Modeling

For the modeling I used 3d Max 9. It was the most difficult and intense, part of this piece. I didn't know where I need to start, what to do, where I wanted the camera – nothing. I knew I needed to do a big piece of work and because the centre of the scene was going to be the locomotive, I began by modeling him. Using drafts, I started modeling from the greater part of train onwards, using simple cylinder and polygonal modeling (Fig.10 & Fig.11)



The locomotive and many of its details were not modeled completely correctly, only as close as I could get them, because I didn't have enough information or detailed enough references and I also didn't have much time (and in principle, the task wasn't to produce a completely accurate locomotive!) I even thought to go to the local train station and talk to someone who understood trains and possibly locomotives, but the words "modeling” and "rendering” at the train station? No, they would think that I was going crazy!

So, I needed to just do what I could. Moving up I created the wheels, frame, spring, impellent wheel mechanism and other details. Most details reminded me of some space devices or alien weapon, as batteries or maybe plasma-guns. Most of the objects were initially created from simple primitives, such as Box, Cylinder, Sphere, Capsule etc. Sometimes I start my work from simple planes which I then modify. It is simple to work with such objects, because I can always easily edit them through Editable Poly, which I prefer for modeling. Also, I used lines for the pipes, wires and bent objects (Fig.12 – Fig.29; Mov.01 – Mov.08).