Chain pump animation

I quickly put this together in flash to help me understand how it works.

Basic Flash User Interface

Worked on this while waiting for a copy of the translated version of the book to arrive. At the moment it is very basic but all the images and text can be replaced easily for better items.

Researching how the book will look

The books around that time didn't have modern book binding methods of glue or staples so in order to keep the appearance looking correct in the flash CD of it I had a look at what it could look like.


It looks like it should be bound with string and worn down due to wear and tear.

The Automata Chosen + Presentation

With talks with Phil and Alan I have decided to go with three of the automata, two of which can be quickly done the third will take a bit longer due to the immense detail of the design.

The two easier ones are the:

Hydropowered Sagiya Chain Pump

Hydropowered Water Pump

The third one that will be much harder to model is:

The Elephant Clock

The elephant clock does have a real world re-production I can use a reference:

I am going to present these automata in the form of a flash based educational CD stylized as a 'pop-up book' copy of The book of knowledge of ingenious mechanical devices.

More reference found

I have found some more helpful information to assist me with the creation of these automata.

Muslim Heritage

Automation Robotics In Muslim Heritage

I have also with help from the University's library managed to locate a borrowable copy of the translated book which will help vastly with this project.

Techniques and materials

Of course Al-Jazari didn't have access to today's level of technology and metalergy he had to make do with what was available in that era.

Surprisingly medivil islam had quite a high level of technology for that time meaning thay had the resources to produce steel and cast iron.



(From Wikipedia)

"Iron technology was further advanced by several inventions in medieval Islam, during the so-called Islamic Golden Age. These included a variety of water-powered and wind-poweredmills for metal production, including geared gristmills and forges. By the 11th century, every province throughout the Muslim world had these industrial mills in operation, from Islamic Spain and North Africa in the west to the Middle East and Central Asia in the east. There are also 10th-century references to cast iron, as well as archeological evidence of blast furnacesAyyubid and Mamluk empires from the 11th century, thus suggesting a diffusion of Chinese metal technology to the Islamic world. industrial being used in the

Geared gristmills were invented by Muslim engineers, and were used for crushing metallic ores before extraction. Gristmills in the Islamic world were often made from both watermills and windmills. In order to adapt water wheels for gristmilling purposes, cams were used for raising and releasing trip hammers to fall on a material. The first forge to be driven by a hydropowered water mill rather than manual labour was invented in the 12th century Islamic Spain.

One of the most famous steels produced in the medieval Near East was Damascus steel used for swordmaking, and mostly produced in Damascus, Syria, in the period from 900 to 1750. This was produced using the crucible steel method, based on the earlier Indian wootz steel. This process was adopted in the Middle East using locally produced steels. The exact process remains unknown, but allowed carbides to precipitate out as micro particles arranged in sheets or bands within the body of a blade. The carbides are far harder than the surrounding low carbon steel, allowing the swordsmith to make an edge which would cut hard materials with the precipitated carbides, while the bands of softer steel allowed the sword as a whole to remain tough and flexible. A team of researchers based at the Technical University of Dresden that uses x-rayselectron microscopy to examine Damascus steel discovered the presence of cementitenanowires and carbon nanotubes. Peter Paufler, a member of the Dresden team, says that these nanostructures give Damascus steel its distinctive properties and are a result of the forging



Below are the methods Al-Jazari used to creat his ideas.


(From Wikipedia)


"Camshaft

The camshaft, a shaft to which cams are attached, was first introduced in 1206 by Al-Jazari, who employed them in his automata, water clocks (such as the candle clock) and water-raising machines. The cam and camshaft later appeared in European mechanisms from the 14th century.

Crankshaft and crank-slider mechanism

The eccentrically mounted handle of the rotary handmill in 5th century BC Spain that spread across the Roman Empire constitutes a crank. The earliest evidence of a crank and connecting rod mechanism dates to the 3rd century AD Hierapolis sawmill in the Roman Empire. The crank also appears in the mid-9th century in several of the hydraulic devices described by the Banū Mūsā brothers in their Book of Ingenious Devices.

