come down to following plans, as well as photographic reference, since there is a full size model of the ship in Spain somewhere that you can go and visit.


I'm counting my blessings with this ship since I'm not counting on being able to find this level of reference for the others i'm to build, though I'm hoping i can at least use the hull (with slight adjustment) for the others, since it will make the process alot easier.

Boning and skinning

On the Friday just gone, we started using bones to articulate a human figure, and after getting the envelopes fixed it was possible to get some nice movement out of some simple figures, but unfortunately this was not so easy for me to duplicate with the more complicated human figure i had previously modeled. I'm thinking that i will have to play around with the falloff of the envelopes to get the mesh to deform correctly, since i am getting jagged edges around everywhere where there is a joint if i move a limb.

Later tonight I'll post up some images of this error, and if i manage to get a decent fix to it, some tips on how to avoid this, since most of us will probably get this problem with more complicated meshes.

Also, to anyone wanting to use a Biped (premade bones collection in the form of a skeleton) to animate a character, here is a tutorial that i found useful:

BIPED TUTORIAL

HMS Victory is english for 'OMGWTFTHAT'SHUGE!'

Doing a little bit of research today, here's a couple things i found out:

At the time of her launching in 1765, cost £63,176. For comparison, this would be equivalent to the cost of building an aircraft carrier today.

Victory was constructed from approximately 6000 trees, 90% of which was oak.
This equates to 100 acres (40 hectares) of woodland.
Hull thickness at waterline - approximately 2ft (0.6m)

A total of 26 miles (41.9 km) of cordage was used to rig the ship.

Victory could spread a maximum of 37 sails.
In addition the ship carried 23 spare sails.
Total sail area - 6,510 square yards (5,468.4 square metres)



So yeah, a bit big. I copy/pasted this info from the official website, which should come in handy for when we come to modeling and planning out the movie:
http://www.hms-victory.com/

Finally, some blogging

Well i got the internet at home now, as of Last night, only a month after moving into the house :P

So anyway, my progress up till now...

Well i managed to get the head model pretty much finished, I'm having to go back and redo the lips because i didn't like them, and my first attempt at neck/shoulders was lost due to max crashing, but the current progress on that can be seen below.
As you can see it looks a little odd, but with the new lips there will be a little tweaking in the face.


I also started looking at modeling a body since we can't exactly have a load of disembodied heads staging the battle of trafalgar, and after a couple of different methods i ended up modeling it starting from the torso being made from a cylinder. Since clothes are something that will be different depending on what side the people are on, as well as their rank/job, i've left it without, though obviously i drew a line at the amount of detail the model required.
Unfortunatly modeling hands is giving me some trouble, so hopefully i'll be able to get that sorted out for next week, as well as modifying the figure for different body types and sizes, so that we have some variation in the background characters. I'll need to alter it for a child's frame too of course for the head that i made myself.

Getting Started

Ok, this module is starting to get fun now, last week we did an exercise to learn how to make the topology for modeling a face, from the front view anyway. I completed the last given to us, and made the topology for the face we were using in 3dsmax at home. I also pulled back the vertices teh create the 3d view, though obviously i havn't modeled the entire head, and there are some areas that could do with extra loops due to being stretched out alot around the edges, as seen in the images below.I also atempted to map the face, using the photos that i was basing the topology off of.

After i had done this i felt that it would be a good idea to try doing it again with another head to make sure that i could actually do it more than once without the second or third time not working as well as earlier attempts. Since i don't have the internet at home at the moment i decided to use my younger brother as the subject. The reference plate i created is show below:


Since there were junior officers on the ships back then, as young as 11 or 12 years old, i figure that it should be possible to use the model i create from this in the final animation.