Lifeboat 3D modeling

Devblog

November 6, 2020

Lifeboat 3D modeling

The beginning of the game revolves around a lonely lifeboat. This post sort of contains spoilers, but I am pretty sure that reading it will not ruin the game experience. I doubt you will even remember this when the game is finally playable in the future!

Creating the interactive water effects and splash particle effects for the lifeboat drop will be a very cool challenge!

Modeling

Time-lapse of the full modelling progress

The boat itself is relatively simple. But simple shapes can sometimes be misleading! In this case getting the hull shape to work in 3 dimensions was a bit of a challenge. After the hull was completed the rest was just simple drill operations and copy-pasting details on top.

The tanker ship stock model I used as reference for the ship level had a pre-made lifeboat (from different manufacturer), but it did not import nicely and it was way too high polygon, so I only used it as a size reference along with the sideway shot I found online.

I do like the way this thing looks. It is a cute little boat!

I will not be letting the players see inside the lifeboat, other than what can be glimpsed trough the opened door, so I will not have to make a detailed version of the inside. This will save a lot of time as I do not need to do such a deep research. I just need to understand the functionality of how the lifeboat works on a tanker ship and what the hull looks like.