BA1b 3D - Time Machine 8

My next task was to put the jingle in the bell, so to speak. My first idea was to have something hanging, like in your average bell. But because of the shape of mine, its more like a cat bell, so I thought it would make more sense if I simply had a ball inside that would ring around. This was easy, just make another small sphere inside the bell, making sure it looks like its realistically sitting inside.

I then moved on to the top where I extruded faces out to make the handle.

Last but not least, the stick and string. The stick is a pretty basic shape, with a hole at the top for the string to go in. The string was a bit harder, having to go through the whole process and trying to almost 'guess' where its supposed to go in reference to my bell and stick. 

All in all, I am proud of my design - if a bit simple. I will be putting my model into zbrush next to create all the details.

BA1b 3D - Time Machine 7

To make the top of the bell, I started with another sphere. I then cut off all of the bottom half, and only kept the small top area. In order to stay under the tri count limit, I decided to target weld the top half of the bell like below. This meant that I didn't have create more divisions in the top half and also didn't have any 5-sided shapes.

I then realised that I would need an inside of this bell, as a metal bell would be somewhat thick. One way to do it was to select the faces and extrude inwards, but that would mean I would double the amount of tris I had, jumping me over the limit of 10k. I decided to then create another sphere, of low divisions, and put it inside my bell. 

I then cut out faces where needed, and bridged or extruded the gaps between the two shapes so that the bell had an actual thickness to it.

BA1b 3D - Time Machine 6

In order to make all three loops, I simply copied the first one I made and changed the size when needed.

I then target welded the two shapes together, which was easier than before as they were identical shapes so had the same divisions as seen below.

I then did the same again for the third loop, creating an almost beehive affect on my bell.

Next challenge is to create the top of the bell, with the handle part and the other holes.

BA1b 3D - Time Machine 5

I've moved on from the drawing phase and have started modelling my bell. I created a sphere first, trying to figure out how I would make the indents in the shape. I concluded that I would have to add more divisions, and turn it so it was an easier cut. I then proceeded to cut the shapes out of the bell, deleting faces and moving vertices. 

The next step after I had made the bottom of the bell was to create the three parts that you turn, so I made a torus shape around the same size as the top of the bell I had made, and then deleted the insides of the shape as seen below.

I started to cut only the bottom faces of the torus, and then realised that this would mean I would have shapes with over 5 sides above the areas where I've cut.

I thus decided to use multi-cut through the shape where I needed more edges seen below.

And then welded them together with the target weld tool.

BA1b 3D - Time Machine 4

This is a sketchy drawing I did of the character and the bell together, looking at the colour scheme and trying to distinguish a final design. I'm happy with how it looks, the bell looks how I wanted it to and I am really happy with the characters design. The cloak of the character looks like a bell, more of your average bell rather than the round idea I used for the time machine itself. I was thinking they may have had an incident when time travelling and no longer show their face, so drew their own mask and wears that. They are not a good artist, so the mask is cute and childlike. 

BA1b 3D - Time Machine 3

Here is another sketchbook page of the time machine idea, looking more at the bells design and character, and also how the bell ringing system would work. I decided that having a stick would make more sense for the bell, as it would be far easier to hold and ring. For the ringing itself, I thought that if you ring once, then pause for 2 seconds, then ring three times, then stop for another 2 seconds, ring nine times, stop, and then one final ring, and then stop for over 2 seconds - it would mean the year 1931. The hour, time and date are all parts of the bell that you turn to the date you want. The character currently has no face, but I will be looking further into it once I've fully finished the design of the bell.

BA1b 3D - Time Machine 2

The bell idea I thought was the most promising, so I decided to look more into how I could work a bell as a time machine. I want to at least design a character too, and if I don't have time to create a 3D model of them at least I'd have the design for the future. Me and my friend were throwing ideas around for our projects, and she mentioned that with the bell I could have movable parts that you twist to make a date/time etc to time travel to - similarly to the code feature on a padlock.

http://images.toolbank.com/images/full/ABU158KC45.jpg

I was thinking about there being different parts you turn for the hour. day, month and year you want to travel too, but the year one may be somewhat of a challenge as it would have to infinite amount of numbers. Below some sketches and ideas I wrote down to get a clearer idea of what I was thinking of making and how the bell would work.

I thought that maybe ringing the bell rather than having a fourth turning part would work better, and also I would be using the key part of a bell, the ringing, for the years which are important.  I was also thinking that each of the three parts would have a different set of numbers. One would have Roman Numerals, one would have English numbers and one would have Kanji numbers, also looking at how I could make it obvious in the bells design which numbers you are selecting, and how the character that's connected to the bell would look. I thought that maybe if the bell only worked with the character, then the character would be part of the bell and time travelling process in a very large way.

BA1b 3D - Time Machine

We were told that our next project was going to be making a time machine, and it can be whatever we want. It has to be under the 10000 tri count, and needs to have a normal map, ambien occlusion map, albedo map, roughness map and metalness map, and then we can have ones like the emissive map if we want too as extras.

Whilst thinking about what kind of time machine I would make, I laughed at the idea of using the character 'Isabelle' from Animal Crossing: New Leaf as she has two small bells on her head that jingle when she walks. The jingle/movement of the bells could send you somehow back in time if you shook her/the bells a certain way. Even though that idea was just a joke, the idea of bells themselves was something that I found interesting and wanted to look into further, especially the round bells.

                                (isabelle)                                                       (bells)

Somehow, I could use the shaking of a bell to send someone back in time. I also want to try having a character, as this is more the field I want to go in - but depending on what I decide to model I'm not sure I will have the time or skills to create something like that.

BA1b 3D - Damaged Pillar 10

Here are the maps for my damaged pillar.

Base AO and Normal

Bottom PaNormal and AO

Tiger AO and Normal

Top Part Normal and AO

BA1b 3D - Damaged Pillar 9

Below are screenshots from marmoset of my finished damaged pillar. I'm not really happy with the bottom half of the pillar, or the way that the tiger has been mapped. There are also a couple of holes and I'm not sure how that happened. The mesh itself was a mess, I had to do a lot of editing and removing of edges and vertices in order to lower the tri count. I think, looking back, if I had known more about how the whole mapping/high poly/low poly process worked, it would have been an easier model and I would have kept less of the high poly - I simply didn't understand how it all worked, so ended up trying to keep as much of the high poly as I could. I didn't at the time realise that you map the high poly details onto the low poly, which would have made life a lot easier. At least I have learnt from it, and in the future will do a much better job. Overall however, I'm proud of myself for finishing it.

BA1b 3D - Damaged Pillar 8

Below is what my pillar looked like when I put it into marmoset, with the normal and ambient occlusion maps on. There are some clear problems with the tiger, which seems to have the high poly protruding through the low poly.

I decided to thus import the high poly tiger into maya and see how it worked with my cage/ low poly. It was out of place, and the cage did not overlay both of them so I made a new one and transformed it so that its larger than both, and then worked with the vertices so that it properly covered everything. Below is before with the low poly moved. 

Working on the vertices

Above is the cage after editing, that covers both high and low poly.

Above is what the end result of changing the cage. It still doesn't look quite right, but it may be the best I can do with the time I have. If I have more time in the future i will try and sort it out and make it perfect, but for now this is the best I can do.

BA1b 3D - Damaged Pillar 7

This is my finished low poly pillar mesh. I had some issues with the mesh itself, with the tri count jumping up without reason on the bottom pillar (maybe linked to the messed up mesh from before), which resulted in some messy vertices and faces. 

Overall however I am happy with the result, and now need to cage and map it.