Sophie Rowson [B]

Intended Outcome:

• Create a simple but realistic thermos flask.

Problems I encouraged and how I overcame them:

• I began this model with a cylinder roughly the thickness I wanted the flask to be, then extruded it to resemble a basic thermos flask. I made sure to constantly refer to a reference image as I created the base of this model, and created indents or extruded as necessary, not focussing too much on the details as of yet.
• At the bottom of most stainless steel flasks, there is a slight indent around the bottom. Instead of creating just one slight mark, I chose to widen it to a thicker indent, allowing for more detail opportunity when texturing this piece. I used a rather simple and inaccurate method of creating this, choosing to use loop cuts and extrude parts around this portion. While inaccurate, this detail is small and therefore difficult to notice, making me allow myself to get this result without focusing on measurements. The overall effect works well for this model.

 

• The lip at the top of a thermos flask was also a detail I had to interpret. while I struggled to make this part of the model resemble my reference image exactly, I still managed to use the extrude and scale tools to create a convincing break between the base of the flask and the lid.
• To create the lid, I firstly placed loop cuts towards to top of the model, before using proportional editing. I initially struggled to taper the top the correct way and consulted the blender community on how to create my desired effect. On researching this method, however, I remembered a quicker way to bevel the top and make it bear resemblance to my reference image.
• To complete this model, I added a subdivision surface modifier to smoothen the surface, 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.

Where to go from here:

• After completing this rather simple model, and refreshing my workflow speed in Blender, I aim to focus on my more complex assets.

 

Timelapse:

Final Model:

One initial struggle I had when experimenting with creating fabric in Blender was what vertices to pin and how to pin them. After experimenting with basic, but not ideal, results, I consulted the Blender community on Youtube, finding the following tutorial by CG Cookie.

What was unique about this tutorial was how CG Cookie used weight painting to pin the sections he wanted to. Not only does this allow him to pin the exact points of which he wants to pin, but he manipulates the strength of the weight painting in order to apply a diluted effect to other parts of his model. This allows him to add detail to his model, without restricting the strength of the effect to %100 or %0.

ON watching this, I experimented with this method of pinning fabric and gained the following results.

I quickly made the following set up:

 

 

I initially experimented with using just red and dark blue values. This was quick and easy to assign:

 

As I had already relied on the system of having just two values – pinned and loose – I added strips of green into this set up, a value that falls roughly inbetween red and dark blue. The effect was interesting, and allowed for more modelling capabilities in what I thought to be such a restricting effect:

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Sources:

– CG Cookie (2017). CGC Classic: Creating a Pup Tent pt.1 – Modeling (Blender 2.4).

Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNgOLmhxtLg [Accessed 22 Apr. 2018].

Although I have previously worked with many of the physical effects Blender has to offer, I had only used the cloth effect to create a simple sheet of material. Because of this, I had not idea how the feature would effect differently shaped meshes, and decided to do a little bit of experimenting on how to use the effect to gain the best result I could.

Because my initial plan was to create a modern pop-up tent, the following experiments were used to try and recreate the above reference picture. Although my idea changed, the trials I describe in this post helped me to understand this specific modifier to a higher level.

During my experiments, I tried the following methods:

* Cylinder to cone

* Sphere

* Select pole vertices and make a face

* Plane

* Cast Modifier

Cone & Cylinder

When begging to experiment, I firstly wanted to see which mesh would be most appropriate to begin with. I initially thought a cone shape might be a good start, but although the cone is triangular, I wasn’t able to subdivide or loop cut to create detail in my cloth, so I opted to create a cone shape out of a cylinder. In my first few attempts, I began by trying to make each section with one large shape, but as I carried on it proved rather difficult to do so, so I often used the initial shape to model around the shape of the poles, then deleted the vertices I sins need until there was enough to fit one of the four sections of my tent.

I began by scaling the cylinder so that the top and bottom points matched the curvature of the tent poles. After this, I created loop cuts to add detail for when I apply the cloth simulation, then began to scale each section to again follow the curvature of the tent poles. Afterwards, I needed to scale and alter the whole dome until it encompassed each corner of the frame, and deleted faces so that I was left with just the right amount for one panel. After separating these faces by selection, I created a vertex group to add pins in the cloth simulation, and was left with this following result.

 

 

Sphere

As above, This was initially an attempt to create all four panels at once, deleting the bottom half of the sphere and working with the top half. Once I had scaled and altered the sphere to fit comfortably into the tent poles, I deleted faces so that only one panel was visible, in a hope to focus on this individually and duplicate it for the rest of the tent. As I began to refine the details, I found it difficult to get the mesh to move as I hoped when using proportional editing.

 

Create a face

Another method I attempted to use was to use the vertices from the poles to create a face and model that mesh. After selecting the points along two sides of the inner sides of the pole, I simply pressed [F] to make a face and copied the selection to form a new object. This then proved to be ineffective as I was unable to subdivide the face of this mesh, causing no movement when the cloth physics were enabled.

Plane

This method seemed to work most efficiently, an was the simplest to do. I simply created and subdivided a plane, rotated and scaled it to create a triangle that was the width and height of the frame of the tent, before using proportional editing to curve the mesh to fit the curvature of the frame. The initial proportional editing was effective, however I still needed to make alterations in order for it to look more natural. I struggled to fit the frame exactly, but with a bit more time and attention to detail, it could be achieved.

 

Cast Modifier

I found a rather helpful tutorial online that explained a way to create a modern tent precisely and with one mesh. This method proved easy to follow and introduced me to new features of blender I had not yet used yet. I did not follow this tutorial fully, but I gained a result I was very happy with. Had I chosen to create a modern tent with this shape, I would have used this method, however, would need to experiment with how to create detail on top of this mesh to make the model more realistic. For example, creating a zip and an open door would be difficult so I would need to consider using one of the other methods I have tried for this panel.

Cast Modifier Tutorial

 

 

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Sources:

– Blender.stackexchange.com. (2017). How to model a Dome Tent?. [online] Available at: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/41982/how-to-model-a-dome-tent [Accessed 27 Mar. 2018].