Reply To: Polybook – FrikkR

Another WIP that I have been working on for a while. This was a  follow on from my “mini-models” hair clippers but I got into this a bit  too much so its now a “massive-model” …..

 

This one was started as a way to practice modelling something from  photos, rather than something I had in front of me. I also wanted to do  something that I was not very familiar with and hadn’t realy seen much  of in person. I also went for a train because it was a completely  different scale to the clippers. 

 

Unfortunately, as soon as I got into this, my mission to make a model  that was a close replica, became as obsession. So in addition to trying  to add every detail as closely as possible to what I see in the photo. I  also have made this model so that every piece fits together perfectly.  There are no pieces that are “crashed together” or protruding through  eachother, and every object matches up perfectly with the next. There  are still a lot of details to add, bolts, hoses, stuff like that , and  the cab needs a lot more work. I might also add the coal cart thingy at  the back that I knew the name of and have now forgotten. Anyway this is  one of those “take your time and do it right” models so ill keep  chipping at it until its done ,and done right 

 

Needless to say as soon as I saw the “train wheel rigging” tutorial by Chris Kuhn found here : https://cgcookie.com/course/rigging-train-wheels-within-blender/1  then I had to rig this thing for animation. Chris’ rig is a great way  to alternatively rig something, without bones, and it was a lot of fun.  The finished rig however, is quite simplified, compared to what I found  when I started looking for videos of real train wheel mechanics, so as  usual I had to adapt my attempt to make it realistic to the model. It  was hard to find a video of a “Green Arrow” wheel closeup in action, and  even harder to rig it realistically (there are a lot of parts that  depend on eachother and move together in so many different ways) but I  percivered and got it working. Im at the stage now where I can start to  model the initial block in of the mechanism.

 

However, I haven’t touched this thing since Christmas as I got  distracted by other projects but hopefully I will get back to it properly  soon