The Bullock Museum in Austin, Texas is the home of the recovered remains of the La Belle. A ship built in 1684 for French explorers who were to embark on a journey to the Mississippi River to claim new territory. Unfortunately, the ship took a wrong turn and sank in 1686. In 1995 the remains were recovered off the coast of Texas.

I was tasked with creating a physically accurate model of the La Belle based on the recovered remains of the ship, historical accounts and drawings. The textured, rigged and animated model was to be used in an Unity based, real-time augmented reality installation for the museum guests to get a better understanding of what the ship and its various holds and weapons looked like. The ship was modeled in Maya and textured in Substance Painter. The sails, pennants and flag were created in Houdini using Vellum cloth.

In addition, I created a custom Unity model viewer for the client, so they could view the progress of the ship in 3D on their own computers as it went along. This allowed for detailed feedback and resulted in a more accurate model.