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So I have always liked submarines, I think they are pretty neat.  I have wanted to create a 3D sub for a while and finally decided to get started on one..  Instead of going with a more modern design I went with one of the most popular submarine designs of old; the German type VII.   I also have to admit that another reason for this design is that I like the game “Silent Hunter” and the fifth installment of the game is coming out this year.

As I work on it, I’ll post images here to show where I am at and as with all my other posts the top most image will show the latest image or render.

I’m creating this entirely in Modo 401 using my Wacom tablet with the intent to make it as photo-realistic as possible.  That’s gonna be tough because it will force me to model everything in sub-d and it will really make me have to pay very special attention to my models materials, the shader tree and lighting..

The first 3 or 4 hours was scouring the net trying to find a set of plans for this boat.  Believe it or not it was harder than one might think..

The initial shape

+3 hours – Getting the initial shape - After getting my work area setup and getting the backdrops in place I was able to do this.  Not perfect, but not a bad start for getting the basic body shape down.  Next I’m going to try to form the outer hull actually into the bulb shape you see there.. for now that’s an additional mesh just sitting there.

Shape Refinement

+3 hours – Shape refinement – So I know it doesn’t look much different but it is.. I have refined the hull shape a lot so that now the top deck area is actually the shape it should be for holding the conning tower and what not.  But more importantly I have actually added those side bulges to the model such that they are part of the main layer and can be subdivided nicely.  No more having one model poke through another model.  Ding! “You have gained a level!”

It may sound like a simple thing but it’s actually complex if you’re coming from hard body modeling to subdivision modeling.

Front Wire Cutters

+3 hours – Front wire cutters – So I spent the better part of these three hours getting the front wire cutters (I guess that’s what they are) looking right under subd and making sure they smoothly transitioned into the rest of the mesh.  Good times.  It took longer than I wanted because I had some serious symmetry issues that I wasn’t sure how to sort out.  Thankfully, Modo has a Symmetry tool that does it all for you!  It’s just magic.. No clue how the hell that works.

I have also been researching what I want the top part of the boat to look like.. I wanted to keep the boat as accurate as possible and my research has lead me to believe that every fricken one of these boats was different..  For some reason I had it in my mind that manufacturing back then would be similar to how it is today.. But I guess I have to keep in mind that these things were built one at a time and each one was hand crafted.. So they tend to be a tad different from one another..

The more I work on this the more I think I would really like to visit a real one of these if for no other reason than to just gawk at it..

Conning Tower

+ 5 hours – The beginnings of a conning tower - I started and restarted this conning tower probably 10 times and even now I’m not 100% happy with it.   I kept going back and forth with the design as well as the number of tiers it would have.  This one has 2 which means this is a type VII-C or later as it will have two flak guns as opposed to only one.

It’s been hard to find plans with anything close to this so a lot of what I am doing comes from this kit built by Guillermo Martinez Baz..  Nice looking model Guillermo..

The shape of the tower has a lot of gentle curves and odd shapes so I have had to play with and learn the falloff tools a lot better in modo.. It was a great learning experience but I didn’t get a lot of work done for the 5 hours I spent on it..

Also the more I study Guillermo’s real world plastic model, the more I think my model is way off in some places..  My decking at the top of the model for example isn’t correct by a long shot.  Probably want I’m going to do is actually build an inner cigar shaped tube where the people would be to get some idea of why the exterior is shaped the way it is..

First Actual Render

+2 hours – The first actual render – So here you have the very first render of my entirely incomplete Type VII-C German U-Boat.  My goal is to have it render out with that underwater look but for now I’m going to make it really bright so I can see all the defects..

I still have a very long way to go.. I’m still working on the conning tower area as that will have a lot of detail.  I need to merge the two layers too so that the conning tower actually connects to the sub body, as right now they don’t.  Still having fun!  That’s what counts..

Details and Lighting

+4 hours – Adding detail and lighting – So there isn’t much of a change to the model here other than for details that are hard to see, and the obvious lighting differences.  I’m going to be making the necessary detail changes to the model to make it look better and better slowly over time, but I’m also going to be working on texturing and lighting while I can.

