Multi-Component Vehicle Model: Base Model

To begin with my airship design, I decided to model the boat. This would be the main component, and everything else will be attached to it (wings, tail, cloth portions). In order to accomplish this I went for image base modeling since it was something we had covered in class and was strongly suggested to follow. In image base modeling you take a basic shape (cube, sphere) and you extrude it and tweak it in different ways so it takes the shape you want. I decided to go with a cube, since my boat would be easier to model from it.

I took my sketches of my boat and imported them into Maya. I placed the side, top and front views of the boat into multiple camera views in Maya so that I could shape my cube in the properly.

One trick for image base modeling is to split the basic shape and model half of the object. This is because it is easier to do one half first and then use the mirror tool so that both sides of our object are symmetrical. It would be harder to model both sides of the object because we would have to make sure that the vertices were placed on the same position on both sides.

After this step, I began extruding my cube and moving its vertices so that it would take the shape based on my model.

After making sure that the top, front and side view of my boat matched my design, I used Maya’s tools to create a mirrored duplicate of the half of my boat. I combined both halves, but because they were separate objects, I had to go through the center edges and snap them together.

The next thing I would have to do for my model to have the shape of a boat, I had to add edges across the bottom. I have to admit that I should have done this before snapping both halves together, since I had to make sure that the edges and vertices were in the same position but in the end I was able to accomplish what I intended.

The next step was to also apply the roundness to the other views. I moved the edges down in the middle of the boat to give it a more appropriate shape.

Lastly I added an edge across the length of the boat so it wouldn’t be too flat. This also added a more adequate shape to the boat! The next step would be to smooth it, but I will smooth all the components of my ship once they are all completed!