Over the past seven weeks, my group and I have recreated a steam powered coal pump featured in the 'Museum Of Power', Maldon. The idea was the create the engine from the ground up and show the mechanisms working in an educational and also interesting light. Furthermore we had to show the steam pump being used in the sort of environment it would have been used in decades ago.
Following a visit to the museum and deciding which steam pump we were going to concentrate on, we then decided to assign responsibilities to each group member. So each member of the group could all be working on the project together at the same time, we each designated parts of the steam pumps parts to a member. This allowed us to build the model in less time and as each member was competent modeling the objects we ran into few issues. One important idea we had to take into consideration before creating the objects was to make sure each group member was working to the right measurements. This made it much easier when bringing everything together into one file.
The texturing stage also went mostly without incident. Some of the textures used were created within 'Photoshop', others changed slightly to our requirements, and some others were used from sources on the internet. Creating our own textures allowed us much more flexibility when figuring out what was needed of the materials and how they would be assigned.
The animation stage was probably the most difficult area the group faced in this project. Many of the mechanisms the steam pump uses move at different times, odd angles and at complicated rhythms. One section that turned out to be a lot more complicated than first anticipated was the wheel, and after some hours of experimenting with keyframes, 'Euler X Y Z' and the curve editor we managed a good animation for the wheel. Then after many more hours the animation for the mechanisms were complete, though not exactly how we would of liked them. A couple of the mechanisms were very difficult to join and animate at the exact same time and rate. Also when the loop feature was used to repeat the movements, the mechanisms would get more and more out of position which we couldn't seem to rectify completely. However the animation stage was completed to the best possible standard within the time frame as we couldn't afford to get behind schedule as rendering and post production are very time consuming aspects of the project.
The quickest stage of the project was adding the lights and cameras to the scene. With the environment built and the steam pump now fully complete, it was time to prepare the scene for rendering. Omni lights allowed to light up selected areas as we wished around the scene and created a nice effect on the environment around the main building as the light comes from inside, through the windows and shadows the outside ground. A camera on a path constraint circles around the main building setting the scene, whilst two others inside focused entirely on the steam pump, one remained static as an all encompassing shot and the other zooms in and out whilst circling the engine. The three camera view points were rendered as 'Quicktime' movie files for greater compatibility with mac's. The resolution at 1280 by 768.
With the renders complete, Tom and I used 'Adobe Premier Pro' to build the video for the presentation, along with Stuarts narration and some static images. The Video was exported and then imported into 'Cakewalk Sonar 6' where it was easy to add audio effects prepared by Tom. From here the movie was exported out as an .avi file, running stable and without issue in 'Quicktime' player.
Working within the group environment has been a great experience and has a massive feeling of triumph associated with the project when seeing the whole picture come together. The scene is more technical and has greater scope because of the team effort.
Tuesday 8 December 2009
Post Production
With each of the renders now complete it was time to put the clips together to create the main video for the presentation. Inside Adobe Premier Pro, Tom and I used Stuarts narration audio clip and placed a number of still images to be displayed along side the narration. The 3D renders were then added so the animation would play once the narration has ended. With everything in place we exported the video file as an AVI. This took some time and with a few failed attempts when experimenting with different file types we eventually got a stable video.
The video was then imported into Cakewalk Sonar 6, a audio editing application which was ideal for adding some of Tom's sound clips to the video clip. By changing the placement and the volume of the audio it was easy to create a realistic sounding steam engine.
When trying to export the now complete video to a Quicktime movie file the application failed the process. However we then tried exporting the video as an AVI and this was done successfully. The final video is at a high resolution to give a good professional quality to the content. Furthermore not much quality was lost during the exporting process from Premier Pro and Sonar 6, and so overall as a group we were very happy with the end product.
The video was then imported into Cakewalk Sonar 6, a audio editing application which was ideal for adding some of Tom's sound clips to the video clip. By changing the placement and the volume of the audio it was easy to create a realistic sounding steam engine.
When trying to export the now complete video to a Quicktime movie file the application failed the process. However we then tried exporting the video as an AVI and this was done successfully. The final video is at a high resolution to give a good professional quality to the content. Furthermore not much quality was lost during the exporting process from Premier Pro and Sonar 6, and so overall as a group we were very happy with the end product.
