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The Brief
For the transmedia show, my team was tasked with the entertainment. We decided as a group to make a VR battleships game. In the group there was myself, another CAD student and a 3D student. Therefore, each of us decided to make a set of battleships for the game with a certain theme. My theme was decided to be World War Two.
The Hull
For the hull I took plans from a yacht I found on GrabCAD and used them as a canvas to create the hull from. I used the sculpt feature to approximate it and achieve a smooth surface for the hull. I then used the split body feature to achieve the red bottom to the hull which old warships have.
Landing Deck
Following this I created the top of the landing deck for the aircraft carrier using polygon modelling. Then I made the sub level to the landing. This is where the anti-aircraft guns will be placed and will be situated slightly underneath the landing. I also added the small loading bays into the side of the hull and the doors which slide up and down on them.
The Bridge
The bridge was to be one of the most important and detailed parts of this model. I looked at inspiration from other models online to create this. For the guide rails I created one rectangular piece and used the path pattern tool to follow the curve of the floors to create the fencing more quickly. Then added the radars on top and one of the gun batteries.
Finished Carrier
This is the finished model of the carrier. It is important to note that the total poly count had to be kept as low as possible for the game to run smoothly. Therefore, some of the later features like the AA guns and the planes I added later in the Unreal engine as this is better at coping with more complex geometry.
Animation
As an aircraft carrier is normally the flagship of the navy, I wanted to do something special for it. I therefore decided on animating a plane being launched of the deck. The way I did this was using the custom path tool in Twin motion. I decided on using a swordfish plane.
Destroyer
For the destroyer I created a new hull which was narrower and truer to life. However, in order to be more time efficient, I used the split body feature for the already made bridge of the carrier and put this on the deck. I also used the pipe sculpt tool to make the wires that stretch from the bridge to stern.
Mapping
For the destroyer I had to learn a new skill as to this point, I had never made anything with dirt or grime on it. This therefore involved texture mapping. I found a good panel texture online and put it into Photoshop to create the bump map, the normal map and the displacement map. The final effect can be seen here.
Battleship
To be more efficient with my work I began to recycle parts from the previous models. In order to do this, I used Fusion 360s derive feature. This enabled me to import certain parts of the ship, in this case, the hull and the bridge were imported to speed up build time. I had to make the main gun battery from scratch as they were unique to this, I did these without projections and just used the deck of the ship and reference pictures for scale.
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The Ocean
In all these final renders you will notice there is an ocean. For this I had two options of how to create this. The first being to create It in Blender using its ocean modifier and import this into other files. This influences computation speed when it comes to rendering and can make renders last hours longer. Therefore, instead I used Twin motions built in ocean feature which has little to no effect on the render time, at the cost of the quality of it being slightly worse.
Gunboat
The Gunboat is made up of almost all already made parts which I have taken and scaled down. As this boat will be so small to the user it doesn’t really matter, as not a lot of attention will be payed to the detail of this model.
New Skills
This project has made me begin to practise many new skills. The first and possibly most major is the split body feature. This enables me to use guide objects to separate a body after I have made it. This feature was particularly useful for making the windows and decking of the ships.
Submarine
For the submarine this was the first time I have used externally made parts for a project. I used the GrabCAD website to get the main hull and guns for the submarine. The reason I did this is because I was strained for time and this part will spend most of the time under the surface of the water and not visible to the user.
Final Renders
Now that I had finished all the ships all that was left to do was, when needed I could export the ships as .FBX files. This allows the geometry and importantly the textures to be given to the developer to be imported into the game engine in one simple file.
Final Show Reel
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Made with Love and Caffiene By Matt Nugent