In 1206, Al-Jazari invented an early crankshaft, which he incorporated with a crank-connecting rod mechanism in his twin-cylinder pump. Like the modern crankshaft, Al-Jazari's mechanism consisted of a wheel setting several crank pins into motion, with the wheel's motion being circular and the pins moving back-and-forth in a straight line. The crankshaft described by Al-Jazarirotary motion into a linear reciprocating motion, and is central to modern machinery such as the steam engine, internal combustion engine and automatic controls. transforms continuous

He used the crankshaft with a connecting rod in two of his water-raising machines: the crank-driven saqiya chain pump and the double-action reciprocating piston suction pump. His water pump also employed the first known crank-slider mechanism.

Design and construction methods

English techonology historian Donald Routledge Hill writes:

We see for the first time in al-Jazari's work several concepts important for both design and construction: the lamination of timber to minimize warping, the static balancing of wheels, the use of wooden templates (a kind of pattern), the use of paper models to establish designs, the calibration of orifices, the grinding of the seats and plugs of valves together with emery powder to obtain a watertight fit, and the castingmold boxes with sand. of metals in closed

Escapement mechanism in a rotating wheel

Al-Jazari invented a method for controlling the speed of rotation of a wheel using an escapement mechanism.

Mechanical controls

According to Donald Routledge Hill, al-Jazari described several early mechanical controls, including "a large metal door, a combination lock and a lock with four bolts."

Segmental gear

A segmental gear is "a piece for receiving or communicating reciprocating motion from or to a cogwheel, consisting of a sector of a circular gear, or ring, having cogs on the periphery, or face."Lynn Townsend White, Jr. wrote: Professor

Segmental gears first clearly appear in Al-Jazari, in the West they emerge in Giovanni de Dondi's astronomical clock finished in 1364, and only with the great Sienese engineer Francesco di Giorgio (1501) did they enter the general vocabulary of European machine design."

The Automata

These are the automata created by Al-Jazari in which are illustrated within the book and i hope to re-create in 3d and hopefully correctly animate their actions.

Hydropowered Sagiya Chain Pump

Hand Washing Automata With Flush Mechanism

Candle Clock

Musical Robot Band

The Elephant Clock

Hydropowered Water Pump

Biography of Al-Jazari

Abū al-'Iz Ibn Ismā'īl ibn al-Razāz Al-Jazarī (1136-1220) (flourished c. 1206) (Arabic: أَبُو اَلْعِزِ بْنُ إسْماعِيلِ بْنُ الرِّزاز الجزري‎) was an Iraqi polymath: a scholar, inventor, mechanical engineer, craftsman, artist, mathematician and astronomer from Al-Jazira, Mesopotamia, who lived during the Islamic Golden Age (Middle Ages). He is best known for writing the Kitáb fí ma'rifat al-hiyal al-handasiyya (Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices) in 1206, where he described fifty mechanical devices along with instructions on how to construct them including water-operated automatons, many of moving peacocks. Most are decorative fanciful objects, though some also serve a function. Leonardo da Vinci is said to have been influenced by the classic automatons of Al-Jazari.

Sources: World of Invention, Encyclopedia Britannica Online.

Minor Project: New idea

As I said in my previous post that I may be scrapping the idea and going for a new one closer to modeling than narrative.

I had a few ideas before I came up with the new one with phil's help.

Still image of earth being placed on a high detail orery.

Still image of scientific instrument with people gathered round it similar to the image I wanted to use as reference to lighting and colours for the old idea.

Movie poster (without text) of a small girl holding a teddy by the arm in front of a dark decrepid forest/apocolyptic city street.

Stills of an Exibition of old scientific instruments even ones that never got built.

Digital model of the "Enola Gay" a 1945 bomber which was involved in deploying the nuke at Hiroshima. (Zack Moat's idea during conversation of what I could do).



My new idea is to transcribe the automata of early 13th century Arabic engineer Al-Jazari as illustrated in The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices and hopefully figure out and show how they were meant to function.

I have found a pretty decent site regarding Al-Jazari and his automata and shall prove usefull in recreating them.

Wiki: Al-Jazari

Minor project so far

Admittedly i have not been using the blog due to laziness towards it and hence the progress i shall put into this post.

