The train. 

One of the elements of our immersive experience that we are working on for the Wardsend Cemetery project is a train. As there is a (small) steam train barely visible in the painting, we decided to incorporate it into the scene. During the project presentation meeting with our customers, we asked them for their opinion about their idea for the rig of that train. They responded that they would like to see the train to be a quite accurate model of the vehicles from the times the painting was created. They also said that they will source a reference image for us to work with.  

After about a week I was forwarded a couple of train photos by our course leader, Annie, that she had received from the clients. I was able to commence the modelling process. 

I started with setting up a project in Autodesk Maya, as that is the software I use for 3D modelling. I brought the two mentioned photographs to an empty scene in Maya as image planes. As neither of the photos showed the front view of the train, I had to search for another image of a similar train facing front, so I was able to adjust the size of the model I was to build.  

I started to model the train just before 10 o’clock in the morning by placing a cylinder polygon in the scene, adding subdivisions to its faces, and then extruding the shape to become a funnel. I created the base of the locomotive first and then moved on to the details of it.

  

After finishing the first big and possibly the most important part of the train, I worked on two additional carriages. I modelled the first one and then duplicated it to have the basic shape. I then made necessary adjustments so the three parts of the train could be connected to each other in the right way. 

When the model was ready, I proudly presented it to my family. Despite the general applause, there were two flaws spotted that needed my further attention. I then went back to the modelling process and had to soften the edges between the funnels and the body of the locomotive – quite an important detail that I somewhat missed, but luckily was brought to my attention. After this correction the 3D model of the train was ready.  

I uploaded it to our project’s GitHub repository and notified my group that this task was completed. 

I enjoyed the process of creating this train model even though it was a time-consuming action that, in total, took me 12 hours over two days. I also had some difficulties related to Maya’s performance as at some point, when I was about half-way through the project, it was freezing completely every now and then. I was only able to save the changes then; and had to close and open my workspace again multiple times during the work. Also, the longer I worked in Maya, the slower it responded to all the changes I was making. I think that this might be related to the processing power of the computer I have worked on as it is not a game industry-ready machine and it doesn’t have a GPU.

Overall, I can also say that my Maya skills have improved a lot in comparison to what I could do and how I worked in that software last year. Practice makes the master as they say.