Battleship IJN yamato

[ahau]

Hi all,

just found this great forum, i'm happy there are people with great skills which aren't always modeling girls and cars.

I started this project 2 weeks ago, but as a student, i have to work this summer to pay my next year for school so it's a bit hard to work fast. Anyway i want to create a model of this huge battleship as correct as possible, and push the detail as far as my computer can handle ( and i'm really impressed how some computers can handle the modelling i saw in here, that's incredible.)


actually i'm about 1.9M poly with iteration 1 of smooth, working on 3dsmax9 and rendering via Mental ray. I can't say if the whole ship will handle at this rythm i hope so because i want to put as much detail as i can, so if someone could help me optimising this i'd be glad :) .

[Archetype]

Looking good.

i hope you can keep the detailrate of the A/A guns up.. :)
chainlinks <3

anyway show me a wire and i could help you do that

[pete.cook]

A very impressive start. Going as far as putting chain link guardrails shows an incredible commitment to detail. But sometimes details like that are wasted because you'll never see them, especially on an mesh the size of a battleship. If your eventual aim is to have very close in renders of the guns then that's fine, but if you want more general overviews of the whole ship, I'd skip them for now, especially as you are short of time. Sometimes sacrifices need to be made to get the job done.

[ahau]

actually it's a side project so i'll put as much time i have, there is no dead line, i don't want to rush it, i'll make it done at my rythm with the same level of quality about detailing and other.

Of course i'll will put thoses details forward with close up renders at the end, but my best wish are to create a short animation with it, i don't think if it's possible but i'll try to.
Maybe just a travelling around as i did here:

http://lionheart01.free.fr/travelling1.avi

just a question, how can u do with max and MR to render very high polycount scene? some of my test renders fail with a memory issue when there is not even 10% of the ship,(but i do have 2go of ddr2) so i was wondering how can you render something like 20 or more millions poly .. i know Vray has a meshproxy but i like way more the shading in MR. If there is no solution i'll switch to vray i guess.
anyways thanks for the appreciation :)

edit:

here is the mesh requested, i'm modeling by poly subdivision, if you want an unsmoothed mesh please ask.

[pete.cook]

Occasionally the memory issue pops up due to the way Windows handles physical and virtual memory.

There is a work around, but it can be a little complicated to implement if you're unsure of what you're doing. It can also cause some drivers to stop working correctly too.

You need to add a switch to your boot.ini file.
1. Right click on your My Computer icon (either on the desktop or in the start menu). From the context menu that appears click on Properties.
2. On the System Properties dialog, select the Advanced tab. Then in the Startup and Recovery section click on Settings.
3. In the System startup section of the Startup and Recovery dialog click Edit. This will open your boot.ini file.
4. In the subsection of the boot.ini file under [Operating Systems] copy the line that looks like "multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect" (the numbers may be different depending on where your OS is stored.) and paste it below.
5. On the pasted line add "/3GB" to the line (without the quotes). Also change the description so you know you are using the switch to something like, Windows XP Pro with 3GB switch. This is so that you can still startup as normal should the switch cause drivers to stop working etc.
6. Close notepad and save the file.

Hope this helps with the memory issues.

[Archetype]

the hull is ok polywise

As for the superstructure and a/a

i would reccomend NOT using subdiv
http://www.navalart.net/images/105skwire.jpg

here's an example from my GZ's 105sk's

basicly you should get the general shape and just chamfer the corners a few times

there are to many poly's going into "flat" surfaces you should try to avoid that


note that my example does have alot of subsections on round surfaces "gun barrel/front armor etc" but because i dont have any sections in the length i save about 4x on the polycount

[ahau]

oh i see,

by the way i found out how render very high polycount scene with vray with vray proxy so now i can continue subd modelling as far that i want, but thanks for the tips should help me with circular objects

i'm starting detailling the front main turret

[ahau]

hi there i'm starting the rear part of the hull, also working a little on the ocean

c&c welcome.

[Deetz]

Excellent, that was one massive ship! :eek:

Deetz

[ahau]

It was the one of the biggest :)

[ahau]

hi all,

i didn't see my 127mm AA guns weren't accurate at all from the original one, so i made a new version more correct in it's proportion and more detailed, hope it's better than the old one :)

[Nils]

Nice :)
but only one of those would have choked my PC, I fear

[Archetype]

you seem to have some issues around the aft cutout.

did you do it in lowpoly ?

if so i would reccomend trying to do it after you collapse it wont warp the hull shape in any way then

[ahau]

yes i got some issue in this area, it's following a perfect line when mine is in curve due to my mesh workflow, need to do some work to fix this.