First off there is no concept art due to talks with Phil where we discussed that it would be better for me to cut straight to the storyboarding and animatic. The animatic has the entire storyboard in it so there is no reason to waste space and time uploading both.

Next i looked at possible colours i could use for this project. I had envisioned it as a poorly lit workshop with muted colours assisted with the orange glow of the candles. Here are the colours i looked at and a picture Phil sent me that fits the scene much more.



Next came the pre-viz of the scene i have started to do, i have not yet started to animate these.

The Artisan's hand:
Low poly model:


High poly model (WIP for use as normal map for low poly):


The Orery:


The basic scene setup:




That's it for the moment as i may end scrapping this whole idea since this is close to narative and is not my cup of tea for one more close to my ideal path of modeling high detail models.

Minor Project: The Idea

The Task:

The task for the Minor Project was to create a self-directed project about anything we wanted to do within 15 weeks. The fact we had no base to stand on and we had to figure out what we wanted to ourselves scared me, i've never really had to come up with my own idea fresh out of the box before.

The Goal:

With this minor project I am hoping to do something that differs from the model of Wyld’s Globe I did during an earlier transcription project. By this I mean to actually create an animation that this time is a totally original idea of mine and hope to improve on my animating and modelling ability during the course of creating this idea for the task.

The idea:

Camera fades in from black to show a small artisan’s workshop (an artisan is a high grade professional crafter) and multiple shelves full of completed solar system models (Orrery).

The camera continues to pan across until we can see the artisan at work at his worktable. The camera cuts to the current orrery he is working on of our solar system, he ponders as to if it is finished while tapping his finger on the table. After a small amount of time he decides to pull apart the orrery and fits in another rotation ring with a small rod extended out far enough to be the new third orbit (this is where Earth would be). He sets it aside and selects a wooden ball from a tray of various sizes and proceeds to carve detail into it; during this the camera cuts to the shavings floating to the table, the camera cuts back to the finished ball as the artisan blows the remaining dust from it. The artisan reaches for a brush and the camera cuts to the paint as he gently dabs the brush, this dabbing happens a couple of times with the different colours. Cut back to the ball and it has become coloured looking very close to early earth before the tectonic plates shifted (Pangea).


He places the ball upon the rod and starts up the orrery and lets it spin for a bit. He slams the table and the camera cuts to the side of the worktop as he lifts a waste basket to the table and shoves the rejected orrey into it. He in anger places the waste basket to the side and gets out his chair and storms off, the camera cuts to the orrery in the trash and zooms in closer to the label on the base, the label states “ Orrery of Sytem “Sol” crafted by God (or some other name of god)”. The camera fades to black.

I'm Back For Year 3

Year 3 of the course just started and we have the Dissertation, Minor Project and Major Project to get through this year. To be honest I dread the dissertation I have never had much luck at writing, on the flip side the Minor project already has an idea pieced together for it that has been brewing in my head over and over again over the summer. This idea shall be told in the next post.

Full E-Sting Completed

Well here it is.

Match move tutorial done

In the end i had to borrow a motion tracked file off of Tom so that i can do this, it was fairly simple to setup the rest of it, i spent most of the time on tweaking my alteration to it.

Low quality software render

Here is a severely low quality render using maya software to see if everything works, i realised by doing this that i have forgotten to animate the static on the tv.

Animation still going

The animation is still going and has been a bit fiddly trying to fit the actions into the twelve seconds of time we have for this project but this is almost finished, including blend shapes for the E4.

The blend shapes i had to do again due to stupidly setting the delete all history button into the shelve instead of just the single object history delete.

Here is a render of the E4 which is acting as a giant monster.


I have also been tweaking my render settings to reduce the amount time it takes to render, this includes to knocking the resolution down from 1280 x 720 to 960 x 540. If i find that i have enough time to render it out in a higher resolution i will.

I have tweaked the city a little bit so that the road has a smoother bend, it just doesn't seem to look right with a sharp corner.

Progress report

The modeling is done, the rigging of the TV character is done and the scene is set with cars in the background and lighting set-up. All i need to do now is rig up the E4 to be the monster and animate.

