Great model, especially that sword.
thanks guys!
I’ve been working on the set… which is the deck of a ship. Right now I’m just modelling and Texturing the basic stuff like wooden beams/planks/ropes etc. I still need to model some cannons and more rigging details, as well as some wear and tear. what do you think so far?
cheers!
wow, very nice work.
All right: a few notes on wooden ships.
The deck is designed to shed water. Waves do come over the side in rough weather. So the deck is not flat, but slopes toward the outside, and there are holes in that lower rail (called scuppers) to let water drain back into the sea.
That ‘rope ladder’ is actually a support for the mast, takes a lot of stress, and must be adjustable. So each main rope comes down and is fastened, through some wooden blocks, to one of the ribs of the ship.
Those white posts are actually ribs of the ship, and go all the way down to the keel. They are a major structural element of the ship design, and should be both equally spaced, and not stop because some other part of the ship structure is in the way. The rest of the ship is built around the ribs, not the other way around.
Every line, rope, sheet and chain on a sailing ship (and there are plenty of them) has a purpose, so it’s either in use holding something or is coiled up on deck ready to use. How neat those coils are on a pirate ship… well… it’s not the Royal Navy. Rope would never be coiled around a post like that since it would be a pain to get to it, and when you need to use a rope, you always need it in a hurry.
Keep up the good work!
The ship will make a suitable environment for her. And I wonder ho you did the ropes. They look great.
The character is looking great. She’s just too much fun to not use in some way. You could build an entire game around her if anyone was up for it.
Re ships: what Orinoco said. You’ll find that sailing ship nutters are every bit as bad as steam locomotive nutters. Total detail freaks. 
I was fascinated by sailing ships when I was a kid. When I was eight I could name every sail on a fully-rigged clipper, and knew most of the rigging as well. My suggestion is to find some good reference photo of replicas. There’s one replica of the Endeavour and one of the Batavia, just as two examples from roughly the right period. By checking those out you should be able to get a good idea of the basics.
Hey Guss, are you going to take this one further or do you consider her to be a finished work? If finished, you really ought to put her in the right board. IMO she’s top row material, both for quality of work and just general sense of fun. 
this is very motivating. I hope to get this level of detail on my current project.
wow, what a great model! very nice concept and wonderful work!
thanks a lot Doris
Oh my lord I almost forgot about this project :o when are you going to post updates?
Anything wonderful in store as usual?
Hi all,
Its been a looong loooooooong time, but I haven’t stopped this project, I just took a break, I was feeling pretty drained and tired, and I needed to step back and clear my mind. I’m now ready to start again…
so I continued working on the deck, I removed a lot of the ropes and rigging, I feel it needs to be re-done, after some awesome crits from Orinoco and Gumboots… thanks guys 
for a start I textured the wood, added cannons, and addes “scuppers” to the bottom of the deck. check it out:
Enjoy, and please, C or C if you see something 
EDIT: whoops! I forgot the DOF on for the bottom render 
sorry 'bout that…
Oh awesomesauce, teh pirate wench is back! (Every home should have one).
Yokay so ship bits are looking better now. If you want to get a really good feel for them, I suggest checking out the replica of the Batavia. This is a 100% kosher reproduction of a 17th century Dutch East India Company ship, the type of heavily armed merchant ship that people instinctively think of when they think “pirate ship”. It’s basically the Black Pearl for real.
Plenty of pix here: http://www.bataviaphotos.com/gallery.html
Also a very good model of the replica here: http://modelshipbuilder.com/page.php?44
@ Gumboots: Thanks man I’ve been looking at lots of reference lately, and there is a lot of work to be done yet… thanks for the links, they will help (that website for the Batavia is insane! 0_o such detail… very awesome.)
so right now I’m in the middle of re-designing/modelling the ropes, and I also rendered a test render to see if the proportions look right etc. I’ll be moving the ropes in the background to their correct position once they’re done. 
let me know what you guys think (especially the scale/relationships, ie, does she look too large compared to the rest of the deck, or too small…?) enjoy!
Aaand, just for kicks:
C&C most welcome
Wow this is gr8. Will you be rendering some background scene as well? May be some exploding ship
@Aloe heh for sure… It will have a nice background I’ve got something cool in mind for the background.
gr8 b8 m8 i r8 it 8/8 pls no h8
I think she’s about right for scale on the deck.
Gloss on some of the bits could be knocked back a bit (cannon wheel edges, timber caprail, etc) since irl they wouldn’t have had a shiny finish. Decks were usually scrubbed bare wood, since this was best for grip when wet.
There appears to be some lens distortion creeping into the rigging, which looks weird. Maybe give it a slight curve back the other way so it looks straight to the camera.
Gumboots I’ll remove some of the gloss on the wood, and do something to make the deck more “rough” I think I did throw on a lens distortion effect in the nodes for this, else it might be a optical trick of some sort… I’ll work on the ropes… I still need to add the horizontal ropes, and those thinner ropes that are tied to the pegs near deck level (no idea what they’re called). Updates soon