Tutorial --- Modeling a Ship (Maya)

Shipbuilding_tutorial

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Shipbuilding Modeling a Ship in Alias|Wavefront's Maya 2.0 By Carsten Lind Email: [email protected]

One crucial thing to do before modeling is to do research. I searched the web and found images of cruise ships. If you don't do the research, you might miss important things that will make the model believable. After studying the images of the cruise ships carefully, I roughly sketched the basic shape of the ship in Maya using curves. These curves will then serve as a guideline when modeling the Figure 1 ship. I also applied all the curves to their own la er so I

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can turn them all off at once when evaluating the model. The hull of the ship was made by using Maya's birail function to sweep curves along two rail curves to get one side of the hull. The hull surface was then mirrored to get the complete hull. (Figure 1) I then build the front deck, by lofting the top curves from the hull. The passenger's cabin decks were then created by duplicating curves from the geometry of the hull and lofting them. This ensured continuity of the surface. To get the lower deck (the cutout in the side of the hull) Figure 2 I projected the shape of the lower deck onto the hull surfaces and trimmed away the holes. (Figure 2)

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A lofted surface from the trim curves on the hull,


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from left side hull to the right side hull. I inserted a cylinder as a banister and duplicated it, running inside the lower deck side, to get some easy, yet effective detail on the lower deck. The chimney was created from a couple of lofted curves. The The bridge is an extrusion of a triangular shaped curve along one isoparm taken from the front of the upper cabin decks. I added a few cylinders, serving as antennas and created a lifeboat from a hemisphere. The support for Figure 3 the lifeboat was made by extruding a circle along a curve. The lifeboat sections were then duplicated and placed along the side of the ship's different decks. The anchor opening in the front of the hull was made by projecting two rectangles with


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roun e corners on the hull surface and trimming away the holes. (Figure 3) I also placed a few boxes and cylinders randomly on the surfaces to get the kind of "hey we are humans" look on the ship. As always, when creating 3D i'ts important to add some randomness to avoid the "perfect symmetry syndrome" which makes a model unbelievable. Always take a look at your researched material and take notice of the little things such as small boxes, and litter and used Figure 4 sodacans and add those to get more realism into your model. Texturing I rendered an image of the ship from the side viewport in a large resolution width=1000 and opened the


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mage n Photoshop. I made a layer and started to paint the texture. ( Figure 4)

This is the final texture that was assigned as a planar projection as a color map. (Figure 5) Fi gu re 5 When creating the texture, make sure that the texture is cropped to fit the bounds of the ship -- this makes the alignment of the texture a lot easier in Maya. Just press the 'Fit to bounding box' button in the attribute editor on the projection node. Here you can Figure 6 see the texture applied to the surfaces. (Figure 6)

The same texturing creation method will be used for the front of the top deck. I created the bump map for the windows


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from the same Figure 7 file I used for the colored texture. This is the greyscale bump map file. (Figure 7)

I connected the bump to the shading network and reused as many of the network nodes as possible. Here you can see the shading network for the shader. (Figure 8)

Figure 8 The rendered image with the bump map applied. (Figure 9) I find it very important not to exaggerate bump maps. This is a common error made by quite a few artists. The bump map was adjusted using IPR rendering, which enables Figure 9 you to see your adjustments immediately.


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ow y, more more and more textures are being applied. (Figure 10) The chimney now has a decal and the front deck now has a wooden texture applied (it's going to be adjusted, though). I am going to place some railings on the edges of the decks and behind the Figure 10 chimney there will be a pool. But more on this later.

This image was created to present the model for the client. (Figure 11) It had to indicate that the ship was "under construction" and I added the scaffolding. Figure 11 I have cut the rear end of the ship to get a more irregular shape. (Figure 12) I drew a line, describing the shape of the cut. Duplictated the curve and lofted a surface between them. The new surface was intersected


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Figure 12 with the surfaces of the rear end of the ship and then trimmed.

The texture for the bridge of the ship was all made in Maya. As you can see in this image of the shading network, it required quite a few nodes. (Figure 13) 13)

Figure 13

Here you can see the result of the texturing of the bridge. (Figure 14)

Figure 14 The Virgin Trip! Just for the fun of it, I added the sea, and applied a sea shader I already had, just to see how it looked. I don't know who made this sea shader, but it's great! (Figure


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Shipbuilding_tutorial 15)

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First of all, I wanted to have the windows as a color map. For this I used the grid texture which was applied to the color node. Then I duplicated the grid node network and applied it to the incandessence connection on the shader. This gave my shader a brighter look on the white parts on the windows. Finally, I created an environment sky node and connected it to the black color of the incandessence grid node to get a kind of reflection of a sky on the Figure 16 black parts of the windows. You can download the shader in the shaders section here at caligraphics -- or click here: seaWaves.ma You will get the best out of it if you use raytracing when you render your image.


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Another view of the ship... (Figure 16) The water level was adjusted a little and the shader with the windows was applied a little reflection. Notice how the water surface reflects slightly on the hull. I also added some more Figure 17 antennas. Once again the rear end was adjusted. (Figure 17)

I added railing and changed the texture of the front deck. (Figure 18)

Figure 18 Carsten Lind's studio, Caligraphics, is based in Denmark. Visit the Web site at http://hjem.get2net.dk/caligraphics Images are Copyright of Carsten Lind and Jubii A/S and may not be used or reproduced without prior concent of Carsten Lind or Jubii A/S Kind Regards Carsten Lind, 1999

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Tutorial --- Modeling a Ship (Maya)

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