[Archetype]

could you show me a wire of that section ? "lowpoly"
perhaps i could aid in your topology

[ahau]

i'll see if i can fix it myself, if not i'll post the wire, but i'm not at home currently i'll see this tonight :)

[ahau]

hi all,

sorry Archetype, i didn't work yet on the hull, i wanted to finish the main 460mm turret first, i'll get back to the hull when it'll be finish, wich is nearly the case :

[ahau]

ok the hull is fixed :)

[ahau]

there is the overall ship for now :

i solved my problem about rendering with the vray proxy, works very well, so now i can continue subd modelling :)

[Nils]

Great looking model,
heavy render time though :) 2 hrs, 5 min ..

[ahau]

yeah it's because there is 5 area lights, and the real output was 3000x2400 px :p

[kevjon]

It looks good, I wouldn't worry abut fancy light setups for WIP's all you need is one mrspot and skylight with final gather if using Mental Ray or if using scanline 1 direct light (for sun) and e-light for global illumination. Both should render within less than 5 minutes if setup correctly.

[ahau]

it is actually my setup i'm using with MR, but as i said previously, MR can't handle the mesh anymore and crashs, so i switched to vray, i'll put a better light setup for the next render :)

[Archetype]

it is actually my setup i'm using with MR, but as i said previously, MR can't handle the mesh anymore and crashs, so i switched to vray, i'll put a better light setup for the next render :)



i could share my vray light setup as soon as i hit home

my 2.8 mil poly GZ renders within 15 mins on my machine witch is a 2.8HT p4.

[ahau]

thank you very much archetype :)

[giant551]

I think it could be your render settings Mental Ray can handle very poly heavy scenes.

Its the area lights which are killing your render, why not just use 1 area in conjunction with a sphere with final gather. It should render pretty qiuck and give good results.

cheers

Paul

[ahau]

i tryed even without lights ( the defaults lights only) and it crashs, bytheway even if MR could possibly handle my mesh, it won't with the shaders, and as i want to do the final render on the sea, would be useless to continue with mr if it can't handle 1/4 of the mesh :/

hopes vray won't do this to me, it works fine for now

[Simon]

As far as I know, Vray has almost no size limit. I've rendered fully textured scenes with 20 million polys (ok, only just) but if it will kind of handle that insanity it should handle your ship. Most machines will run out of gas before Vray does.

[giant551]

How many poly's is your mesh ???:)

[ahau]

i'm about 8 millions poly on render if i remember well, sorry about the lack of updates, i'm working on a side project ( a little one ) for my sister, i'll get back on the yamato tomorrow

[Martocticvs]

How's this one coming along now?

[ahau]

my computer crashed last week, just finished to restore it.

I got back to work yesterday ( on the rear part of the ship, a big $h*t to model :/) but today i'm switching my cpu ( for a quad core ) so i'll need again a day to install it and get my system ready for work.

Once i got some fresh news i'll post no worry about that.

here is a little preview of the finished 460mm turret, i'm currently rendering it, will be ready in about 8 hours :lol:

http://lionheart01.free.fr/_scene.avi

[Archetype]

8 mil poly's !!!?
man you should really tone down on the turbosmooth \o/

[ahau]

8M on rendering :D

when modeling i'm around 2.

[Archetype]

still far too many for a ship thats 30 % built ;)

[ahau]

it's not for video game purspose of whatever, so this is pure Hi poly modeling, and vray allows me to render anykind of polycount, the only limit is my attention to details :)

polycount is no more a restriction for me.

here is the finished render :

http://lionheart01.free.fr/vray.avi

( aa machines guns aren't shaded, my bad i forgot them )

[Archetype]

well your going to hit a brick wall pretty soon when it comes to your modeling speed.

the thing is not that you cant render it but you'll be taking ages to modify existing meshes.

there is only so much your graphics card can handle.

atm my GZ wont even run on Direct 3d because after unhiding everything my max chrashes, i am forces to use open gl witch drasticly decreases my frame rate. .26 frames per second witch means it updates about every 4 seconds "on a good day ;)"

[ahau]

i'm switching to xp64 soon, as i just got 4 gigz of memory and a quad core, my cg should handle well to, get back to you if not.

[ahau]

some real update:

was working on the rear part of the ship, a real pain to mod :/

[Archetype]

Your a bit off on the portholes m8
just needs to be a hole in the hull with a lid on it

otherwise it looks good.
still alot of work to do on that part though

[ahau]

that's not portholes :

don't even know what it is :D

[Deetz]

Love the render Ahau, nice work!

Deetz

[Archetype]

hmm i still think your Hull mesh is a bit unclean the aft could be a lot smoother..