I have also learned that its not necessary to make everything part of the main mesh.. It’s okay to have sub-d elements in different layers so long as it looks okay.  The idea being if in the real world something is made of a single piece of metal then sure one layer is appropriate, otherwise more than one is fine..

Tail Features

+7 hours – Tail Features – I have spent a good portion of the day working on the tail features of my sub as well as generally mucking around with the over all look of the boat.   But primarily, the rear dive plains, propeller shafts, rudders, supports, struts..etc..  I have a long way to go but this put a nice dent into the rear features that up to this point were completely missing.

During this process it occurred to me that I don’t know which way the props should be twisted.. And I kind of assumed that they counter rotate.. So if that is way off some one please tell me..  The rudders are actually to scale according to the plans I have but damn they look big.. And my plans arent accurate at all with how far apart the propellers are, and so I did my best to “Guesstimate” and I think I blew it..  They seem a little too close together..

The more I work on this thing the more I hate how some of it has come out.. I spent such a long time getting those side bulges working and now I think they are too prominent..  The top decking is all wrong too in a few places..   Still I know I should give myself a break.. I mean this wont be a perfect thing no matter how hard I try.. I just don’t have the skills yet..  But I am going to work at it..  But my dreams of making this thing photo realistic likely wont happen at all..

And I haven’t even started to ruin the textures..

+10 hours – Still going! – Okay so I don’t have a picture this update..  I’m in the process of correcting a horrible mistake I made..   At some point I subdivided the entire main hull and it caused a lot of odd rendering artifacts.. I was pretty upset that I had done this at first because apparently I did it days ago and didn’t even notice!  Luckily I make daily backups of my model and I work in a lot of layers.. so thankfully its only a matter of using the old hull and bringing it back up to date, preferably without making the same mistake..

Yay for rails

+5 hours – Yay for rails – I’m guessing todays installment was roughly five hours worth of work..  Hard to say really in that it wasn’t a straight piece of work..  It’s really a continuation of work I did last night, and what little work I did today in between bug fixing for work which has been going on at a rabid pace..  Every hour or two I spend 20 minutes or so on the model… The bug fixing is killing me so this makes a nice change of pace..

In this update you’ll see I’m starting to add lots and lots of railing everywhere… Ah good times..  I have also completely fixed the ugly striation crap that managed to work its way into the model because I was a dolt and did something stupid..

Part of this fix was also to correct some big errors with the conning tower.. I still have a lot of work to do.. but its coming along nicely..

Steel Rope

+5 hours – Steel Rope – I just got done spending the better part of the entire 5 hours learning to make rope.  3D rope that is..  The sub has quite a lot of steel rope hanging from various points on the hull and I wanted to get that to look right.

At first I just created a really long cylinder and sliced it up with the intent of just adding a 3D texture or displacement to make it look like strands of steel rope.. but it just looked crappy.. So, I had to actually create stranded rope..  This took me a long time and I had to get pretty intimate with Modo’s Twist tool and the Soft Move tool..

I still think the way I ultimately did it, was the wrong way..  I should have used a path and cloned a single rope piece along that path, but it didn’t work..  No matter what I tried, I just couldn’t get the curve clone tool to output something that looked reasonable..  Plus it was REALLY laggy bringing modo to a stop trying to clone a <1000 polygon item 100 times..  100,000 polygons isn’t that heavy so I have no idea why it was struggling so hard with it.. I also tried to use a custom python script suggested to me on the modo forums called CurveDeformer, but it failed too.. (in odd ways) .. SO I was left to my own devices..

It took me too long to do this though.. I mean seriously ~5 hours to figure out this ONE thing.. sheesh..

Steel Rope Details

+3 hours – Steel Rope Detail – So I spent the majority of this time getting the steel rope finished on the back side of the boat.  It now hangs correctly between the two rail uprights on the back of the boat in such a way as to imply weight..  In the tail of the boat it rides over the risers in a ring then down into a hull point where its anchored.  And its simply wrapped around the lower conning tower platform rail and clamped together using a pair of wire clamps.  This isn’t how it was actually done, but I thought having the wire simply wrapped around the rail and secured with a couple wire clamps made it look more real..   Very excited as to how it turned out.. I think it looks fantastic..

