a Blender modeling project

3D model of a Viking ship

3D model of a viking ship made in blender

Creating a 3D Model of a Viking ship

Viking Ships

I have been thinking of doing a big project for some time. Some time ago I happened to create a landscape in unreal by that looked somewhat nordic. A Viking ship would look amazing in that scene.

My work was based on two ships, the Osenberg and the Gokstad. There are good references online, such as the Viking museum in Norway. I also found this website with very affordable blueprints of ships.

Working with details for a 3d model

A ship like this has a lot of rope knots, planks, and fabric. These details take a heavy hit on the polygon count.

The tricky part was getting all the details and keeping the polygon count down. The answer is baking. I managed to get the polygon count down from 800 000 to around 60 000 using baking.


Working with details for a 3d model

The software Blender has gotten better and better. Now baking works like a charm in Blender. It is maybe not as fast as I would like.

Blender could also handle the cloth simulation of the sail. It turned out much better than I thought it would.


A Viking ship like this always had oars to move when there were no wind and shields to protect the crew using them. Luckily I made a model of a Viking shield not that long ago. I made a post about that shield here. A bit of polygon reduction on those shields was needed, but nothing else. I added my ship together with some arrows and a bone tomahawk to make a more dramatic scene.

Check out the Model on SketchFab

I really like Sketchfab

Sketchfab is the best way that I know of to showcase 3D-Models. It makes it easy to check the topology and the materials. The client does not have to trust that the model is as I claim. For me, it saves a lot of time figuring out what areas of a model might interest a potential client. Why not check out my Sketchfab Portfolio and see for yourself.

This website is updated sporadically and if you like to know what I am doing right now you can always check out my Instagram