Recent contributions to the three-dimensional vortex method for bluff-body flows are presented. The numerical method a vortex method combined with a boundary element method is briefly reviewed. It is applied to direct numerical simulation of the flow past a sphere (Re = 300 and 1000). The on-going work to extend the method towards vortex-based large-eddy simulation for high Reynolds number flows is also presented. Preliminary results for the flow past a hemisphere are discussed.