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HMS Sovereign of the Seas - Bashing DeAgostini Beyond Believable Boundaries

The problem with sculpting human figures from scratch in Blender for a beginner like me is enormous and terrifying. So, I have to cheat. I downloaded a human figure to use for the nereids (water nymphs) and started a tutorial on adding an internal skeleton of bones to deform it with. Add clothes to the figure is a problem to be dealt with later. Because of the small size of the carvings, 1 cm tall, the folds of clothes could be simply simulated by sculpting the body mesh later, and the results should be good enough. I inserted a "basic human" skeleton which the Rigify Tool in Blender already comes with. Soon, the bones will be posed to bend the figure into the upper body poses shown in the van de Velde drawing.

The legs of each nereid are separate, long fish tails. I can use the fishtail from the previous model as the basis to form those, and find a way to attach them to the torso. Making 3-D models at this level of detail for decorations that are typically simple, carved base reliefs for the Sovereign of the Seas is serious overkill, since much of the details will not show up in the resin printing, but it's a skill I need to develop to be able to create decorations which experienced carvers seem to create so easily. This topic may not be strictly model ship construction, but you may be interested in how I learn to create these decorations as I make them should they choose this method to make model parts.
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On to the Gemini panel. I bought a 3-D model of a baby for $12 and used the bones feature in blender to reposition the boduy and limbs to create the same poses of the Gemini twins in the Payne engraving and the van de Velde drawing (below).
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Finished model, flattened into a bas relief. The background decoration behind the twins is next.
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Kurt Konrath said:
So any thoughts of selling your 3D work to others building this same ship?

Maybe help pay for costs of getting data needed for design work.
Click to expand...
Yes, that was the plan from the start, to make them available and inexpensive. The 3-D models are not professional. My topology sucks. I'm a beginner. But, they will work.
 
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