Week 8-More Modelling of the Steam Engine

Before I continued with the modelling this week I looked at my photographs to see exactly what I still needed to do. There did not seem to be much of my section left, mainly just the minor detailing like the bolts. However, at this point I did notice that there was a large pole which I had not realised was there before. Due to this I thought it would be a good idea to create this whilst I remembered.

In the photographs I could not see where this part led to as in each image where it was visible it went right to the top of the photo. This was an error made whilst at the museum as any detailing at the top is not known, so when we create the animation we will have to work around this so it is not evident to the client. Anyway, to produce this part I started with a cylinder with a radius of 6.867cm and height of 158.209cm. I left the segments set to the preset values of 1 for the cap and 5 for the height. I then placed this roughly in position.

Next I made the new cylinder into an editable poly and entered polygon mode. Here I selected the base cap segment and deleted it. I then moved across to edge mode where I highlighted the bottom rim of edges and with the scale tool dragged out new polygons by holding the shift key while moving the mouse.

I repeated the process above two more times to create further segments, but this time I used the move tool and dragged the edges downwards. When I felt the height was correct and I had created all of the necessary segments I capped the bottom of the shape.

At this point I compared the cylinder to the post in the image which it was meant to represent. I was reasonably pleased with it so far but did notice that the shape spread out slightly at the base where it joined with the rest of the machine. So, I went into vertex mode, selected the bottom ring of vertexes and in the top viewport scaled the selected points out to create the desired shape.

I was now happy with this part and so went on to make cylindrical parts at the back which joined up with the pistons. By comparing photos of the front and back of the engine I thought that the cylindrical shapes on either side seemed to be in proportion and so I felt cloning a copy of these parts which I had already created would be the best approach. To begin I selected the cylinders on the front, cloned a copy of these and in the mirror window flipped these along the X axis. I then positioned them on the back of the engine, all the time being careful to only move them along the X axis so they remained level with the ones on the front.

When I believed the positioning was correct I entered vertex mode on one of the cloned cylinders and flattened out the domed area in the middle. When doing this I remained conscious of the surrounding area of the shape as I wanted this part to be completely flat. To help I hid the other objects in the scene which affected my view of this object and its edges.

When I felt the central vertexes were level vertically I moved across to polygon mode and highlighted the polygons in the centre of the cylinder. The extrude window was then opened and an extrusion height of 11.424cm was applied. Afterwards a second extrusion was applied to the same segments, this time to a value of 1.068cm.

With the polygons still selected I chose the scale tool and used this to increase the radius of this section as in the photos this part appeared to be wider than the area behind it.

The last step for this shape was one final extrusion. This time I applied an extrude value of 3.896cm as I felt this was proportional to the rest of the shape.

When I felt I had achieved an accurate shape I repeated the process for the other cylinder. Once again I flattened out the domed shape in the middle of the cloned shape before extruding the central circle of polygons. When applying the extrusion I used similar extrude values to what I did on the larger cylinder as well as using the edges on the side viewport to perfect the alignment of the different sections.

After this I made the other objects in the scene visible again to make sure the parts I had just extruded worked with the rest of the scene. I was really pleased with the outcome of this.

While looking at the engine as a whole in comparison to the photos I took I realised I had missed one of the needles on the dial face. The second was very similar in appearance to the first and so I started by changing the position of the pivot point. I placed this in the centre of the circular part where the needle is joined to spindle.

When I was pleased with its placement I cloned a copy of the shape and selected the rotate tool to position the copy further around the dial. I referred to the photograph when doing this so I could get it in the correct place.

Next I entered editable poly mode and chose the vertex icon. I then removed the vertexes at the bottom of needle as in the image I was working from there were no segments below the point were the needle is attached to the spindle. Lastly I moved the vertex in the centre of the bottom of the needle closer to the ones which surround it to make a rounder, smoother shape in this area.

Afterwards I used the move tool to position this needle under the original needle. Also, I used the scale tool to increase the size of this object as the second was larger than the first in the photo and to make sure some of the circular area was visible around the edge of the spindle like the first.

However, once I had scaled the shape the needle became too large to fit into the dial. To resolve this I entered vertex mode and with the move tool shortened the height of the needle. I reduced the height until it fitted into the face of the pressure gauge and I felt the height was equal to that of the first.

I now felt I had completed the pressure gauge and so decided to go onto another part of the model.

I then went on to create the pipe which comes out of the side of the vertical pipe I have already created. To begin I drew out a cylinder with a radius of 1.624cm and height of 4.065cm and set both the height and cap segment values to 1. To help to get the size accurate I first positioned the cylinder next to the pipe which already existed to assure it was proportional to the rest of the machine. Once I was happy with the sizing I made the shape into an editable poly and selected the polygon icon.

In polygon mode I selected the outer cap and deleted it. I then entered edge mode and highlighted all of the edges on the rim where the cap polygon used to be. Then, by incorporating the move tool and shift key I dragged out new polygons to the side of the original part of the cylinder. I created a few rings of new polygons before going into vertex mode and changed to the scale tool. With this I increased the size of the selected area of vertexes to get the shape to resemble the pipe in the photograph.

