Hi all, hoping someone can help me out with this. I want to model some boats and ships. A wide variety from classic Viking style to modern Navy ships, just for fun on my end. Anybody have any good recommendations? I'm finding that this is an area I'm weak, mostly due to the way the hull of boats/ships are shaped and looking for what types of workflows you'd do to handle this.
HUGE thanks in advance for reading this, even if you aren't able to help! I appreciate your time!
tthibaultroge12 (I think) might have some good answers for that, based on a recent project he did :D
Boats have tricky shapes for sure. I'm thinking the tutorials here that could help the most is Pothead:
https://cgcookie.com/courses/pothead-create-a-hard-surface-character-in-blender
Maybe the old robot one:
https://cgcookie.com/courses/game-character-modeling-with-blender
But what you have to keep in mind is, that it will not be just a matter of following a tutorial to learn how to model something complex, if you follow the tutorial you'll just be copying what they do and next time you have to do it on your own, you wont know what to do. In reality I'd say you just have to model a lot and by a lot I mean a lot, and make a lot of mistakes so your brain starts to get around the mental complexity of modeling complex stuff.
Hi Sean,
I think Grady means Thibault Caradec 
otowa .
But it's more about learning to model (from reference). Whether it's a ship or a car or a house or...
A Viking ship will be a very different process, than a modern navy ship or a cruise ship.
About the shape, try using a Lattice. And yes, Thibault has some experience making (wooden) boats; maybe he has some useful advice.
As said above, I had to model ships for some of my artworks.
Basically, I followed this type of method, that allows to recreate hulls using line plans : https://modelshipworld.com/topic/20027-hull-modeling-with-blender/
Read carefully as this topic has a lot of trial & error informations.
I didn't need to have the part below water visible for my illustrations so I did not completely fix the geometry but this is what I ended up with for both boats.
If you try to follow this method, just be careful to never change the height of vertices of the line plans. They should stay horizontal or you will completely mess up your overall hull shape : 
If you need more precise information, I may be able to answer, so you can ask. If you manage to keep up with it, you can finish with quite nice models!
First off - you all are awesome, very humbled to get to be a part of this awesome community!
gradyp and Martin, one of the main reasons I wanted to get better at this in particular is because of the amazing work I've noticed by otowa in the gallery in the past. I'm about 8 months into my learning journey right now, but when I notice a weak spot I want to hit it.
Thibault, your work has been HUGELY inspirational for me in my learning journey. I see your pieces in the gallery and they’re seriously impressive. Keep doing what you're doing! And thank you so much for sharing this out with me! I've never tried a lattice so this will be a new one for me. I'll use what you gave me for starters and then might have more questions for you eventually but will definitely be respectful of your time if I reach out.
Omar, as always thanks for the awesome advice, man! I am trying to get some more practice in with modeling. Ever since taking Kent's sculpting course I've been working as hard as I can to get better at sculpting characters, more on that to come soon. My day job picked up and just trying to squeeze as much time in as I'm able. I really respect what you said about "you'll just be copying what they do and next time you have to do it on your own, you wont know what to do. In reality I'd say you just have to model a lot and by a lot I mean a lot, and make a lot of mistakes so your brain starts to get around the mental complexity of modeling complex stuff".
I think that's really what I need to be doing is just a lot more modeling. Any of you that do both sculpting and modeling, how do you find a good balance between the two?
Huge thanks all around to all of you, I really appreciate the advice!
Modeling and sculpting don't work one against the other, more like in conjunction, so I wouldn't say there is a need to find a balance. Kent really likes the sculpt it first and then retop approach, instead of box modeling out of thin air. I prefer it as well, it's so much freeing and less prone to mistakes in the model, less wobbly results. Also a lot of the time you can go into sculpt mode in any model and make some tweaks. Sculpting is usually for organic models, hard surface models will mostly be box modeling, so whichever approach you use will depend on what you're modeling. So like before, just lots of practice.
woleslagle Thank you for your kind words and support !
Just be careful, I'm not the one who suggested a lattice. I tried it once for a very different type of boat and didn't succeed in using lattice effectively.
As usual, there are no good or bad ways to do it. It's all about your goal and what your model will be used for. Good luck !