[ahau]

can you explain me what the aft is? i couldn't get any translation :/

[Archetype]

aft1 /æft, ɑft/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[aft, ahft] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation Nautical, Aeronautics
–adverb 1. at, close to, or toward the stern or tail: Stow the luggage aft.
–adjective 2. situated toward or at the stern or tail: The aft sail was luffing.

[ahau]

oh ok thanks, now i see, yeah there is still lot of bumps will work that, thanks.

[ahau]

sorry for the lack of update, kinda busy :

http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/5776/vray10nw6.th.jpg (http://img132.imageshack.us/my.php?image=vray10nw6.jpg)

http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/8216/vray12dx9.th.jpg (http://img148.imageshack.us/my.php?image=vray12dx9.jpg)

i'm currently doing the 155mm secondary turret.

[kiwi123]

Very nice work Ahau, tres tres bien !

[Lukem]

The gunnery looks especially good - I'm looking forward to seeing the detailing around the funnel.

[ahau]

i nearly finish the secondary 155mm turrets:



http://lionheart01.free.fr/155mm.mov

here is a little anim.

[Lukem]

Very nice level of detail; the bags around the guns look superb.

Are you going to be adding the railings around the turret? The other thing you could add in my opinion would be to define the recoil section a bit more - at the moment you have a solid barrel, if you split the barrel in to two parts, a bit of bevelling and you have the two section barrel as it's meant to be.

How is your computer coping with this level of detail?

[ahau]

http://img105.imageshack.us/img105/7442/2577385070090615747npfzqi0.th.jpg (http://img105.imageshack.us/my.php?image=2577385070090615747npfzqi0.jpg)

as you can see on this ref, the barrel is in one piece, i'm going to do the railing of course, as i did for the 460mm, it's just not finished :D that's why i said nearly :P

currently my computer handle well while modeling, as i'm modelling a specific part of the ship at once, using the isolated mod of max, i don't have any lag, when showing all the ship unhided, i got between 1 and 40 fps depending of the distance and what is on the screen. that's still very acceptable for now.

i optimised the main 460mm mesh to decrease the poly count, now the whole ship is 2.3 M with the 2 news 155mm turrets. ( it was 2.5 without them on the old version) ;)

[Lukem]

I can see what the photo shows, but I can't see how it could have worked. I don't see why there would have been a larger section to the barrel if it wasn't a recoil sleeve - if there wasn't a sleeve, the whole gun would recoil within the turret, making the working space within the turret very small.

That said, I haven't any clear photos of the secondary turrets, so maybe that was the case?

Anyway, looking forward to the next update:)

[Martocticvs]

The larger part of the barrel is reinforcement - there are several steps of reinforcement rings (two or three sometimes) making the barrel diameter larger towards the breach. Being mounted on fixed trunnion brackets, I'm not sure that the guns were actually allowed any recoil. I have a video of a British battleship firing her main guns somewhere - I'll see if I can find it tomorrow.

[Lukem]

It'd be nice to see that mate.

If the barrel is mounted on fixed trunnions, if there was no recoil allowed in the barrel, the gun would not stay on those trunnions very long, surely? Take a tank gun, for example. Again, breech loaded, fixed trunnions. Notice that the barrel length up to the muzzle slides in to the larger barrel section as recoil. If it didn't, the gun would smash backwards in to the turret on firing, or maybe even flip the entire tank. I can't see these guns being any different, but I stand to be corrected.

Apologies for hijacking the thread Ahau - looking forward to more details.

[Martocticvs]

Well I'm just speaking from looking at the detailed drawings of the main guns of the Queen Elizabeth class battleships - the main guns are constructed to form one piece, and I can't see anything in the turret that would allow for recoil - in fact it the barrel did recoil it looks like it would be in danger of smashing out the barbette wall... still, I could be interpreting it wrong. The smaller guns are shown to have recoil allowance, so these may as well, but the main 15" guns don't show anything like that.

[Lukem]

I certainly didn't see any recoil mechanism in the 15" guns (based on Anatomy of the Ship - Warspite); as you say, some of the smaller guns did (smaller than the casemates), but there the breech appears to have come back into the gun house. Yamato's 460mm guns feature recoil cylinders - again pushing the whole gun back into the turret, but damped to avoid structural damage.

It would seem I was wrong - sorry:)

[ahau]

hey it's ok, at least you give us some wisdom about thoses, i didn't know as much as u guys, it helps me to get it even more accurate :) thanks to you.

[Der_Peiper]

lookin very nice...
the details better than mine .. :)
cool stuff.. keep goin.

[ahau]

ok it's been a long time i didn't update, was kinda busy at school with other 3d projects, just little advance on the 155mm turret and the superstructure.


http://img404.imageshack.us/my.php?image=new1yz0.jpg
http://img443.imageshack.us/my.php?image=new2bw2.jpg

ps: damn i lost my file, was corrupt, all i just showed up is gone :/ must redo it doh

[ahau]

update, reworked the stuff i lost on the last corrupted file
put some shader because was tired of the white.

