Making the body of the ship

Next I added a mirror modifier and set the object to the keel this is because it will allow perfect symmetry for the hull. After apply it and delete half the ribs and read the mirror modifier and set it up the same this is because we want the ribs on our editing side all editable. After that select all the ribs and bridge edge loops together. This is so we can join the ribs together and now we can see the start of the hull forming. You would also add the mirror again so what ever we change on one part will be changed again.

Next extruding the end of the hull to the bow and adding tweaks to it to make sure you don’t brake the hull shape. By following the ship plan in the top view. When you extrude you can knife the bow to get rid of vertices. The bow of the ship was to make it easier for the ship to cut through the water. The bow was also one of the weaker parts to the ship as well as the stern.

Now by repeating the above process to the stern the ship hull is completed without the decorations. I will be adding that further down the line. Now the topology is alright however, we can do better with less gemortry being used.

First extrude every outer edge of the ship this will look strange at first however, it will make the topology easier later one for texturing and importing a optimised clean model inside of Unreal Engine. We now extruded all parts of the ship this is because we are now going to be shrink-wrapping it. This is because it will allow for better topology and easier workflow.

We add a plane and start to trace the hull shape by doing this we allow ourself to add less geometry but still able to get the hull shape. This shows how we have optimised are model and made it easier to work with in the future this means if I had to hand down the model I could. We added a shrink wrap modifier and made the target the original hull and made sure that it is above the mirror modifier as modifiers are arranged from first applied down. I then added the solidify modifier which gave it thickness. This modifier caused issues however, will be fixed near the end of the hull making.

We now add cubes where the cannon port will be placed and by adding the cubes then using a bool will subtract the unwanted geometry allow us to have cannon ports.

Making the stern is important I pulled in the loose vertices towards the keel allowing them to merge. I did the same for near the top however, tried to give it the stern shape. I also used the bool from the cubes to add cannon ports to stern.

For the deck we created a plan and extruded it following the deck line on the ship plan just beneath the cannon ports. Then we added a solidify modifier and a bool and cut of the remaining plane. However, I did need to do some tidy up because it wasn’t perfect.

As you can see there are issues within the hull and will need to be fixed this fix is pretty easy because we just need to add some new geometry. Due to this geometry issue the stern is also incorrect as most sterns was was flat.

Now we added some more cuts this has made our geometry cleaner as there is no issues with clipping or overlapping faces.

We have no finished the entire body of the ship and can move into adding masts and decoration.