Thursday 3 December 2009
The Oil Lamp
For added effect and detail we thought as a group that a few oil lamps dotted around the scene will create a much more realistic atmosphere, and would also explain the presence of light during a night time scene.
To start modeling the lamp I used a thin cylinder with 22 sides for a more smooth appearance. Converted the object to an editable poly and selected the top polygon and using the bevel function I pulled up and created the shape of the bottom of the lamp.
Adding a mesh smooth modifier created a good, rounded off and smooth surface.
On top of the object I created another cylinder surface which would be the flint area. Again using the bevel tool to manipulate the object into a suitable shape. Two box shapes on top of the cylinder add detail to the shape.
Ignoring the lighted area in the centre of the lamp I went on to create the top part of the lamp. Starting off with a thin cylinder and converting to editable poly and beveling the shape into the desired object.
I applied a mesh smooth on this section as well to round the shape off and make it more consistent with the shape positioned below.
Using the line tool with both properties set to 'smooth', I created a triangle shape which would be positioned on the very top and would act as a little handle. Once converted to an editable poly I could extrude the shape slightly and clone the object. With the cloned shape I booleaned the middle, leaving a handle shape.
The next stage was to create the long pieces of metal that act as handles and attaches the top to the bottom. I used the line tool again with smooth properties, I drew out the desired shape and converted to an editable poly which allowed me to extrude the shape into 3D. Using the border sub selection I could then cap the reverse side polygon.
The mirror tool was helpful for cloning the handle object to match on the opposite side. For added effect I applied a 'bend' modifier to the handles and with direction set to 44, angle to 27 and the bend axis on the Y axis I bent the handle into a more warped shape. I thought this made it look a bit more interesting.
Back to the top of the object, again I used the line tool to draw out the main handle. After the object was converted to an editable poly and extruded I cloned the object and rescaled it ready for boolean. At this point there seemed to be problems with getting the middle shape to boolean like the previous objects. I instead used the pro boolean option which worked as normal.
I applied another 'bend' modifier on this handle on the Y axis at -33 angle and 63 angle.
To finish the model I placed a small sphere into the centre of the lamp. Inside the material library I changed the diffuse colour settings to a light yellow, specular to white and lowered the opacity to 70. I thought that this gave the object a more realistic light effect.
After experimenting with a number of materials for the lamps metallic texture I found a simple, plain grey metallic texture with specular highlights enabled. I applied this texture to each part of the lamp. More detail could have been added during the texturing, such as different materials and bump mapping. However as this object isn't the focus of the scene the detail of the object wouldn't be seen and the extra detail would add to the rendering time of the scene.
To start modeling the lamp I used a thin cylinder with 22 sides for a more smooth appearance. Converted the object to an editable poly and selected the top polygon and using the bevel function I pulled up and created the shape of the bottom of the lamp.
Adding a mesh smooth modifier created a good, rounded off and smooth surface.
On top of the object I created another cylinder surface which would be the flint area. Again using the bevel tool to manipulate the object into a suitable shape. Two box shapes on top of the cylinder add detail to the shape.
Ignoring the lighted area in the centre of the lamp I went on to create the top part of the lamp. Starting off with a thin cylinder and converting to editable poly and beveling the shape into the desired object.
I applied a mesh smooth on this section as well to round the shape off and make it more consistent with the shape positioned below.
Using the line tool with both properties set to 'smooth', I created a triangle shape which would be positioned on the very top and would act as a little handle. Once converted to an editable poly I could extrude the shape slightly and clone the object. With the cloned shape I booleaned the middle, leaving a handle shape.
The next stage was to create the long pieces of metal that act as handles and attaches the top to the bottom. I used the line tool again with smooth properties, I drew out the desired shape and converted to an editable poly which allowed me to extrude the shape into 3D. Using the border sub selection I could then cap the reverse side polygon.
The mirror tool was helpful for cloning the handle object to match on the opposite side. For added effect I applied a 'bend' modifier to the handles and with direction set to 44, angle to 27 and the bend axis on the Y axis I bent the handle into a more warped shape. I thought this made it look a bit more interesting.
Back to the top of the object, again I used the line tool to draw out the main handle. After the object was converted to an editable poly and extruded I cloned the object and rescaled it ready for boolean. At this point there seemed to be problems with getting the middle shape to boolean like the previous objects. I instead used the pro boolean option which worked as normal.