[ahau]

is there no errors ? as you got nothing to say ? oO

[Archetype]

we'll you've already heared my say about subidividing everything.

the reels look too smooth.. its usualy a metal plate with a chamfer on the edge.

as for the frame they are suspended in, you should fix the smoothing groups they appear to be all of the same smoothing group

[octopus7]

I look forward to seeing this completed ahau, I remember seeing it over at CGsociety when I was modeling my HMAS Eureka battleship. Keep up the great work.

[ahau]

this project is kinda hold on for now, i got a lot stuff to complete at school so i don't have lot of time to advance on the yamato. i'll try for the christmas vacation if i can.

thanks you for your interest :)

[allfiredup]

Wow, though not a ship modeler, I find ship building extremely interesting. Very fine work you got going. I love the lighting in the renders.

[SvenLittkowski]

What an impressive ship. I have it as plastic model. Doing it as 3D model, well, that is a challenge, especially when taking care for all the details. I would love to see the final results! So far, it looks great!

[Magnus]

update, reworked the stuff I lost on the last corrupted file
put some shader because was tired of the white.
Hi,
may I ask you the question what technique you use to model the textile piece that covers the area where the barrels meet the turret. That looks extremly good...

[ahau]

i've started with a cylinder, then cut it with edges ( a lot of edges) scaled it to be at the side of the barrel and the base turret, then i cut it more to create the waves add a subdivision modifier ( i'm talking about max modelling here) convert the quad into quads to sharp it. i'll post a wire later i'm going to school right now :)

[Magnus]

i've started with a cylinder, then cut it with edges ( a lot of edges) scaled it to be at the side of the barrel and the base turret, then i cut it more to create the waves add a subdivision modifier ( i'm talking about max modelling here) convert the quad into quads to sharp it. i'll post a wire later i'm going to school right now :)

Thanks, so you did it with sub-d, allright, C4D, which I use, has nurbs- capabilities as well... I have some similar items in my current project.

[ahau]

here is the wire unsmooth for you :

[Magnus]

here is the wire unsmooth for you :

got it, thanks.

[ahau]

Hi guys !

Long time no update, was freaking busy at school, too much projects at the same time, i couldn't handle the yamato.
So now i'm in vacation i can work on it.

I didn't advanced much on the modelisation, just a little on the base of the super structure, but i worked on rendering.

[ahau]

uber high rez render:

[Martocticvs]

This is really starting to look very nice now - great update! ;)

[Magnus]

uber high rez render:

Hi,

the water texture and the overall atmosphere is really good. Although two things - the scaling of the waves should be smaller and the horizontal line should be straight...

[ahau]

yeah it's easy to fix, for now it's just a light rendering setup :)

[ahau]

hi back, just restart playing with the yamato,

working actually on the superstructure and the funel :

hope to show more soon .

[thecomcombremasque]

Great work, render is very realistic, congrat

[rsvette12]

Looking awesome and well done render :)

Rich

[ahau]

some element were done, but still a lot to do.

[ahau]

hi there,

some more

[simjoy]

still looking good mate ..i'm looking forward to the scene your proposing over at CGT ..

[ahau]

hi there,

it's been a long time i didn't update my topic here nor on cgtalk, but last week i got some nostalgia looking at my old renders of the yamato and wanted to finish the big baby.

So i'm back on tracks to work on this project a lot more as i have way more time than before.

I redone the texturing of the 460mm main turret, and rerender it.

as i learned a lot during my schoolship and internship, i may redo some of the parts of the ship which may need some rework. i'll work without subdivision as archetype adviced me in the beginning of my project ( i was too dumb to listen at that time though :P )

so here a teasing of what should follow i hope more frequently :)

[ahau]

some new stuff,

the secondary radar tower and 6.1" turret

[cobra6]

Wow, how come I have missed this model the last couple of years? :) That is looking very nice ahau!

Cobra 6

[Der_Peiper]

very nicely presented ahau...

[KoMic]

not bad, but for me u r using toooooo much MS. keeps going

[ahau]

yeah i know, that was my beginner mistake :)

[Niels]

Very nice man! I have a small question, where did you find those blueprints?

[ahau]

the blueprints of what precisly? the hull and overall i got them from wikipedia and some modeling forums, nothing fancy.I use them only for placement. All the rest is image based modeling from the 1/10 scale replica of the kure museum.

here is a global vue of the yamato at that time

http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/6227/allhdp.jpg

i'm looking next to finish the superstructure texturing/modeling.