This model is starting to get rather beefy.. It’s already a 5 meg file and renders out at over 3 million polygons, 15 million with subsampling turned on.  I call that starting to get heavy..  I know that a lot of the models the big boys work with are vast by comparison, but then so is the hardware they use..

Gonna keep working on this thing.. I haven’t been playing any games at all since I started this project, its kept me that entertained.. Tomorrow I’m going to continue poking the detail holes in the side of the boat.. Good times.

Poking holes

+8 hours – Poking holes in the model – For todays installment of “make a sub” I have been concentrating on poking holes in the side of the main hull mesh. It’s actually exceedingly difficult because of the non-linear off axis subd modeling method I’m using, combined with round holes.. I have to say so far so good! I have a lot more holes to poke, and I need to add inner piping and details that could be visible from the outside.. This means I need to build a very basic model of what the internal cigar tube will look like and the basic support structures.. I have no clue what those actually should look like so I might just make it up..

Waist Steel Cable

I also spent a chunk of my time adding the waist steel cables to the waist railings.. I went to a lot of trouble too wrapping the cable around the railings in a believable way.. I think it turned out pretty damn good if I do say so myself.. Though looking at it now in some areas I should have added a tad more twist to the cable, but since each cable is actually a strand of six cylinders its a pain in the rump to go back and change it now.. I’m really glad I went this route though as opposed to the one cylinder that gets textured into wire.. The actual twisted polygons while heavy in terms of polycount, really adds a lot in terms of details..

I have to say I’m still have a great deal of fun making this model.. that bodes very well.. Typically when I do these things, they last for a couple of weeks before I want to move on to something else, but this model is really inspiring me to keep going.. It’s been really cool seeing how each piece comes together to add up to more and more detail.. Every so often I scroll up to the top of this post and look at where it started and then look at where I am.. I realize I have a long way to go, but I have come a LONG way..

I want to find some more pictures of real Type VII’s up close so I can get a good idea of what the hull plating should actually look like. I dunno if I should model that or just texture it.. I’ll likely model the rivets, but texture the plates.. we shall see..

At this point this model is easily the most complex and well done model I have done to date.. Not only that but its by far the largest in terms of polygon count, file size.. render time..etc..

Conning Tower Details

+10 hours – Conning Tower Details – So after a day or two break I am back at it and have added a lot of detail to the conning tower.  I have a lot more I want to do and shall continue to work on it..  For this installment I have added several rails around the front of the tower for hand holds, as well as adding several doors and panels with hinges and handles..   I’m likely adding way too much in the way of details in that no one will ever see some of it.. I mean whats the likelihood someone will zoom all the way in to a single hinge on one of those doors..  heh but hey what the hell..

It’s a learning process as much as it is anything else..  I mean I want this thing to look good and having a high-poly model that renders out well is the beginnings of that..

The real issue at this point is that the model is getting big enough that rendering it is starting to run me out of memory..  Any form of adaptive subdivision is right out of the question..   Plus I can only do one or two renders before I have to reload the model fresh.. memory leak I guess..  It’s only mildly annoying..

Latest Render

While my Tau Hammerhead is coming along nicely, I needed a bit of a break from it.  I decided to model something from either the Imperial Guard or Space Marines codex.  I don’t have either army, but I do have a Leman Russ that I was planning on turning into an Ork battlewagon..  So it seemed like the natural choice for modeling..

The model is still in pieces which as actually a boon because I can hold and model each part individually and then assemble them.. or at least I hope its that easy..

As with the hammerhead I plan to show a render of the model for every 4 hours (or so) of work.

Note: This post will be updated a lot as I work on this model.

Leman Russ 01

First 4 hours — Believe it or not, that’s 4-ish hours there.   I wanted to take advantage of instancing for all the bolts and rivots as well as the spiral lathe for the springs.. took me a bit to figure that out..

What’s nice is, there is actually only ONE rivet and only ONE bolt assembly.  They are then instanced into the 8 bolt assemblies, and 90+ rivets you see here.  This means all I have to do is adjust one rivet, or one bolt and the others will match.. Or more importantly, texture only one and you texture them all.. Yay!

