Old warship: Soleil Royal

[Thomas]

Hi!

This is a new WIP I'm starting, something crazy, which will be a very looooong run!
Wel, I will do the "Soleil Royal", one of the Louis XIV french king boat

Below, some photos of model kit of this boat. as you can see, a lot of details and stuff to sculpt / model!







I will do all the base meshes with Amapi 8, some other modeling with ZBrush, all the sculpting and details with ZBrush, I will use CrazyBump for some normal maps and alpha creations and the render / composition with Modo or 3DSMax.

I already done one type of gun boat (is it the exact name?), and some other parts, but not enough done yet to be shown...

Here it is some ZBrush rendering and an mapi 8 screenshot:

[jbshorty]

That is a really crazy project! More difficult than coding a new 3D program?

[rickei]

whooo hooo! that's crazy.

hopefully I will still have good vision and not die from old age before you finish

[Thomas]

jbshorty: in fact, what is difficult here is more the porject managment and taking care of the computer ressources. Except the sculpting and finding the good documentation, nothing really hard to do.
Then, it's less difficult than coding a new software

[DAIGORO]

wow,this is a megacoolproject,the cannon looks very good,i really cant wait to see what you are going to do next and how long it will take to make so much modeling,texturing,sculpting........WOWOWOWOWOW

[Grendel]

Looks gorgeous Thomas, I forsee a ridiculous poly count in the near future, you'll have to really optimize where you can.

[Thomas]

Grendel: yes, in fact, it's more the main problem of this creation: optimization. I will use a lot the normal maps and rendering displacement maps, with the help of external references / Xrefs

[Aunty Betty]

Sweet details already Thomas and this for the bits that will barely be seen.

Lovely work.

[Odessey]

Just the file management for a project like this magnitude alone would take great organizational skills . You are going to dream of Soleil Royal in the middle of the night ! This is one huge project , off to a fine start though.
Regards , Michael.

[Wesgraphics]

Hokey Smokes! That's one ambitious project!

Great work and planning on it. I like it!

[crazy wabbit]

oh you can do it, your talented and well organized.

[-ash-]

That cannon looks really cool. I'm really looking forward to seeing the progress on this one. Also any tips you can pass on along the way would be great.

[JuST]

Uh... amazing idea and great job already. I like all the detail... the texture is just...amazing! XD

[mon_stdnt]

I'm excited to see the progress on this one, a lot of details. Off to a good start with the cannon, Thomas. Good luck

BTW, when I first saw the first image I thought it was the render.

ramon

[Popgriffon]

Uh, that's a big project indeed, but I dont think it's "crazy" - I plan to build this model myself (beginning next year). Yup, I'll be wathing your progress very carefully..
Anyway, expression "gun boat" is not proper in this context, I believe it should be for example "24 lb. cannon" For proper naming/translating (you will have to name probably K+ parts) is good to use "Dictionnaire GRUSS de Marine" - book is rare and hard to buy, but very useful for people that have anything to do with the ships.
"AFAIK the source of all sources" of data about this ship is Maritime Museum in Paris, @Trocadero. They have a big model there (is this model on your photos 2 & 3 ?), which is a base for all other models/kits available. That's true also for my own reference: 1/100 Heller/Humbrol plastic kit. But real life models aren't best source for the reference data about materials... I believe the barrel should be darker, almost black, with yellow highlight.
I hope my remarks are more helpful than annoying

[Thomas]

Ppgriffon: Thank you for your comments!
In fact, I made myself the Heller model kit when I was (a lot) younger). I still have it, but at around 700 kms from home

and for the cannon, it's just a real time shader, the same for all, not a render

[Thomas]

Oups, I forgot that...

Something I started yesterday night, which is far to be done. I continue it a little bit today while eating my sandwich
Between the gun, you can see some sculpted patterns :



Because of the lack of information, I did some sculpting researches: I created a simple base mesh in Amapi and imported it in ZBrush (1), I did a very fast rough sculpting to search the shape and the design of this pattern, I did a retopology (3- sandwich and retopology are not good friends and then, I have a base mesh, close to what I want, ready to be sculpted again.



I can use the projection, but I don't want to use the first sculpting, it was just a test, something simple to find what I wanted to do. I will start over, to have something a lot more clean. I think my new mesh will have enough polygons to give a good result with a normal map when the sculpting will be done, or to be use with a displacement.

This workflow can seem weird, but like that, I can focus only on my recherches and then, I can focus only on the technic, and not both at the same time, losing what I have in mind

Later, the shape done.

[sadot]

Thats what i call a BigProject go ahed man!
Really nice!

[Thomas]

Well, some progress this week end, but not as much as expected, I had to go to the beach, play with my son, etc.. well, a social life!

Then.. I continued the sculpted patterns which are located between the upper deck cannon. Like the cannon, I will use a mix of displacement and normal maps for the final rendering. About the rendering, I will do all the scene with 3DSMax, I had my Max 2009 license this week end.



Nothing crazy on this part, just a basic sculpting, some masks and a very nice real time shader, found on ZBrushcentral, which fit perfectly this mesh, for what it has been designed on this war ship.

The face is not accurate, I mean, nice details, because I don't have such detail references, and I guess that on this war ship construction in 1669, the sculptor weren't able to sculpt so much items like that with a lot of fine details on the face.

Critics and comments are welcome

[sadot]

Hey im seeing an ugly six point polystar
hmmm well you can fix it (red) but you have to create another loop (blue)
.
.
.
(Sadot now runs for cover after defying the king)