TV expressions:


The car:


The city:

idea change

To begin with there is no excuse for not updating, now thats done with:

During the tutorials with Alan we realised that all my ideas had good and contradicting bad points. therefore a new idea was needed, with multiple different alterations to the box monster idea we came up with a giant monster attack idea.

box monster end state due to no longer needed:


The monster attack story goes like this:

We see a retro style TV headed person walking down the street, a shadow looms over the character, they turn their head and sees something horrifying and the screen/face turns to static, the camera pans round to show a giant E4 stomping and roaring.

The TV head character:


The street:

Sister's task

Every now and then my sister asks me to try and model something in 3D. This time it was her idea of what the final evolution of a pokémon should have been instead of the original. You can find her drawing of it here: Feniiku.

Modeling and also rigging it so that I could coil it up took me about 7 hours 40 mins with distractions and dinner inserted in there somewhere. Please click on image for higher quality.

Physical sun and portal light

Here is the result of the second tutorial teaching us about using physical sun and portal lights properly.


Here is my alteration of the scene.

Maya Static Image Overlay

The first of today's tutorials from alan involved us manipulating maya so that we could model around a flat image. Getting the orientation of the grid first was the hardest thing to do, everything else was easy. Here is a render of my result.


The reflection over the chairs is due to not modeling them so they block it, other than that i think it went well.

E-sting stories and storyboards

I have come up with 3 ideas in which i believe that i have enough time to do all of them.
(Please download the images to view properly).

Idea 1 - Chew Toy:

In this one the E4 is a dog toy and is thrown to a live action dog to play with. The dog thoroughly enjoys the toy squeaking it frequently. A white flash occurs and fades, no more dog or chew toy can be seen but instead a blast pattern on the floor as a wad of fur lands into shot.


Idea 2 - TV Flood:

We start seeing a TV dish and a signal being received. An E4 appears on the TV screen, then more appear at a faster rate and breaks the screen, pours out and a large E4 rises out of the pile.



Idea 3 - Box Monster:

A large shadow of E4 looms over an un-suspecting box. It turns confused and it is shocked when it sees the massive E4. It is overloaded with awe that it explodes.

new project: Models and metaphors

In this project we have been asked to create within 5 weeks a short 12 second icon advert for the channel E4 they have been dubbed E-stings and i will refer to them as such.

to begin with i have downloaded the offical pack from the E4 website and used the image of the icon and save it off as a usable format for maya while also at the same time making a black and white slightly blurred version for the bump. I took ages to try and model the icon into a 3d model as a start while thinking of ideas.

IT LIVES!!!!!

During a rearrangement of the files on my computer i came across my scene file for digital environment of which refused me to render properly anymore.

I thought what the hey and opened it up to see if with more understanding of maya would help me fix it, i tried with mental ray and found that it does render something but not the scene, then i remembered a few issues with lights and linking i came across in the transcription project so i selected everything and relinked all of the lights and da dada daaaa! IT LIVES!!!!!

here is the render of what i had at the point of failiure.

Transcription finished

Well the presentation went down nicely even though the footage was incomplete due to lack of frames.

Anyhoo here is the full video, enjoy!

Render time is too long!

This is slightly scaring me now, my render isn't half way yet and i doubt it will be complete by the time the presentation is tomorrow, so i'm going to compile what i have got in the morning and set up a computer at uni to render as much as possible and add that to the video when the time comes for handing in the work, seeing how long this has taken as it is, i fear it will miss the deadline, if possible can i hand it in on friday if i fail to get it rendered in time.

I found some audio to go with the render its called Nocturne No. 1 in B Flat Minor, Op. 9 written by Frédéric Chopin (a composer who died just before the globe was built).

Click to download

Rendering

Oh god this is going to take ages, i calculated my render time to about 34 hours to render my 3410 frames, its been rendering since about 10 last night, its going to be quite a close call before the deadline.

on a side note i have taken your advice phil and saturated the blue print so its not as vibrant.

backdrop

I have created a "blueprint like" backdrop for the model for which i want the building to rise up through it matching the lines drawn.