I applied another 'bend' modifier on this handle on the Y axis at -33 angle and 63 angle.
To finish the model I placed a small sphere into the centre of the lamp. Inside the material library I changed the diffuse colour settings to a light yellow, specular to white and lowered the opacity to 70. I thought that this gave the object a more realistic light effect.
After experimenting with a number of materials for the lamps metallic texture I found a simple, plain grey metallic texture with specular highlights enabled. I applied this texture to each part of the lamp. More detail could have been added during the texturing, such as different materials and bump mapping. However as this object isn't the focus of the scene the detail of the object wouldn't be seen and the extra detail would add to the rendering time of the scene.
Tuesday 1 December 2009
Animating The Wheel
When first animating the wheel, the first thought was that it would be quite a straightforward and simple task. However it soon appeared to be a little more tricky than first anticipated. The first attempt at animating the wheel was done via auto key frames on the time line. With a keyframe at the start frame and then moving to a later frame and rotating the wheel object 360 degrees and applying another keyframe makes the wheel rotate all the way around over the span of those frames. Although at first this seemed to be OK, when applying this animation method within the full 600-700 frame movie the wheel tended to need more keyframes to support its animation at a consistent speed. The wheel would also gradually speed up and slow down as it approached the keyframes which ruined the consistent animation.
Upon further research and advice given by lecturer we also looked at applying an animation technique called 'Euler XYZ' which in effect allows the user to select an object such as the wheel, and control the amount of frames, speed, direction and rotation. However this method seemed to be quite complicated and the 3ds Max help files not really explaining how to make it do simple functions. This unfortunately led myself and other members of the group to experiment with the Euler technique, without actually ever getting an object to move. As time was pressing on until the final presentation and hand in date we decided to use another technique using the curve editor. Searching the internet and 3ds Max help files gave me the impression that the curve editor was worth a shot because it seemed to be the most popular method of controlling the sort of animation we needed.
At first it seemed quite complicated, but with some experimenting and a bit of guess work we started getting some results. At first we used keyframes again, over a 100 frame span, making the wheel rotate 360 degrees. However to make the wheel keep its consistent spin and to make it last till the 600th frame the curve editor was needed. Within the curve editor the wheels rotation animation appeared a green line going from left to right at a gentle incline. With help from the lecturer we were able to figure out how to make the animation loop so the keyframes could be kept at the ideal spinning frequency (frames 1 to 80) then using the loop option inside the parameter curve-out-of-range types, to repeat it without extra keyframes being added to the scene.
This was a bit of a breakthrough for the group as we could now tweak the actual speed of the wheel as it rotated from frame 1 to 600. The wheel still appeared to be moving quite slowly, so to speed it up I pulled the green line from within the curve editor and made the incline much greater. The gentler the incline the slower the animation.
The wheel animating without textures using the curve editor.
Upon further research and advice given by lecturer we also looked at applying an animation technique called 'Euler XYZ' which in effect allows the user to select an object such as the wheel, and control the amount of frames, speed, direction and rotation. However this method seemed to be quite complicated and the 3ds Max help files not really explaining how to make it do simple functions. This unfortunately led myself and other members of the group to experiment with the Euler technique, without actually ever getting an object to move. As time was pressing on until the final presentation and hand in date we decided to use another technique using the curve editor. Searching the internet and 3ds Max help files gave me the impression that the curve editor was worth a shot because it seemed to be the most popular method of controlling the sort of animation we needed.
At first it seemed quite complicated, but with some experimenting and a bit of guess work we started getting some results. At first we used keyframes again, over a 100 frame span, making the wheel rotate 360 degrees. However to make the wheel keep its consistent spin and to make it last till the 600th frame the curve editor was needed. Within the curve editor the wheels rotation animation appeared a green line going from left to right at a gentle incline. With help from the lecturer we were able to figure out how to make the animation loop so the keyframes could be kept at the ideal spinning frequency (frames 1 to 80) then using the loop option inside the parameter curve-out-of-range types, to repeat it without extra keyframes being added to the scene.
This was a bit of a breakthrough for the group as we could now tweak the actual speed of the wheel as it rotated from frame 1 to 600. The wheel still appeared to be moving quite slowly, so to speed it up I pulled the green line from within the curve editor and made the incline much greater. The gentler the incline the slower the animation.
