Collab2021 – WIP – simonsez11

I was watching the casual video @theluthier did earlier today. Very interesting stuff I must say, even if he said that nothing was actually done, but there was a lot of brainstorming and problem solving which is equally as important as modelling in 3D. I probably would say that in the engineering world this stage is more important than the 3D modelling side (this comes form a design engineers perspective)

I was originally working on the vase C project but after getting the shape done, my eye was constantly drawn towards the water wheel and how I would actually make it. I’ve done some projects in the past where wheels and chains were involved

My immediate thought (as I am sure probably all the other designers in this collab thought) was that the wheel is made out of a series of buckets and this was mainly because of the top 2 components where it looks like water is sitting.

When you check the next 2 parts it looks like the water is dripping from the side of the “buckets” and not from within. 

Also, one big give away is that those 2 “buckets” should be sitting vertical and not pointing towards the axis. That is when I decided to look into it in more detail to see how it would be manufactured and how it would work. It seems that all the wheels that have buckets on are the ones that sit under a waterfall or an aqueduct from where the water would fall into. the only other reason why these would be buckets, would be if the water was coming in from the top. see illustration below 

The other option then was quite obvious. These are paddles and then it would tie up with the bottom 2 paddles and the 2 top ones would have just a sheen of water on the surface of them. This is where I then decided to look into this in more practical terms and look into the proportions. I personally feel that these paddles can be made in 2 distinct ways. 1) each paddle is 1 thick slab of wood or 2) it is a box made out of “standard” size wood planks. option 2 would be overkill in engineering terms as you don’t gain anything by having a box. On the other hand option 1 is equally as bad simply because of the sheer weight of the whole wheel when assembled and there would be no actual gain in the way it would work. It would just be too heavy to assemble and fit in position.

However, I think right now we should go ahead with option 2 and be true to the artwork and still keep some sort of credibility at the same time. I might be overthinking this to be honest, but in my profession I need to be sure that everything fits instead of leaving it to chance. and I know this is an artistic 3D model and not a functional one. below is my initial interpretation of this wheel, I think that the spigots that connect the main shaft to the outer wheel should be re-designed. instead of having them connect to the paddles ,they would need to connect to the outer rims (I hope this makes sense and thank you for taking your time on reading this super long comment of mine )

thanks @yukinoh1989 , I thought that it adds a little bit of realism with having the vase a bit wonky. 

I’ve added some texture to the vase, but to be honest I feel like it looks bland and boring. I’ll give it another go I think.