3D sculpt maps as boat hulls

I tried modeling a hull in "wings 3d" and exporting it as a 3d scuplt map, but without any success. It seems there is a problem with the export plugin... I couldn't even export a sphere!

I think scuplties are a must to design boat hulls as it is the only to get a proper shape. However, i'll have to find adequate software. An IGES to sculpt converter would be ideal, IGES being considered the "standard" exchange format for nurbs surfaces...

On the left, what the boat looks like so far.

The rig is done

I got a bit sidetracked building my boat, but I managed to get the rig done finally, and the cockpit is progressing. I was thinking about using sculpted prims to do the hull, which would give a much nicer and more realistic shape, all in one prim only.

I downloaded a converter from rhino .3dm files to scuplt maps, but I can't get it to work... So I will use another 3D soft as an intermediary step. That's the plan, anyway...

My first boat

Here's what my first boat looks like at the moment. The hull sides are in place, as well as the deck and roof. I am left with the hull bottom, the rig and the detailing (winches, etc)

It's quite difficult to get a good result with the shapes I'm using. Nothing matches exactly. It's impossible to trim surfaces, so I guess there must be some tricks to hide those defects...

Yacht Design

Ok, so after a few days in SL, I saw that there was active sailing going on there... As I am a yacht designer in real life, hey! maybe I can start designing boats for my fellow residents, I thought. Well, there are already quite a few designs out there, the most common of which seems to be the Tako, a dinghy that is raced regularly. The scripts behind it are even available on the lsl wiki !

I tried my hand at modelling a boat in world, but I just don't understand how it is done. The editor is extremely limited. All I could manage was a triangular box...

Anyway, it doesn't matter because the shape has absolutely no influence on the performance. Everything is done is the script. The script I saw is not based entirely on physics, It seems to try and approximate the behaviour a boat, and I don't know how realistic it is as I never sailed one. For example the leeway angle seems to be based only on the angle of the wind, the strength of the wind and the heel angle. This is not true as boatspeed, sail angle of attack and sail angle relative to the boat all have to be taken into account. As I understand this script, if you are on a beam reach and sheet the sail in hard, the boat won't drift sideways like it does in real life, with both the sail and keel stalled.

So my goal is to develop a boat that has a more real life like behaviour, by using a realistic GZ curve, lift and drag coefficient curves for both the sail and underwatershape and solving the resulting equations 3 dimensionnally for the required variables (speed, leeway, heel, etc...)

It's a daunting task, but I think that It can be done. After that, I just need a boat to put this script in :)

I was born yesterday.

Well no, actually. I was born to my second life three days ago. I've met a few people already, and received a lot of gifts. I've also been sailing with brianzzz.