The wheel animating without textures using the curve editor.
Wednesday 25 November 2009
Creating & Applying Texture Maps
The final stage before animation was to apply texture, specular and bump maps to the objects. As a group we decided that a lot of the texturing will be done by all group members as this alleviated the work load and allowed us to focus on the animation and post production.
In preparation for the texturing phase, Tom and I downloaded a large collection of different textures that could be used for our project. I also created a brushed metal effect texture and manipulated another texture to my own requirements for use on the models I created. These were saved within the group work folders we share so other members of the group could use the same textures if needed.
As a lot of the steam pumps components featured a brushed metal effect so I thought it would be ideal to create one from scratch because its simple to create and I can make it as high a resolution as needed. I started with an image resolution of 1200 by 800 and filled the background grey. I applied a noise filter (14% gaussian, monochromatic), followed by a motion blur filter (angle 0, distance 41 pixels).
This is the final texture image used for the objects within 3ds Max.
Within 3ds Max I opened my model of a metallic cap and applied the brushed metal texture to each object via the diffuse map properties. Inside the diffuse map settings, under co ordinates I increased the U and V tiling to 3.0 each. .I dragged the diffuse map image down to the bump map properties to copy the image into the bump map settings. I then lowered the amount of bump down to 81.
I added specular highlights to the material inside the 'Blinn' parameter. Under the blinn properties I raised the specular level and glossiness to 74 and 27.
I found a texture online of a grainy, dirtied metal that suited the sort of material I needed for some of the steam pumps components. However upon applying the texture to the wheel object I found that the texture appeared more wooden than metal, even with specular mapping applied and tweaked. I imported the image into Photoshop and applied a few changes to make it appear more metallic. The image below is the standard texture, and the second image is the modified texture.
To start with I made the colour in the image much bolder by changing the hue and saturation with image adjustments properties.
I wanted to remove the black spots from the image as these were appearing more like dark spots on wood rather than a dirtied metallic effect. I used the patch tool within Photoshop to select the areas I wanted to remove and replaced them with the clearer sections of the image.
Finally I applied a motion blur texture like the brushed metal effect image. This gave me a much better image to work with.
I opened the wheel model within 3ds Max and applied the texture to the diffuse and specular level map properties for all the objects in the scene apart from the outer rim which will be a steel texture. I decreased the specular level map amount to 85.
Under the basic shader properties I changed the 'Blinn' parameter to 'Anisotropic' which gave the wheel model texture a much more realistic metallic texture. I tweaked the anisotropic parameters by changing the specular colour to a light pink instead of bright white, specular highlights to 166, glossiness to 30 and the anisotropic to 65. Orientation was left at 0 as there was no need to change this after experimenting with different settings.
For the outer rim of the wheel I applied a steel texture to the diffuse map. I changed the diffuse map U and V tiling parameters to 2.5 by 1.3 because the objects surface is quite thin. Within the blinn shader parameters I set the specular level to 149 and the glossiness to 10.
The red metallic texture was also used on another main component. I modeled a mechanism which is used in the centre of the steam pump and is made of the same metallic material as most of the other parts, such as the wheel.
I imported four separate materials into the library, the red metallic texture, the brushed metal texture, a concrete texture and a dirtied metal texture, each with their bump map amounts set to around 80. Each material also had their basic shader parameters changed from blinn to anisotropic.
The individual settings were all slightly different, specular levels ranging from 79 to 111, glossiness 19 to 65, anisotropic 57 to 72 and orientation ranging from 10 to 116.
Below is a rendered sequence of three images from applying the material to bump then specular mapping.
Using reference photos for guidance I was able to accurately copy the types of textures on the object. Also as some objects had different types of materials on the same object I had to use the polygon sub selection tool to select individual polygons I wanted to apply a texture to.
In preparation for the texturing phase, Tom and I downloaded a large collection of different textures that could be used for our project. I also created a brushed metal effect texture and manipulated another texture to my own requirements for use on the models I created. These were saved within the group work folders we share so other members of the group could use the same textures if needed.
As a lot of the steam pumps components featured a brushed metal effect so I thought it would be ideal to create one from scratch because its simple to create and I can make it as high a resolution as needed. I started with an image resolution of 1200 by 800 and filled the background grey. I applied a noise filter (14% gaussian, monochromatic), followed by a motion blur filter (angle 0, distance 41 pixels).
This is the final texture image used for the objects within 3ds Max.
Within 3ds Max I opened my model of a metallic cap and applied the brushed metal texture to each object via the diffuse map properties. Inside the diffuse map settings, under co ordinates I increased the U and V tiling to 3.0 each. .I dragged the diffuse map image down to the bump map properties to copy the image into the bump map settings. I then lowered the amount of bump down to 81.
I added specular highlights to the material inside the 'Blinn' parameter. Under the blinn properties I raised the specular level and glossiness to 74 and 27.
I found a texture online of a grainy, dirtied metal that suited the sort of material I needed for some of the steam pumps components. However upon applying the texture to the wheel object I found that the texture appeared more wooden than metal, even with specular mapping applied and tweaked. I imported the image into Photoshop and applied a few changes to make it appear more metallic. The image below is the standard texture, and the second image is the modified texture.
To start with I made the colour in the image much bolder by changing the hue and saturation with image adjustments properties.
I wanted to remove the black spots from the image as these were appearing more like dark spots on wood rather than a dirtied metallic effect. I used the patch tool within Photoshop to select the areas I wanted to remove and replaced them with the clearer sections of the image.
Finally I applied a motion blur texture like the brushed metal effect image. This gave me a much better image to work with.
I opened the wheel model within 3ds Max and applied the texture to the diffuse and specular level map properties for all the objects in the scene apart from the outer rim which will be a steel texture. I decreased the specular level map amount to 85.
Under the basic shader properties I changed the 'Blinn' parameter to 'Anisotropic' which gave the wheel model texture a much more realistic metallic texture. I tweaked the anisotropic parameters by changing the specular colour to a light pink instead of bright white, specular highlights to 166, glossiness to 30 and the anisotropic to 65. Orientation was left at 0 as there was no need to change this after experimenting with different settings.
For the outer rim of the wheel I applied a steel texture to the diffuse map. I changed the diffuse map U and V tiling parameters to 2.5 by 1.3 because the objects surface is quite thin. Within the blinn shader parameters I set the specular level to 149 and the glossiness to 10.
The red metallic texture was also used on another main component. I modeled a mechanism which is used in the centre of the steam pump and is made of the same metallic material as most of the other parts, such as the wheel.
I imported four separate materials into the library, the red metallic texture, the brushed metal texture, a concrete texture and a dirtied metal texture, each with their bump map amounts set to around 80. Each material also had their basic shader parameters changed from blinn to anisotropic.
The individual settings were all slightly different, specular levels ranging from 79 to 111, glossiness 19 to 65, anisotropic 57 to 72 and orientation ranging from 10 to 116.
Below is a rendered sequence of three images from applying the material to bump then specular mapping.
Using reference photos for guidance I was able to accurately copy the types of textures on the object. Also as some objects had different types of materials on the same object I had to use the polygon sub selection tool to select individual polygons I wanted to apply a texture to.
Thursday 12 November 2009
Mechanism
My next job for my group was to help model the moving mechanisms in the centre of the steam pump. At first this looked quite daunting and complicated, and the animation was going to be even more difficult by the look of it.
We decided to break up the work load between two members. My part was to model the triangle shaped mechanism and the other smaller parts that surround it. As this was an awkward shape to undertake I started to build it up slowly and worry about the finer details later on. At first I tried to create the basic shape by creating a square with a lot of segments that I could manipulate into the shape I wanted, however this was fairly inaccurate and didn't look very good.
I decided instead to use the line tool with properties of the line tool set to 'Smooth' so I could create a fluid line with no straight lines. This created a much more realistic and better looking shape.
I converted the line shape to an editable poly and extruded the shape out into the right width and height.
Like all line shape converted to an editable poly the reverse side border must be selected and 'capped' to create a polygon in the empty space.
As the shape had a hole through the middle I cloned the object and scaled it smaller and wider so I could boolean the object, creating a hole.
For the next part I created a cylinder that would be put on the right hand side where the triangle object comes to a point. I gave the cylinder 32 sides for a much more rounded and smooth edge. I then cloned the object, scaled it down and placed it inside the first cylinder.
