Thursday 6th February 2014

Ferris Wheel Model

This week I was to create a 3D model using some of the techniques I had learned from following the tutorial last week. For this I decided I wanted to make a ferris wheel as that was what came to mind whilst I was using the duplicate special tool during the tutorial. I found some images and been using them as reference to create my own design. Modelling the ferris wheel has been a lot harder than I expected and I've had to do a lot of trial and error to get an idea of how to model it. The hardest part I've found is creating the frame of the wheel. I've managed to create the inside frame of the wheel but the rest has been difficult. I think I have figured out how to create the wheel entirely but I'll need to put it into practice next time I get a chance to model.
Whilst creating this model I've found out a useful shortcut, holding the letter d allows me to move the pivot point freely. This allows me to pick where the rotation point will be when I duplicate the objects.

These images were what I had been using for references and inspiration for my 3D model. The top image especially as that is also a 3D model.

So far this is the progress I have made with my model. It isn't too much progress as I have been having some problems with the modelling. At the moment I am attempting to have a bar connecting around the outside of the model. However, my attempts haven't been very successful at this point.

Thursday 30th January 2014

Creating a Simple Polygon Model

Today I created a simple polygon model with a blinn texture by following the tutorial that I was shown. Creating the model was not at all very difficult but I did make a few mistakes to learn from. The first mistake I had made was that I hadn't turned off the function 'Interactive Creation'. Interactive creation allows you to freely created a polygon on the grid, but negates the option to create a polygon by typing in specific dimensions. The tutorial was using specific dimensions and did often state that the interactive creation needed to be turned off, but I failed to notice until someone pointed it out to me.

The second mistake I had made was I had failed to group things correctly. Grouping polygons together allows you to select all the objects at once rather than one at a time. When I first grouped my objects together, I thought I had done something wrong so I undone the action, or so I thought. This happened a couple of times and when I eventually grouped the polygons together I hadn't realized that I was doing it correctly each time. One of the steps of the tutorial was to template the groups, which I followed correctly, but when it came to the point I needed to untemplate the groups I was unable to do this. No matter how many times I tried to untemplate the groups they remained templated. Eventually I learned that because I had grouped the objects together 3 or 4 times that the group ended up within 2 more groups in the hierarchy. So I wasn't able to simply select untemplate, instead I had to go to each individual group, select each individual object and then manually untemplate everything by unchecking the box next to template (Attribute Editor -> Object Display).

This is a screen-shot of the finished model after following the tutorial.