When I compared this to the photo I realised I had made too much of the cylinder visible before making the rounded part. To resolve this I came out of editable poly mode and used the move tool to position the shape further into the original cylindrical shape.

Now I had corrected the positioning I continued to drag out new segments whilst in edge mode and gave the areas a realistic shape using the scale tool, all the time using the photos to guide me to the correct shape.

When I came to a section where a shape needed to resemble a bolt I scaled the area larger once the polygons had been created and in vertex mode selected every third vertex in the ring. I then used the scale tool to move these vertexes further out than the rest in these rings, resulting in a hexagonal shape.

From this point I continued to create new segments and reproducing the shape in the photo using the methods as detailed above. However, when I compared what I had created to the image I was working from I realised I had not made the lengths of the different section of pipes equal to one another. Due to this I entered vertex mode and highlighted the rings of vertexes and moved them to correct the proportions.

Following this I repeated the method I used previously to create one final, larger bolt.

Afterwards I went on to create the claw-like section where the metal pipe joins to the rubber pipe. For this I entered edge mode and selected the edges along every other side of the bolt I had just created. Then, whilst pressing the shift key, I used the move tool to drag out new polygons. I then used the move tool to position these parts further outwards, making them form a wider shape.

Next I returned to edge mode and dragged out two further areas of polygons to create this section. When positioning these with the move tool I was conscious of the curved path each arm of the curve followed and tried to reproduce this as accurately as possible, eventually getting something I was happy with.

I thought this had been successful so far, but thought that it would be best to produce the rubber pipe before going any further so that I could assure the two would work together before doing too much work. So, I went to the create rollout and selected the spline icon. From this list I chose the line tool and with this drew out the curved shape of the pipe.

This looked good so far, but currently was too upright. So, I selected the end vertex and turned on soft selection so I could use the move tool to make the spline slope across the engine until it disappeared behind the back of the machine.

I was much happier with this shape but did feel it was necessary to make some minor alterations to the position of some of the vertexes just so the line was as smooth as possible.

Afterwards I selected the spline circle and created this within the scene. I then placed it by the claw section which would join this pipe to the one previously created so I could get the size I required so it was to scale. When I felt that the radius was correct I made the circle into an editable poly and chose the polygon icon. Within polygon mode I highlighted the polygon which made up the circle and opened the ‘extrude along a spline window.’ Here I chose the spline line which I drew out to follow the shape of the pipe.

In the ‘extrude along a spline window’ I set the segment value to 14 as this created a fluid shape without having more polygons than necessary.

Once extruded, I looked at this part in the render window to make sure I was happy with its appearance. I did feel it was slightly uneven, however when I tried it with NURMS subdivision applied I was much happier with its outcome.

The last alteration I made to this piece of pipe was to refine the alignment to the claw piece. Currently the two parts were not lining up and so I entered vertex mode, selected the ring of vertexes closest to the claw area and with the move tool placed the vertexes next to the base of the claw, all the time being careful not to allow a gap between the two. However, this did leave the pipe no longer following a fluid curve. To resolve this I used the move tool to position the whole of the pipe closer to the machine and rotate tool to align the ring of vertexes to the clip without creating the sharp twist.

Now the pipe was created I went back to finish the clip between this and the metal pipe. The two parts fit together well and so I feel the claw had been built well enough to carry on. For this I went into edge mode, selected all the outer edges which make up one of the claws and whilst holding the shift key I used the move tool to drag out new segments.

This went well, so I repeated this process for the other claw arms.

Afterwards I swapped to border mode and selected the border around the clip. I then opened the right click menu and selected cap. However, I was disappointed with this as it did not work as I would have liked.

Instead I selected some of the side edges on one of the claws and dragged out new polygons. I then went into vertex mode and turned on snap with it set to ‘snap to vertex’ and using this I aligned the vertexes. When aligning these I was careful not to align any of the vertexes to an incorrect one on the base of the claw as this would result in the polygons becoming twisted or turning into triangles.

Doing this on the first claw was very successful and so I then repeated on the other two before welding the vertexes to make the overlapping vertexes into one. I used a weld threshold of 0.025cm as this would weld the vertexes which had been snapped without welding any of the others. This process resulted in three large polygons on the back of the claw arm, which meant that the long side of the segment was not attached to the edge next to it as it had two other vertexes along the adjoining edge. As a result of this I separated the longer segments further using the cut tool. I segmented the rows by three as this is equal to the number of segments on the top edge.

Now each side had an equal number of polygons I went into vertex mode and highlighted all of the vertexes which made up the shape. I then opened the weld window and once again used the weld value of 0.025cm so only the vertexes which overlapped were made into one.

Next I moved across to polygon mode and selected the create tool. With this I created the polygon on the side of this section between two of the claw arms.

I then used the create tool again, this time to add polygons into the gaps between the other arms of the claw shape.

Following this I went into border mode and selected the open border on the inside of the claw shape and applied cap to this area. I was not sure this would work as I wanted it to as when I tried this previously to this area, before it was segmented, smax created surfaces where I did not want them. However, this time it was much more successful.

The clip section of the pipe now had the appearance I was looking for.

I am pleased with the progress which I have made with the modelling so far this week. Next I will create the pipe on the back of the steam engine before adding the finishing touches, such as the bolts.