Sunday 31 October 2010

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."

Saturday 30 October 2010

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 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.

Wednesday 27 October 2010

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

Monday 25 October 2010

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.