Here is my humble first freebie, soon to be commissioned at the Renderosity freebie site. It's far from perfect. The hull was created from a set of offsets I found on the web, the rest was kinda put together from experience sailing, memories, dreams, wine... well, just a little of that. ;)

It's been a long time making.

No, it's not the Daz Sloop John B. I actually bought it recently, just to see what I needed to do differently, and I'll have to say that whoever modeled it did a great job. I'm not in this class of modeler at all - just a self-taught Blender wanna-be, learning it bit by bit, that's it. What an incredible tool Blender is, though, hey?

So, here she is, so far:

The hatch slides back and forth, the tiller moves the rudder and moves appropriately, the stern hatch opens and closes and the main/boom moves out ...

but here's where the issue has reared its ugly head: there's a conspicuous absence of mainsheet -  how do I make a mainsheet that will behave naturally? I suppose this might take a bit of modeling in Blender, and then creating morph targets from that in Poser, but does anyone have any experience with lengthening/shortening rope props?
In short, how do I allow the Poser artist to lengthen/shorten those lines just by moving the boom?

I've decided not to try to model sail shape variations based on topping lift/boom-vang settings. Too complicated, and I don't think it will add to the end-product enough.

Yes, this will be a freebie, once I get that issue sorted. I will deliver it sans interior. Perhaps I should make the interiors before I publish it?

What do you all think?

Clearly I don't pay enough attention to sailboats, I didn't notice the absent mainsheet ;)

I'm talking about something I know nothing about here, but is there a way to link a morph to another morph?  I.e., you have a morph for the boom and one for the lenghthening rope, and changing the boom morph also changes the rope morph.  I think I heard V4 was had something like that for several of her face morphs or something, but I could have misunderstood.

Unless the problem is creating the rope morph in Blender in the first place?

Hi Haloedrain - thanks so much for considering my little problem. The only reason I know about all this nautical stuff is I used to sail with friends a lot and became quite the enthusiast, and they got tired of hearing: "Oh, you you please just throw me the thingie..."

Quote - ... is there a way to link a morph to another morph?  I.e., you have a morph for the boom

I've actually imported the hull obj into Poser 7 as a separate entity to the boom/sail obj group. The main reason I did that is because I want to be able to set Smooth Polygons on for the hull but not for the boom and rigging, because it renders weird. However, this allowed me to set how I want the boom to behave (swing back and forth) using the joint editor and even set limits and removed xtrans, ytrans, ztrans and xrotate, zrotate by opening the .pp2 and editing out those features.
I had to parent the boom/sail assembly first to the hull so that when the vessel heeled over (tipped to one side) - as they do when the sails fill and draw - the boom/sail group would tip in the same direction.
So, this is the background against which I'm going to be doing those morph thingies with the mainsheet. The boom swings as the user twiddles the yrotate (renamed "Swing", since that's kinda what it does - it swings out, right?)

Quote - ... one for the lengthening rope, and changing the boom morph also changes the rope morph...

Since the boom just swings on the y-axis - limits set to -30 - I suppose the morphs would have to somehow be associated to some defined point on the boom, perhaps? I guess I need to get a grasp on how to create prop morphs for Poser - the modeling in Blender would be the easy part! (Geez, I do like Blender... it's alway so hard to go from Blender when everything is so intuitive and quick - to Poser, where just moving around the workspace is so awkward... :S...)

Thanks again, Haloedrain... :)

So, here she is, so far:

**Congratulation.
**

Yes, this will be a freebie..

Many thanks.

Perhaps I should make the interiors before I publish it?

**You should publish one boat with and one without.  I'm thinking animation here in Vue d'Esprit ou Poser.

I'm also very keen on sailing boat but have no time to model one so thank you very much.**

Getting close to publishing - just working on a mainsheet that will sorta act like it should. The modeling is just about done - just gotta get the behaviour done in Poser. I'll keep you posted.