I cloned the cylinder again and scaled it down significantly, increased the length and again placed it inside the second cylinder. However this time I booleaned the smallest cylinder creating a small hole in the centre, which is very similar to the actual design.
To create the metal poles that hold the main component and allow it to move from side to side, I created a cylinder that was about the right size and increased the amount of segments. Once converted to an editable poly I could select the end polygons via the sub selection mode and and scaled them so they were slightly larger, creating a shape that was similar to the real design.
the cylinder shape also had a small metal shape that points out and away from the object, so to create this I simply made a square, changed the shape to the right size, decreased all the segments as this object didn't need them and rotated it slightly.
I grouped the cylinder shape and the small metallic square and cloned them and copied them on the other side of the main component, reversing the little square.
Inside the cylinders I created another one, but much longer and more slim. These are the parts that allow the movement of the mechanism, and are attached to the main body of the pump . I created one for each side.
Now that I had the main shape and body of the component, I went back and started to add more detail. The top part of the main triangle shape has a raised edge that runs around it with one part having a rectangle hole. To create it I made a rectangle, then another smaller and slimmer rectangle in the centre which I would boolean to create the hole.
To blend the object in to the triangle shape, I rotated the rectangle slightly and made it fit, then turned the object into an editable poly, with the vertices at each corner selected I pulled them out so there was a slight angle rather than straight down which would create a more obvious contrast between the two objects.
I then needed to create the raised edge around the triangle. I used the line tool again and drew out the shape on one side .
and again on the other side.
I converted the line objects to editable polys and extruded the shapes to the right size, capped the reverse sides and moved them into the right place.
Within the raised edges there were also two circular objects that were there for attaching the small metal oil pots that I had modeled before. To create the circular base objects I made a cylinder and placed it in the right position, converted the object to a editable poly and with the top polygon selected I used the bevel tool to create a rounded tip.
I placed one either side and used the scale and move tool to make sure they were in the right position and didn't look out of place.
I imported my metal oil pot that I created before and placed two on top of the circular bases. I had to make slight adjustments to the oil pot with the scale tool to get a good fit. I also rotated them so they were facing the directions they were in the photographs.
The final part of the model to create was a thick rectangle shape that moves up an down in the middle of the main component while it moves side to side. This was a particularly difficult object to model correctly because of the shape and the position its situated in.
Like the first part, I decided to build it up in a very basic form then make it appear much more detailed later. I used a cylinder and with the scale tool made it wider, creating an egg shape. Then I made a rectangle that made up the main section. I made another rectangle, but smaller and thinner, I used the boolean tool to cut a hole in the main section.
Using the line tool again I created a shape which over lapped the cylinder shape slightly and ran halfway across the main section. Again I converted this line object to an editable poly, extruded and capped the reverse side.
The top section I created with the line tool also had a small rectangle hole with a raised edge. I created a rectangle with a couple of segments and converted it to an editable poly, then pulled out the verticies on one side and brought them up slightly creating a slope in the shape.
After using the boolean tool to cut the shape out, I created a small rectangle shape that sticks out from the object and gave it more segments, converted it to an editable poly and moved the points either side down a bit, making it look a bit like an arc. I then applied a mesh smooth modifier to make it appear smoother.
Along the top section again, there is another hole in the surface, a dark dent in the object further back from the first. This time I used a pyramid object and rotated it upside down, scaled it to the right side and placed it where the hole would be.
Using the boolean tool again I cut the pyramid out of the surface below. I also placed a small sphere in the centre to give it bit of detail that closely resembles the real surface.
The last bit of detail I added was a sphere on the side, it added some more depth to the object and made it look more like the real object.
I grouped all the objects together and changed the colours of the objects to help with texturing later on. Below is the final model of the object.
We decided to break up the work load between two members. My part was to model the triangle shaped mechanism and the other smaller parts that surround it. As this was an awkward shape to undertake I started to build it up slowly and worry about the finer details later on. At first I tried to create the basic shape by creating a square with a lot of segments that I could manipulate into the shape I wanted, however this was fairly inaccurate and didn't look very good.
I decided instead to use the line tool with properties of the line tool set to 'Smooth' so I could create a fluid line with no straight lines. This created a much more realistic and better looking shape.
