3D Fitz.com - Computer Generated Model of Edmund Fitzgerald

05/28/2008 - Edmund Fitzgerald Gathering

The Gibraltar Historical Museum at the Lake Erie Metropark will be having an opne house featuring workshops, lectures, awards artists and more.

Meet people involved with the building and family members of Edmund Fitzgerald crew.

Click the poster at left for a larger version, or visit www.ssedmundfitzgerald.com for more information.

01/21/2008 - Updated Print Released

I have reworked, and enhanced the original illustration.
I've reworked the illustration, rendering an updated model, adjusting lighting, textures and the sky and lake to produce a new and better print for 2008 (view the old print).

The Edmund Fitzgerald can be seen as she last was above the waves in this print I have made. This print was featured in The Minneapolis Star-Tribune in November, 2005 and would make a fine addition to any nautical, marine or Michigan History prints you may have.

About the print
Prints of nautical/marine image "The Last Storm" are approximately 9x13", printed on 11x14" archive-quality Epson Premium Luster Semi-Gloss paper for a beautiful permanent print using an Epson Stylus Photo Pro R1800. Prints are $20 each (shipping included) and I ship the prints USPS after the transaction is completed through Paypal. Prints are usually received within a week.

Please note the title of the image does not appear on the final print.

About the Project

The 3D Edmund Fitzgerald started as my senior project for my BFA seminar in college at Northern Michigan University, on the coast of Lake Superior. Dedicating 500 hours that semester and summer to work on this shipbuilding project, it quickly took on a life of its own. What you see here is the (continuing) result of that love affair, rendered down to the very rivets on the lifeboats. Many thanks to those who find the Edmund Fitzgerald 3D project stimulating and uplifting.

Here are pics and photos of my model as well as current information on the 3D project and the Edmund Fitzgerald. If you would like to leave me a comment, please visit my contact page. This site designed and hosted by Forge22, all scripts, HTML, and CSS coded and validated.

 

Update Information

This is the section where the latest update information can be found. I am focusing much of my time to this project and other professional freelance projects. Information about renderings, images, and the model development will be posted here.

02/12 - Slowly working on new Video. Prints available for purchase! Stay tuned for further developments.

11/10 - 30 Years later. I'll be in detroit this weekend.

11/08 - I am making a QTVR of the Fitzgerald. Awesome. Stay tuned for big things, this will probably take near a day to render completely.

10/31 - Adjusting lighting for photo-realistic render. Video put on hold temporarily. I'll be up the next three days straight...

10/18 3 AM - Rendering a test video of a 5-second fly-around the pilot house. Completed a lot of touch-up modeling based on pics from the launch. Also worked extensively on metal texturing and fine tuning other modeled details.

5 AM - Test Render complete. Pretty smooth, and I updated some textures and the radar models. They Spin! Pilot House Sweep

Noon - New five second animation posted. Fixed above texture and models. Download the new Movie.

10/13 - Texture work is painstaking. It takes almost as long as the modeling. I have a ton of new textures I've created, but getting them to look right is the tricky part...

10/12 - I took about a hundred pictures of different textures down at Chicago's Navy Pier (ewww) yesterday, so I have a lot of great new material to work with.

10/07 - Smoothing camera movement, updating textures with new, better looking and photorealistic techniques. Some of my old techniques worked, but were used very antiquated methods in both modeling and texturing.

4.5 hours to render 10 seconds of animation. The animation came out rather poorly, with a very pixillated AVI. I need to work on this some more...