This mesh promises to be WAY cleaner than the Hammerhead mesh which at this point I’m embarrassed by..

Leman Russ 02

+2 hours — Okay I have added more features and details to the side of the hull.. The two side doors are open to the world now, as well as adding various other bits and greebles.  I’ll add doors later, as well as adding the sponson which can be used or not depending on the vehicle I actually want..  (Lots of different vehicles in the 40k universe use the same basic body.)  I have also started working on the track which I have to figure out how to correctly shape itself around the hull.  I know Modo has an ability to do this, but not sure what it is..  I may have to poke around on the forums to figure this one out..  (Note: the track is currently WAY undersized, I realizes this and it will be fixed)  All in all it’s going wonderfully.. I’m enjoying this quite a bit!

Leman Russ 03

+6 hours — or maybe even a bit more..  So for this addition you’ll note that there hasn’t been a huge addition.. but it took a long time..  That’s due to the tank track.. Holy crap I want to club a baby seal..  It took me ages to get the tracks in place and working.

I ended up having to do the entire thing by hand since the path instancing tool in modo just doesn’t work as advertised.  I followed all the tutorials I could find and none of them work.  It’s a really simple process too, but the results were completely wrong each time, OR the application would just crash..   It really irritated me to no end..

But at this point the tracks are in place and ready to go, as well as having the room to put in the roadwheels and what not behind the scenes, which I will do next.   Once I get those in place I can start adding the main body..  That or working on a sponson.. not sure which yet

Leman Russ 04

+3 hours — I finally completed the back/inner side of the tread housing.. The sides of the tank are pretty much complete at this time, sans the sponsons and texturing.. *gleee*   The more I look at the track the more I think they are a bit too thin.. I’ll have to beef them up a tad, but in order to do that I have to redo them all the way around the housing.. Ugh.. I’ll get to it..

I have instanced and mirrored the main side in order to see an opposite.. I’m trying to figure out about how far apart they should be for the tank innards to fit..   This render also signals a slightly different render style from the others.. I’m adding in the ambient occlusion data for the render in order to give the image a more gritty film look..  Fun fun!

Leman Russ 05

+2 hours — Roughing out the hull!  Well I have the basics of the hull roughed out..  Now for the painful process of multiplying every single edge around the entire thing to soften them a tad.  I typically would edge bevel everything but that’s just about the worst way to actually do it apparently..

Once I get the hull to subdivide the way I want/need it to such that it maintains the shape while providing clean lines I’ll start working on the hull mounted cannon.   I haven’t forgotten the sponsons or the track fix.. I’ll get to it.

At this point I’m not sure the best way to go about subpatching the hull.. I have tried a couple things and the results were never very good..  I’m going to post on the Luxology forums and see if they have any advice.. most the folks over there are stupidly gifted when it comes to this stuff.. someone is bound to have an idea..

Leman Russ 06

+5 hours — I spent today touching up a lot of things with the russ.. The tracks are looking a lot better now.  I thickened them up quite a bit, though you really can’t tell that via the render.. they are actually twice as thick as they were before..

I haven’t quite decided what I want to do about the hull with regards to rounding and what not.. My traditional method is to edge bevel instead of subpatch.. but subpatching looks way way better..  So I dunno..  I’ll probably just bevel this one too.. Either way, while thinking about that I went ahead and created the sponson and the bolter.. It’s just about 100% accurate, but looks kinda plain.. There aren’t a lot of details on there.. I might have to spice it up a tad..

I did create the 40k Imperial Aquila though.. I figured if I’m gonna have it on there its not going to just be a texture.. It’s gonna be modeled onto the tank.  I’ll have to put it in a bunch of places so I figured I might as well do a good job of it..   Came out quite nicely I think..

40k Imperial Aquila 01

+2 hours — I have completely redone the 40k Imperial Aquila.  The version that is in the 06 picture is good, and actually better looking than the one on the model, but my buddy who knows about these things explained how it was still wrong. So with that I completely redid it using an even more accurate picture to make the model.

I went WAY over board heh.. Each Aquila has over 3k polygons..  That’s more than the entire sponson.. Bolter and all..

