Turntable
 

I have had a browse of the forum and have not managed to find anyone else doing a model of a turntable, and since DJing is another of my passions next to maya and rugby I thought i would give it a whack.

Just really started it to get the basic shape, more detail to be added to the buttons and platter before i add the pitch slider and the arm and mech.

It looks like it could be quite a simply(on the whole!, so far its all just been manipulating polly cubes and cylinders) yet effective and enjoyable wee project.

will keep you up to date with updates when I do them, really shouldnt have started this when I have an essay due next week hahah

robin

Good choice of model, should be a good one to do, are you going to texture it too?

Good model, but what kind of shadows did you use? TheyÔre really splotchy.:beer:

cheers

its an ambient occlusion render, of which I am very new to using ha so I dont no, didnt think I touched anything to do with shadows. il have a play with some settings in it and see if it gets any better.

as for texturing I still dont fully understand it, I jsut use simple blinn and lambert materials and play with lights till it looks ok lol. will have to look into shaders and UV mapping some time.

bevel your edges cause they are very sharp.

ah yes i was going to ask about beveling. I did attempt to bevel the edges of the main table but when i did the top face of the cube disappeared? can anyone shed some light on this problem? I simply selected the poly cube and went to polygon->bevel.

thanks again for input

argh
 

nice work man no crits at this point EXCEPT:you stole my next model idea!!:beer:

ok did some work on the slider and buttons very briefly.

I want to get the bumps on the platter but i have no clue how to do this and get it symmetrical short of creating loads of cylinders and just placing them which would take ages! is there any way i can create a circular path that i then could duplicate the cylinder round?????

cheers
robin

Nice going!

You might want to set up the shaddow attributes of your lights to best suit your need's. I wouldent jump ahead just stick to the ambient occlusion renders for now as they let you see if theres any bumps etc on your model.

What do you mean bu bumps on the platter?

It might be best to UV map the area then exprot into photoshop and make a bump map there?

hey there Robin,

to make the bumps it's as simple as grouping one set of knobbles (select them then ctrl & g) then, with the group selected, open the Edit > Duplicate Special atributes, set the y rotation to equally distribute the number of knobble groups you need around the edge (I kept it simple and set it to 1 degree in order that there would be 360 sets of knobbles). Next set the number of copies to 1 less than the amount you need (remember that you already have one copy) so in my case it would be 359 and hit the Duplicate Special button.

I'm assuming that the platter is central to the world co-ordinates, if it's not then snap the group pivot to the it's centre before you duplicate. Also if you're version of Maya is earlier than 8 there is no Duplicate Special option, everything is under the Duplicate attributes.

I hope that helps,

Mat

wow mat cheers mate i shall give that a try. much appreciated

will keep you guys up to date with progress.

ok that you so much for the help although I couldnt get it to rotate around the right axis. I dont think i snapped my coordinates correctly, how was i supposed to do that? Anyway i manged to just center the groups points with the platter and duplicate and rotate that way so it has worked well.. thank you so much guys.

im really happy with this project so far even tho I dont nearly fully understand all maya has to offer, being only my 4th model but im enjoying every Minuit of it!

one point tho. do you have to put lights in an ambient occlusion render? as I have not been?

thanks again

more update pic....

http://www.cs.st-and.ac.uk/~rcb25/WI...update%205.jpg
http://www.cs.st-and.ac.uk/~rcb25/WI...ble%20Wire.jpg

Looking good Robin.

In order to move a pivot you need to select the group or object, hit w to activate the movement manipulator, press insert and move the manipulator, press insert again once you have the manipulator where you want it.

There are various snapping methods....

Snap to grid = x
Snap to curve = c
Snap to vert = v

While the manipulator is in the insert mode hold the cursor over the vert, grid point or curve that you want to snap it to and holding down the relevant key (X,C or V) press the middle mouse button, hey presto snapped to point!

you can move objects in this way too by snapping while out of the insert mode.

Take it easy,

Mat.

To expand upon what happymat just told you, I'd like to share a little trick I learned just recently.

When you hold "v," you can hold down your MMB (middle mouse button) and gently "gesture" near the vertex you want to snap to, the vertex you have selected will snap to the one you gestured near. This you know; happymat just told you :p

But for example, what if you didn't want to snap directly TO the non-selected vertex? What if you wanted to snap ONLY in one direction; X, Y or Z?

Easy solution. With your move manipulator selected, click on the arrow corresponding to the direction you want to move your vertex in (X, Y or Z), and it will turn yellow. Now if you MMB gesture, as above, your vertex will move ONLY in the axis you specified (the arrow that turned yellow).

Pretty sweet, eh? :D

EDIT:

This does not apply to vertex snapping only; you can do it with grid snapping as well.

hey did a bit of sample texturing. just playing about. Used a HDR map for simplicity. Let me know what you think

still a bit of modeling to do

http://www.cs.st-and.ac.uk/~rcb25/WIP/TT%20Textured.jpg

http://www.cs.st-and.ac.uk/~rcb25/WI...Texturing2.jpg

All crit welcome