A lot more since the last post

I promised to say how I sharpened the blades; each one had a quadrilateral cross-section; I merely merged the outer pair of points on each quad along each blade.

OK, what have I done since then?


Some smoothing and added surfaces on the nose-cone, as well as a central bar in the middle of the cutter


Started a UV texture for the cutter (based on a tutorial here) -- you can see the UV face edges as paler lines on the red of the cutter.


More detail on the texture


A bump map and some grass-stains added to the texture.


I changed the grass (floor plane) and added an area light for fill-in details


And I changed the "sky" background.


I had plans to do a UV unwrap of the rear roller but two points occurred to me:

• It's pointless UV unwrapping a cylinder primitive
• I'm going to change it anyway (I can't just have the rear spoiler sticking up as though levitating)

Next, I'm going to try to make the grass look more like grass.

Wing and nose - more detail

More detail on the front wing, including the beginnings of a nose-cone. Now that you can see through the front blades, it's obvious that a lot more work needs doing on the bits behind.

I'm also pretty unhappy with the texture on the rear roller.

I think some sort of sponsors' decals (like maybe the Qualcast logo or similar LOL) on the front wing, a la standard F1 cars.

Edit: Oops I forgot to give this entry a title...

Second edit: I forgot to mention I've sharpened the blades on the red bit. I'll explain that tomorrow cos I have to go now.

Progressing with the front "blades"

As well as turning the floor-plane a grassy green colour (hey, it's a lawnmower after all) I've started refining the front blades:

Basically, what I did was this:

The end of the blade section is a cylinder modelled with 30 vertices. (Remember that in this post I noticed that there are 5 blades, and 30 divides evenly by 5.)

I took every sixth face on one end of the narrow end-section, subdivided the long edges, and then extruded the faces nearer the circumference. I repeated the extrusion several times until I got to the centre-line, then duplicated and mirrored the whole lot, and basically twisted it all up by selecting groups of vertices and rotating them around the axis of the cutters.

I think I moved the light-source too. It certainly looks that way from the render.

A few refinements

Since the last post, I have:

• Added a floor plane
  
• Added some exhaust pipes (I think these will change; I want more intricately twisty ones)
• Put a texture on the rear roller
• Changed the colour of the front bit
• Put the camera at a more dynamic, exciting angle

It's Monday morning and we've lost an hour due to the stupid clocks changing. Apologies for this post being low on content.

Oh a picture:

Sketching in some blocks and cylinders

The basic lawnmower is going to be a cross between your standard F1 car and a cylinder lawnmower: this image (from the British Lawnmower Museum - who'd a thunk it? lol) should give an idea of the lawnmower style.

(note to self - the front cutter has 5 blades apparently)

Now, having put in a cylinder for the front cutter, a cylinder for the rear roller, and some guides for where the rest of the body and the aerofoils are going, I got to this point:


Now, this gives me an idea of where everything is for positioning of the camera (I'll leave the lights for later; just the default light at the moment will have to do.)


Looks more dynamic, no?

Over the next few posts I'll be adding detail (a LOT of detail), a background, some sort of engine-looking thing, and a whole lot of other bits and bobs. I guess I need a driver too come to think.

By the way, if anyone's interested in the .blend files, I can provide them for what I've done so far.

And so it begins

So I've set up a blog, huh? Well, gazillions of other people have so why not me?

Well, there is actually a reason for this one:

Despite being pretty new to Blender, (I've had it since 12 March) I've decided to enter the 2007 Blender F1 Challenge and have decided to blog the process.

My initial idea is to design an F1 lawnmower.

Sketches: