Plain sailing

[mikeb]

This is the sprite based render to sea (excuse the pun) how it looks, the render time was a bit nasty but i wasn't expecting blink of an eye results..

http://www.doghouseanimations.com/pirat ... ticles.wmv

I think if i scale up the ship this should work well for initial purposes. That said i now have to get this working with my ship simulator, then see if it will all working in harmonious multi-ship style.

[blewis]

Good stuff keep it up! You might also like the Add the Sea plugin from Motion gimmick.

[mikeb]

I did try it out a few years ago, the mesh deformation was good but it all took too long.

I like where mine is going but it's not there yet. On the upside Ederer has offered to help by lending me his expresso routine he used on that brilliant vimeo clip. I'm gonna wait to see where i go next with the contact spray..

Getting back to the job in hand i polished up the older ship, taking the woodwork from my old ship and lashing it on this one. I have also got to re-rigging it and I'm gonna add more details to the rigging as i only really ever got 60-70% there with all the ropes..

I've also been tweaking the look I'm going for, but i seem to be failing. I like where this is going but for some reason it really has a Gerry Anderson feel to it, like the end of a bond film from the 60's?!

[masterzone]

great job man! but I think there is a lot of DOF, if you using it too much the boat appear smaller as well.
When you put your eye into an infinite focus objects near to you become blurred but the water is not so far from you

Great job anyway

[mikeb]

So i have dropped the DOF (and my unintentional homage to stingray), changed the lighting a little and started on the rear details of the ship that now has a name- the Holandia. Today i saw it was very similar to what i've made and will only take a day or so to fully convert.

Still to do is the re-rigging of this ship with splines (i am wrong on a couple of areas), add more details, animation controls for firing of the cannons, start work on the dynamic sails, get this all into my ship simulator, think more about the crew, add the bow waves, sort out the ocean texture (what looks good close and far are very different).

So lots to do then..

[mikeb]

So as i get deeper there is just more and more stuff needed.

I've started to add the sails now, biting the bullet and making the texture map I'd been avoiding for ages. The sea has got a boost from some great texture advise from Paul SFX's (http://www.black-and-white-to-color.com ... -tutorial/) ocean tutorial. I have also been busy making displacement maps to rough up the cg look.

Animation is coming soon again. Now I'm back on the rigging, trying to get it right.

[mikeb]

Back to basics here, i've been working on the rigging. I've re-done all the polygon stuff with spline based rigging styling it on the model from the museum.

It's still not finished, missing the pulleys and the rigging that connect each of the sails to the rigging.

Some of the ropes still intersect the sails, though that will be fixed in the simulation version of the ship as the sails are dynamic there.

[mikeb]

So i have added the rigging to the ship simulation i made, as it will soon have to react to the motions of the ship and it's sails.

The simulation itself has also had a revamp taking into account more of it's surroundings and getting much more dynamic sails.

The next step has also been to get several versions of the simulator running at the same time (which was more difficult than it seems). So now i can have hundreds of ships running at once..

But i've started with just 2..

http://www.doghouseanimations.com/pirat ... im%20f.wmv

One of the reasons i put so much time into this can be seen in the clip (though much faster than reality), i can work out basic strategies. Though they have the same turning circle the fwd ship could have fired 2 broadsides as it turned first. Instead of leaving the following ship the advantage by continuing straight and hoping to outrun them.

I have lots of research books on these ships and have played some games, but now i can see what a lot of captains would have had to learn the hard way.

[masterzone]

mmm sounds good! great job! ship movments are so realistic!

[mikeb]

Only a small update here.

I am busy working on a couple of other things and was doing an experiment the other day when i discovered a function I'd never seen (or heard of) before in c4d.

The simple ability to backlight something thin, previously I'd tried sss etc without good results.

Now i've removed the transparency from the sails and got this working instead.

There is still something new to learn every day..