I converted the line shape to an editable poly and extruded the shape out into the right width and height.
Like all line shape converted to an editable poly the reverse side border must be selected and 'capped' to create a polygon in the empty space.
As the shape had a hole through the middle I cloned the object and scaled it smaller and wider so I could boolean the object, creating a hole.
For the next part I created a cylinder that would be put on the right hand side where the triangle object comes to a point. I gave the cylinder 32 sides for a much more rounded and smooth edge. I then cloned the object, scaled it down and placed it inside the first cylinder.
I cloned the cylinder again and scaled it down significantly, increased the length and again placed it inside the second cylinder. However this time I booleaned the smallest cylinder creating a small hole in the centre, which is very similar to the actual design.
To create the metal poles that hold the main component and allow it to move from side to side, I created a cylinder that was about the right size and increased the amount of segments. Once converted to an editable poly I could select the end polygons via the sub selection mode and and scaled them so they were slightly larger, creating a shape that was similar to the real design.
the cylinder shape also had a small metal shape that points out and away from the object, so to create this I simply made a square, changed the shape to the right size, decreased all the segments as this object didn't need them and rotated it slightly.
I grouped the cylinder shape and the small metallic square and cloned them and copied them on the other side of the main component, reversing the little square.
Inside the cylinders I created another one, but much longer and more slim. These are the parts that allow the movement of the mechanism, and are attached to the main body of the pump . I created one for each side.
Now that I had the main shape and body of the component, I went back and started to add more detail. The top part of the main triangle shape has a raised edge that runs around it with one part having a rectangle hole. To create it I made a rectangle, then another smaller and slimmer rectangle in the centre which I would boolean to create the hole.
To blend the object in to the triangle shape, I rotated the rectangle slightly and made it fit, then turned the object into an editable poly, with the vertices at each corner selected I pulled them out so there was a slight angle rather than straight down which would create a more obvious contrast between the two objects.
I then needed to create the raised edge around the triangle. I used the line tool again and drew out the shape on one side .
and again on the other side.
I converted the line objects to editable polys and extruded the shapes to the right size, capped the reverse sides and moved them into the right place.
Within the raised edges there were also two circular objects that were there for attaching the small metal oil pots that I had modeled before. To create the circular base objects I made a cylinder and placed it in the right position, converted the object to a editable poly and with the top polygon selected I used the bevel tool to create a rounded tip.
I placed one either side and used the scale and move tool to make sure they were in the right position and didn't look out of place.
I imported my metal oil pot that I created before and placed two on top of the circular bases. I had to make slight adjustments to the oil pot with the scale tool to get a good fit. I also rotated them so they were facing the directions they were in the photographs.
The final part of the model to create was a thick rectangle shape that moves up an down in the middle of the main component while it moves side to side. This was a particularly difficult object to model correctly because of the shape and the position its situated in.
Like the first part, I decided to build it up in a very basic form then make it appear much more detailed later. I used a cylinder and with the scale tool made it wider, creating an egg shape. Then I made a rectangle that made up the main section. I made another rectangle, but smaller and thinner, I used the boolean tool to cut a hole in the main section.
Using the line tool again I created a shape which over lapped the cylinder shape slightly and ran halfway across the main section. Again I converted this line object to an editable poly, extruded and capped the reverse side.
The top section I created with the line tool also had a small rectangle hole with a raised edge. I created a rectangle with a couple of segments and converted it to an editable poly, then pulled out the verticies on one side and brought them up slightly creating a slope in the shape.
After using the boolean tool to cut the shape out, I created a small rectangle shape that sticks out from the object and gave it more segments, converted it to an editable poly and moved the points either side down a bit, making it look a bit like an arc. I then applied a mesh smooth modifier to make it appear smoother.
Along the top section again, there is another hole in the surface, a dark dent in the object further back from the first. This time I used a pyramid object and rotated it upside down, scaled it to the right side and placed it where the hole would be.
Using the boolean tool again I cut the pyramid out of the surface below. I also placed a small sphere in the centre to give it bit of detail that closely resembles the real surface.
The last bit of detail I added was a sphere on the side, it added some more depth to the object and made it look more like the real object.
I grouped all the objects together and changed the colours of the objects to help with texturing later on. Below is the final model of the object.
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