Week 3-Starting my Project

During this weeks lesson I started to create my idents. As I knew that we were due to have tutorials on using bones I felt it would be best to start with the background where only basic modelling which I learnt last semester was involved. Due to this I started by creating the play equipment.

Roundabout

To start I decided to produce the roundabout. The first thing I did to create this was to produce the base. For this I used a cylinder with a radius of 51.379 and a height of 3.999.

I felt the next thing to create should be one of the seats. To do this I created a spline with the line tool, and after a few alterations to the vertexes I got the shape I wanted.

At this point I converted the spline into an editable poly and selected the polygon icon. I then opened the extrude window to add a third dimension to the shape I drew before selecting the border icon to select the open edge and capping it.

At this point I duplicated the shape and spread them evenly around the base of the roundabout.

The last part of creating the roundabout was to produce the handle. To start this I used a cylinder with a radius of 1.51 and a height of 22.726. When I felt it was the correct height I cloned an instance for the other vertical bar and a copy for the horizontal bar.

I then made another copy of the cylinder, but for this one I reduced the height to 10.288. Lastly I applied the bend modifier to an angle of 90 degrees.

I then duplicated the curve and placed one on either side to join the frame together. When I was happy with the alignment I grouped the cylinders together.

Afterwards I arranged them at the edge of each of the seats.

Finally I added a mesh smooth to the base with an iteration level of 2 and smoothness of 1.0.

As I was happy with the appearance of the roundabout I went onto another object.

See Saw

To create the see saw I decided to work from the middle outwards as I felt this would be easiest. Due to this I began by drawing a box out for the central column. I then made the shape into an editable poly where I selected the polygon icon and selected the top polygon. I then opened the bevel window and changed the figures until I was happy with the shape.

Next I created the bar to go through the centre of the seesaw. For this I drew out a cylinder and placed it in the middle of the base. From here I changed the height until I felt the cylinder was in proportion to the central part of the see saw.

After this I went on to create the seat. For this I once again used a box, which I split into 7 segments in length, 3 in width and 3 in height. To begin with I used the scale tool to make sure it was in proportion to the rest of the object, and when I was happy with it I made it into an editable poly. I then selected the polygon icon and selected some of the polygons across the top before applying an inverted bevel of -0.6.

Finally I applied mesh smooth with an iteration value of 2 to complete the seat.

I then cloned an instance and placed them evenly on either side of the bar.

At this point I went on to create the handle. I felt the best way to do this would be extrude along a spline so I could get the smooth shape I wanted. Due to this I used the line tool with smooth corner to draw the spline I required.

Then I drew out a circle and converted it to an editable polygon. I then selected the polygon icon and extruded the circle along the first spline. To get a smooth shape I increased the number of segments. When I was happy with the shape I capped the open edge.

I felt the handle had turned out quite well and so I duplicated it and placed one on the inside of each of the seats.

I am really pleased with the way my project has gone so far. Next week I will continue to build the content in the background before I go onto the animation.