Project 1: Lamp due Wednesday, 9-26-2012

 

Description of Assignment: 

For this assignment we were supposed to create a model of a desk lamp using polygonal modeling, NURBS modeling, or a combination of the two.

My Process:

 I first began by importing picture planes of the photos I had taken of the lamp. Using these I created CV curves of the base and cylindrical top of the lamb. Next came the Revolve tool and after a few manipulations in hull mode and adding a few additional isoparms to really get the shapes I wanted I had a base and lamp top. For the neck of the lamp I made another curve and a circle to extruded a tube. I converted this NURBS tube into a polygon and then scaled down several edge loops to create the alternating grooves in the metal which allowed the real lamp to bend its neck in any direction. I then smoothed out the neck to make the bumps rounder. I added various other little details like the nob on the side of the lamp head to turn it on, the inside cap that the bulb is connected to using similar techniques, though in the case of the nob I converted that into a polygon and extruded the faces to create the alternating crevices. For the cap I took a polygon sphere and used the boolean difference tool to cut holes in it and then flattened the whole thing and softened it to recreate the cap's unusual shape. Last was the cable for the lamp, though I left out the plug, which was a symple polygonal cylinder combined with an Ep curve and extruded to create a twisted cylinder. The lines of the cylinder were scaled down and pushed into the surface and then the whole thing was softened using the 3 button. I then grouped all the individual pieces together creating one main piece that was made up of several smaller pieces which could be manipulated without affecting each other.

Download Maya:
https://sites.google.com/site/jarrellfiles/JarrellLamp.zip?attredirects=0&d=1

Apple

To create this apple I first began with a NURBS sphere. I then used the Paint Selection Tool to grab several components to elongate the bottom of the sphere and pull the top part down. This created the apple's flatter top and allowed me to create a crevice on the top of the apple where the stem would originate. I used the same techniques to created another crevice at the bottom of the sphere and pull in four sides to create the four nubby feet. For the stem I began by creating a curve and a NURBS circle, then I used the Surface Extrude tool to create a twisted tube. I covered the top of the tube with a flattened cylinder and placed it inside the top crevice.

Castle and New Tools

The new mesh tools are loads of fun to play with. This castle was largely created by using the Mesh Booleans Difference tool with a bunch of different shapes on two polygon blocks which had been united using the Mesh Booleans Union tool. The shaft of the tower was just one long block and the top part was created using another block with 1*7*7 segments. The inside of the lower block was hollowed by using the Mesh Boolean Difference tool on the shaft, another smaller cube, and a cylinder which had been cut in half using the Mesh Booleans Difference tool and then had its new face pulled down to create an arched tunnel shape. The top cube also had its center hollowed out to create a solid wall from which the crenelation could be made. This way you wouldn't have a flat roof with rectangles jutting out of it. The crenelation was created by simply extruding alternating outer segment faces.  I sized down the tunnel shape I used at the base of the shaft to create the upper windows and then flattened the tunnel to create an outer decoration, again using the Mesh Boolean Difference tool to create the hole in the tunnel and the extruding a connecting base.

Computer Moniter

This model started off a a polygonal cube with 4*3*1 segments. I added more using the extrude tool and messed around with the shape using the move and scale tool on various faces of the cube. The corners, however, were rounded with the bevel tool. The bottom stand was created by extruding a line from the bottom segment out, extruding the sides of that segment up, and using the duplicate face tool to create a top cover. I also used some of the short cuts we leaned like shift-double-clicking to select all the segments in a loop rather than selecting each one individually