Borealis Bow - Status Update (OLD POST - April 17, 2023)

So today, I worked more on the bow of the Borealis. The ship is so large that I will split it into sections, making it a multi-part vessel in Stormworks. This means the only way to spawn it will be as a mission in the game. Here is a screenshot of the bow, where I got the cranes working, and I also tried my hand at cleaning up the topology and decorating the deck:

As you can see, the ship is fairly massive, and that’s just the bow. I think I could fit several of my smaller boats inside this one, and it would still float—if the physics didn’t glitch out, that is! The hull was generated using a 3D model by MoffKalast on Thingiverse (link to Thingiverse page). When I generated the hull using that model, it was way too large at first due to the scaling I did. I think I was also working with incorrect measurements because I was aiming for a 1:1 scale, and I thought I had the correct dimensions. As it turns out, the actual length of the USCGC Healy Icebreaker is about 128 meters, and guess how big the hull is from end to end? 127.25 meters—it's literally just 0.75 meters short! But being a multi-part ship, I can easily extend it by 3 blocks to make up for that. And here I was thinking the ship had to be larger when, in reality, it is nearly 1:1 scale. That really surprised me when I discovered it not too long ago.

Anyways, I generated the hull with the Stormworks hull builder, but the topology was all messed up and needed fixing. Also, because of the way the hull builder generates the mesh, the ship was uneven, and I had to go through the long, tedious process of splitting the entire ship in half. I then removed one half, duplicated the other, flipped it, and merged the two pieces together before I could proceed. Afterward, I divided the ship into multiple sections so I wouldn’t be building the ship at two FPS. I split the ship into its parts: the bow, main superstructure, lower front hull (below the main superstructure), amidships hull, amidships superstructure, and stern.

By the end of this project, I plan to have a fully detailed ship with an interior, and I want it to be completely functional. That’s a hefty plan, but I am confident it will go relatively smoothly. The most tedious parts, I imagine, are going to be the two domes on the amidships superstructure. I can only imagine they’re meant to be skylights for some type of greenhouse built into the ship, or maybe an observatory. But I think it makes more sense for them to be a greenhouse for growing food. After all, the Borealis was supposed to travel through dimensions and stuff, so I imagine they were thinking of ways to survive in environments unlike anything on Earth. The reason those domes will be a challenge is because I need to create them out of glass blocks/pyramids, which is no easy task. Just imagine trying to make a sphere in Minecraft, except you’re building in third person and have more variety in the types of blocks to use. Not easy, in my opinion.

Most of the work above, though, is focused on fixing the topology, adding small details, making functional cranes, decorating, and, of course, fixing some of the detailing. For example, when I mirrored a small portion of the superstructure, it actually ended up with four hoses, but it only needs two. Essentially, everything was copied to the other side, and I had to remove some things.

Though the domes on the back will be tough, most of my time will probably be spent detailing the interior—creating the rooms, figuring out what to put in each room, balancing the number of bedrooms with the ship’s size, and figuring out how to fit laboratories. In my research, I’ve found that the USCGC Healy has five laboratories: Main Lab, Wet Lab, Bio Chem Lab, Electronics Lab, and Meteorological Lab. Aside from trying to fit all those in, I’ll need to figure out what to put in those labs, like decorations for equipment, what equipment is usually in there, and perhaps setting up some computers with data on them.

Anyways, I will be moving to Florida in about three days, so I’m not sure when I’ll be able to work on this project exactly, but I will try to give updates regularly. Here is a screenshot of the generated hull in a modified workbench in Stormworks before I go: