WIP - 123.0' (37.5 m) Planing Hull (aka the Big efing Boat)

[Jeffry Fontaine]

Spent the past few days trying to sort out some of my 3D model projects in SketchUp.  Deleted some, expanded on others and finally decided to push this project a little further. 

The hull was originally done in SketchUp but I was not satisfied with the hull due to the rough appearance of the many polygons that made the hull a 3D model.  I took the outline to another program called DelftShip which is a marine architecture program and gave it a try.  The end result was saved as various sized AutoCAD files and imported into SketchUp to see if there were any improvements in the level of detail. 

Some things improved and others did not but the one thing I did learn from this was that the higher the polygon count the larger your file becomes.  Loading a very high polygon count AutoCAD file into SketchUp does little for your patience as I have discovered.  The model that I was forced to use was not much better than the original hull I worked up in SkecthUp by myself so I really did not come away from this effort at an advantage.  Even with the lower polygon count file this turned into a 40mb-plus file and that in turn forced my computer and SketchUp to time out on me every few minutes as it choked down any changes I made to the model.  Even after removing a number of components that I had saved to the file to expedite working on the model it was still huge and taking forever to save. 

The screen shots from SketchUp that are attached to this post can also be viewed in my FaceBook album where other images of this project reside. 

Click on image or html to view additional images. 


Color view with a 2D figure to provide a representation of scale. 


No color view with 2D figure to provide a representation of scale.

[GTX_Admin]

So that's what you have been working on.  Looking good.

[Doom!]

Looks great! I know what you mean about getting bogged down. The other day at work I had a graphics file that was almost a gigabyte in size. 

[Jeffry Fontaine]

It did feel good to work on the model and it does help reinforce what I have had to learn in order to use SkecthUp effectively.  I think my own standards are much higher than I realize and sometimes this has to be ignored or put in check to create something from all of the effort that has been put into this over the past couple of years.  While there is no putty, sand and repeat process the feeling that I have been doing such repetitive tasks over and over again does surface frequently and that adds more to the annoyance instead of enjoyment factor. 

I may end up deleting the hull from this model and start over again with one of my earlier attempts to create a hull by hand as I much prefer the symmetry that I created with the hull form over what DelftShip provided in the exported AutoCad file based on my original input to that program.  Something got lost along the way and with more experience in SketchUp I can hopefully get that lost quality returned to the model. 

Though at the end of the day it is nothing more than a screen capture of a file containing many bits and bytes, it is still a model  :)

[GTX_Admin]

Though at the end of the day it is nothing more than a screen capture of a file containing many bits and bytes, it is still a model  :)

Damn right it is still a model!  Pixels vs plastic vs whatever...we see no distinction!

[Brian da Basher]

Woah that looks might sharp, Mr Fontaine! You've got some mad CGI skills! That 3 quarter view is especially nice!

Brian da Basher

[Jeffry Fontaine]

Thanks all for the vote of confidence in my "mad CGI skills" :)

I am but an amateur when compared to some of the major league shakers and movers in this field.  Barely scratching the surface with what I am doing but it does bring some satisfaction in knowing that I can do it and have braved the learning curve so far to improve on what I have accomplished so far.