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