Leman Russ SDS Example 01

+6 hours — Thanks to the information provided by folks like Michael Blackboum and Richard Hurrey I am going through and adding the edges necessary to correctly subpatch the body of the Leman Russ..

It’s a lot of work.. basically for each edge becomes roughly 7 edges.. (hard to explain that without pictures.. but just believe me.. )  So its a lot of polygon slicing..  The main point of which will be to give the hull a “real” look.   I could have just beveled all of the hard edges but that starts to a ) fail at certain intersections and b ) look less real as you zoom in.

Consider is this;  Imagine if you will two polygons intersecting at a 90 degree angle.  In reality nothing short of a razor blade has an edge like the one those two polygons have now created..  it just doesn’t look real.  By adding a bevel you can make it look more real, but as you zoom into that bevel the polygons become apparent..    But by subdividing as you zoom in the renderer automagically generates more and more polygons.. so it always looks smooth..  That’s a win for me.

Simply put, it looks more “real”..  This has been a trail let me tell you, but now that I understand the concept I’ll be doing all my models this way I think.. The results just look a lot better..

Leman Russ 07

+3 hours — Okay I have finished completely subdividing the hull of the tank and then went on to build the front little window hatch also using subdivison and subpatches.. It will take some getting used to but I can really see the power of doing things this way..

Now that I am not fixing parts of the model I had already created, I can now go on to actually continue creating stuff..  Next I plan to make the front turret..  Fun stuff!

Leman Russ 08

+4 hours — I have added the nose cannon as well as making some modifications to the sponsons bolter..  The new gun is completely subdivided and looks pretty good.  It looks like its too big to me but all my measurements assure me it’s the right size..   Maybe it wont look so out of place once I get the top turret in place.

There is a lot of stuff going on in the back of the tank that I have yet to even start on.. I’ll probably start tackling that next.

Leman Russ 09

+2 hours — I have been putzing around with several things for this update..   Firstly you’ll note a color change in my render.. heh I was goofing off with the light and environment settings to see what I could come up with..   I’ll probably keep playing with that so .. expect some differences..

Further, I roughed out the top turret housing and started working on that.. It doesn’t look to scale to me.. it looks small, but all my measurements say its correct..  *shrug*   I have also started adding detail to the rear of the vehicle.. Lots of work to do there..  I’m gonna begin on hatches and things first..

I have also been designing and pondering a couple animations with this and other 40k elements.. One of them deals with a drop pod which I need to model..

Wacom Bamboo

I have been getting back into 3D modeling lately and ran into my old nemesis — texturing!  For whatever reason, I had never really been very good at texturing.  I think a lot of that was due to the way Lightwave did textures.  It used to be extremely painful to texture a model because there wasn’t really a good workflow..

Previously you’d have to export your UV’s and do some texturing work in photoshop or some such, then import them back to the model, then render it… just to test your outcome.   It would take a long time to get something looking even half good.  It just wasn’t easy workflow wise causing me not to want to do it.. thus, I sucked at it..

Modern day texturing is so much easier it’s not even funny.  Now-a-days software allows you to directly paint on the model!  It’s so awesome seeing your model update in near real time as you paint on it.

It’s so powerful and so much easier to use.  The only thing you really need to use to take full advantage of that is a graphics tablet.   So this weekend, I went out and purchased a “Bamboo” Wacom tablet for $69.  What a steal!  This thing is awesome.   I realize there are several thousand dollar versions of this tablet and ot be honest I’m not sure what they bring to the table.  This tablet is fantastic and does such a great job I can’t imagine needing anything else.

I know they make a super expensive one that is also a monitor so you can see exactly what you’re working on directly on the tablet, sure that’d be dang nice but other than that I don’t know what the really expensive ones give you over the Bamboo.

I’m very happy with it.  Modo 3D by Luxology is the 3D application I’m currently using to paint and model my stuff.  It is designed to use a pen and does so perfectly.  I still haven’t quite mastered UV creation but I’m pretty close I think.  All in all the tablet was a good purchase and I would recommend one to anyone wanting to get that kind of detail out of their work.