Boat Hull Tutorial      by Barry Christian p2   Creating the Basic Shape Of course, hull shapes are many and varied. I have chosen the canoe hull, but this works for just about any hull shape. To start , we draw the "top" of the hull. This would be the deck. We are actually building the boat hull upside-down. Hey, come to think of it, that's how real boats are built. Hopefully from the tutorial, you see that you only need 4 points on the spline for the canoe hull. You can also refer to figure 1. You need one each for the bow and stern. (That's front and back, respectively, for you land lubbers). You also need one on each side at the center of the boat. (midships). Figure 1 Now you need to set the spline corner setting for the bow and stern vertices to "sharp corner". You do this by clicking the upper left button in the spline properties panel while you have the corner to act on selected. Once you have done this for the bow and stern (front and back) you can go to the sweep/extrude tool to shape the object into the hull.   Extruding the Hull It is a good time to turn of the grid by clicking the grid icon. Now click the sweep/extrude icon. You will notice in your front view that the flat shape you created earlier is now a 3D version of its former self. You may also notice that it is too tall. That's okay though because we are going to change that in just a moment. The default tool that is ready once you extrude it is the "Point Nav, Point Move" tool. This is in the Point Nav panel . you will see it grayed out(selected) in the accompanying image. If you are using trueSpace 4, you may not see the panel. In that case, you can bring up the panel by right-clicking the point edit icon . If you are using trueSpace 3 this will not work, but you will not need to do it because it is already there automatically. (I don't know why.) If you place the cursor in the perspective window, you can hold the right button of the mouse down, thereby only adjusting the Z axis of the extruded face of the hull. If you extrude it about 4 or 5 times it should be enough to make it smooth without creating too many polygons. As you extrude it, you will need to size your selection down with the "Point Nav, Scale" tool. You will find it in the Point Nav Panel where you found the Point Move tool before . Notice the grayed out icon in the Point Edit or Point Nav Panel depending on whether you are using ts4(Point Edit) or ts3(Point Nav). Each of the extrusions should not be much smaller than the first because a canoe hull isn't too extreme. Only the final extrusion should be a lot smaller as you can see in Figure 2. Figure 2 shows the completed hull. Once its complete, click the "Object Tool" . This will de-select the face and select the entire object. Figure 2 You will notice that the canoe is upside-down. You can turn it over by whatever method you like. I like to enter -180 in the "rotate X" axis in the object info panel that you bring up by right clicking the "Object tool" . Next Page   Previous Page   Tutorials Index