Thought I'd post this to see what people think. Still need to texture the quarterdeck and add sail, rigging,rowers, etc. But so far I think it's coming out nicely. This will go in my "Seadragon" scene. Already over 400 obejects and a few million polygons with it all added together ( the boat itself is 4 MB file), and I still have the dragon to do :)

Very nice. The flag is amazing. Symetrical latice? I look forward to the entire scene.

Yes the flag is a lattice to give the shape then a transmapped red triangle applied to it.

Great work! Guess the duel will be between the boat and the dragon! May I make a suggestion? Could you take the camera lower and a bit more closer to the boat? That way the effort that you have put in will be more detailed and more visible! Also a lower perspective would make it more imposing thus enhance the drama of the scene! A dragon's head like wood carving at the stern( hope I got the naval terminology right! :-P)might reinforce the duel between the boat and the seadragon!

Actually this won't be the angle in the final render, it's just a working view though it will be pretty close. Here's an update. I'll post the original painting I'm doing this from. That red thing in the bow on the platform will be a wizard, so technically it will be a duel of the wizard and the seadragon.

Here's the original.... Forgot to mention the boat itself is 244 objects with 800,000+ polygons, file size is 12 MB. Haven't decided whether to put the boat up in the free stuff (really don't have any place to host it yet) or maybe sell it because of all the hours put into it.

Well, just for your info, the illustration is Tim Hidebrandt's (In case you didn't already know that is!)! May I congratulate you on a terrific modeling job done!! But must admit you'll have your work cut out for you!!! :-P. Still feel you'll be able to add a twist, by haveing a dragon like head to the boat (where you have a sphere). More so if you did it with symm. Lat.s to give it the wooden look. Guess you are doing the dragon in metaballs! It really will be an achievement if you achieve a lighting any where near the lighting in the illustration! :-P I think this is going to be a terrific entry for the challenge!

Yes I know it's Tim's and I already got his permission to submit this in the contest. Thanks for the info anyway. :) I think I have the lighting fairly close. His painting seems to have it coming from 2 different directions but I'm happy with mine. You are correct that the dragon will be metaballs and some primitives. If I can I'll make him posable as well but not too sure about that, we'll see how hard it is or how well it poses after I'm finished. So you see I'm truly trying to challenge myself here and trying new things. I'll tell you so far I have learned a lot just from this one pic. Thanks for the suggstion of the dragon head but the ship file is already 17 MB and climbing and I still have rigging and people to put in it. Needless to say I'm trying (not doing a very good job :) ) of keeping the size down a bit and don't think I'll have time to model that anyway. Just the basic scene without the dragon and boat is taking 2 hours to render. This render is after 3.5 passes but gives you an idea of the lighting and all.

Coool! Tres Coool!!! This is shaping up to be a terrific image! I wouldn't bother too much about size if I were you (unless RAM is a problem), 'cos my images quickly move to over 300-400 MB with ease! That's how Bryce works! C'est la vie I suppose! :( But don't sacrifice size for the beauty which is inherent to the image you are doing!!! Have a suggestion, how about doing the terrain on which the toadstools are in metaballs? That way you might get a real interesting terrain and something closer to original!

Whew! Finally finished the boat. Final stats minus the people 520 objects 3,080,977 polygons 20.6 MB file Add in the people and all 701 objects 3,127,057 polygons 22 MB Now on to the seadragon, Just hope I can do as well as Humorix with his dragon.

The sail is NEAT!!! Very Neat!!! Metaballs? Am still feeling sad that we wont be able to see this boat in greater details in the image! :-( Its a marvellous model! Do let me know in case there's any awy I can help you with the metaball dragon. Posted a few tips on my post on Metaball character. Think the rope can be made a little thinner! It tends to detract and its too thick to have that kind of curvature when swinging! And the second flag looks even more impressive! Great job!!!

Hey did you read the post on Pushing the tree modeller by Jhon Penn? Might come in handy while doing the waves!

Well the sail and yardarm are a single terrain. The 2 curved rigging are metablls constrained to a path (about 120) then unlinked them and deleted the path. Unfortunately that was the smallest I could get the without them seperating. I'll see if I can improve it if I have time. As for close shots maybe I'll just do some to post in the gallery but it's not a model for extreme closups because there are imperfections. Thanks for the comments, glad you like it. And if I haven't said it before enough I LOVE your dragon. :) I'll be sure to keep you in mind if I run into trouble.

Well I figured out a way to fix the curve lines but it's a pain. I reduced all the balls to the smaller size, now I'm strecthing them along the y-axis and orienting them along the path so the don't break up but there are around 210 individuals balls to move.

Hey, how if tried to make the curve line out of a very thin torus and booleaned out the portions which you didn't need? Put a texture so that you get the right effect. Wouldn't that bring down the file size and also make it easier to render?

In case anyone's interested in watching the pic come together. Here's the seadragon in progress. Let me know what you think. 

Damn fine it of modelling there. The textures are very nice as well. I'm really looking forward to seeing the end result to your image.

Love the spikes and the webbing in between! This picture is coming together great! And this post in itself will work as a tutorial of sorts!

Well the dragon is done. Ignore the missing underbelly scale, I'll fix that later, it won't show in the final render anyway. It's mostly fully posable, need to fix some things before I can put it in free stuff. Now it's to put it all together and fix the sea foam, I'm still not satisfied with that. Oh final results: 1220 objects 271,904 polygons 10 MB

Cool! Very impressive! Very cool. Glad 2 c that the challenge has you really pushing limits! Am really looking forward 2 see the final image!!!!!

Thanks! I'm really impressed with what metaballs can do. BTW the dragon is completely metablls with the exception of the eyes which consist of 4 spheres (1 glass and 1 color for each eye. I think I fixed the foam to where I'm satisfied with it. Now it's to put everything in. Test render with the dragon in the scene was going to take over 5 hours, must be a few semi-transparent overlaps along with the 2 light sources and the bump maps. I'm curious how long the whole thing will take.

Just curious...but why don't you have a gallery in renderosity? I'm sure you do some real cool stuff!

Because the only renders I've done so far are the space battle challenge and this one. When I finished this render I'll post them both in the gallery.

Update....started the final render. The main part took 12 hours (900 Mhz AMD) but the AA so far has taken at least that long to get to 50%, so I'm estimating about another 12 or more hours for that to finish then I have to fix some minor errors if I have time.

All the best! Sounds like quite a cake is getting baked! ;-)