Intended Outcome:
- Design and model a vintage style drinks cooler.
Problems I encountered and how I overcame them:
- Creating the main base of this asset was rather simple to do. Referencing my inspiration images, I began by creating a simple box and attempted to create the lip in between the lid and the base of the cooler, which originally proved difficult. Using the indent and extrude tool heavily, I managed to create this part of the model by creating slight indentations before modelling the rubber lip, then doing the same before continuing to make the lid of the cooler. This gave the effect of rubber surrounding the inner portion of this object, despite the viewers never seeing the inside.
- After creating the base, I moved on to creating the lock of the cooler. While I contemplated designing a simpler lock for this piece, I liked the contrast of complexity against a rather simple model, so chose to create a lock similar to the above inspirational image. To create this, I began by using a boolean modifier to indent an appropriately sized cube with the front of the cooler I had already modelled. I then removed the little details that extruded into the indents I created at the lip of the cooler and created new faces to reduce the number of vertices and faces in the model. I then added details to the front face of the lock by isolating the front face and added a loop cut to the upper portion. I then inset and indented to make the large rectangular cut-out. I repeated this method to make the indent in the lower portion of the lock.
- On completing the previous step, I realised I needed to create a bevel at the top of the lock before making the rectangular indent. Because of this, I needed to remove my progress, bevel the top edge heavily, and then repeat the previous step.
- To create indents in the bevel, I isolated the bevelled panels and added loop cuts to resemble where I wanted the indents to be. I then extruded the appropriate faces down into the lock to create the desired effect.
- I added some circular indents to the front of the lock by creating two identical cylinders and using the Boolean modifier with ‘difference’ selected.
- To add detail, I created some marks and indentations using the sculpt tool. While I needed to add more geometry to certain parts of the mesh to create these details, I also enjoyed the long mark this method made across the top of the cooler, as it resembled some of the marks oinspirationon pictures I was using.
- To complete this model, I bevelled any edges that were too harsh, and I ensured that the normals of the mesh had an auto smooth angle of 30 degrees. I also removed any unnecessary faces/vertices and grouped any meshes that would be textured the same to help save time when UV unwrapping my models for texturing.
Where to go from here:
- I aim to focus on more on the larger pieces of this scene.
Timelapse:
Final Model: