Finally finished

So it hasn't gone quite to plan. I would have had it in UE4 if the explosion had worked and I wished the model would have looked better and I had the time to make it look better but in the end it's the write up that matters, and I do have plenty to write about.

This final render crashed first time so I had to re start everything which is why the explosion looks a little different. Why I have no idea as I had both explosions on the same frame.

An encountered problem

So I found a rather massive problem with my project. I wanted to import the Hood into UE4 to make it look better and practice my PBR texturing however I wanted to use my fancy Maya Fluids explosion, you know the one that breaks the view port, but I couldn't import it so I looked on the internet and didn't find anything useful so I went on the UE4 forums to ask how to import it and the short answer was no. The long answer was no but here's a YouTube video on how we made the explosion in the tech demo.

The tech demo explosion

Turns out this is STUPIDLY hard. The guy made it in 3DS Max using the FumeFX plug in and then took cross section renders (which is what the grey plains are)

Then importing them into UE4 as a Sub UV texture. Then things happen in the Material editor....

....which is super confusing and I have no idea what the guy is doing and I can't even hope to recreate this even if I did have the faintest idea on how to use the more advanced techniques.

 What I will do instead is try to get a render out in Maya as well as research how to build explosions in UE4 however if it's as difficult as the above method then I will just go back to breaking Maya.

Long time no see

Well I finally got some time to spare and got round to texturing the Hood using PBR methods. I haven't gotten round to a roughness map yet only the metal map and I haven't even attempted bringing the particle effect in, god help me :S

Also the textures have gone slightly blurry but get better when you go closer 

Long over due update

So now the model is finished I started UVing all the geometry that  I will need to duplicate like the guns and the boats. But the model I think looks good and I'm quite happy with how it turned out and how much the model I bought actually helped so it's good to know I didn't waste £16 on it :D

Gannt chart

The Hood

So my model of the Hood arrived and has been built and it's quite a detailed model. I really do think this will help with my modeling. Especially as it cost my £16 -_-

The new project

So I found a few pictures of a very nicely modeled HMS Hood and I also ordered a modeled of the Hood to help me build my own middle

and here is the link to the pictures
http://3dhistory.de/wordpress/3d-models/hms-hood

The particle effect results

Well first up I sent a link to the wrong tutorial, FumeFx is an add on program so I had to use the Maya fluids tutorial instead, and what a fun time that was.

I'm in two minds about it. On the one hand the explosion does look really good as you can see...

however when you have done the explosion the Maya view port becomes completely unusable, so either I make the ship, add the modifier to bend the ship and then add the explosion after and hope it goes well as editing it afterwards will be damn near impossible or I give up on the nice looking explosion and go for something more reliable that won't break my new computer.

Hmmmm,..decisions decisions.

Particle effects

Surprisingly there doesn't seem to be many tutorials, well decent tutorials for creating explosions anyway but I did find one which I think will be effective. It is based of a fuel explosion so it might be better for after the torpedo has hit and has ignited fuel stores and maybe the munitions but still it's a start.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddabUUvZqUA

A little late concept art

Well I never said I was good at concept art but here is some anyway. Blogger decided to load the top one at a weird angle and I can't change that annoyingly but that was just 2 ideas for the wreck. The bottom one is an idea for the new diorama, a frigate escorting some civilian ships when it comes under attack by a submarine. If my research into particle effects proves fruitless or doesn't look as good as I want it too then I can make a little wave of a torpedo as it heads towards the frigate and a periscope.

Maybe even create the ships and the submarine under the water so the viewer can see above and below the waterline.

Another direction to take it

So after some consultation and a quick re think my original idea seems to not have focus and the rocks look unnatural which is fair enough, they don't. I seem to have 2 options. One, I can carry on with my current diorama but add a focus to it and get rid of the rocks. For that I would add an exploratory submarine to investigate the wreck and I would have a high powered light focusing on part of the ship which I think would give the diorama a sense of focus especially if the rest of it was slightly darkened so whatever was in the light was the main focus.

The second idea was to have a diorama of a ship mid explosion. This will be the most interesting but also the hardest to model the damage accurately and  I will need to learn how to do explosion particle effects to make the diorama really something special. I have looked through a lot of dioramas and have never seen a ship mid explosion. If I can pull it off then I would guess that mine would be the first mid explosion diorama around. If I am going to make this diorama then I will still finish the wreckage diorama as a back up, no point wasting it.

I do have my reservations about this new direction though as it seems all I have to do is create a ship, add a bend modifier to bend the ship slightly and add a large particle effect. If the particle effect is big enough I might not even need to damage the ship, simply cover up the 'damaged' areas so it wouldn't even need to be modelled. If the the effect isn't big enough then I will add damaged

An aquarium

I managed to get my dad to take me to Matlock to see a little aquarium so I could get reference images and hopefully some texture shots too however taking shots through a glass tank is not easy so the shots are....well hit and miss really