Da Vinci's Tank

I chose the tank as I felt there were a lot of possibilities when it came to the animation side of the module. This is the easier of the 3 models to make as it has a very basic design. I started the tank off with the main body (the biggest part on the tank), with the cone shape in the geometry set of the create tab. I made sure that I left the top of the tank flat, this enabled me to add another structure to the top. I then made a short cylindrical shape (on which the cannons will be perched), placed under the main cone shape. A second, smalled cone was placed under the cylinder, as the base of the tank to which the wheels would be attached. The top of the tank is a smaller cylinder with yest another cone on the top.

Shape of the tank

I used my past experience of making a chess piece and wine glass to create the cannons and spike (sitting on top of the cannon). I first drew the items in illustrator, by drawing a line down the middle and creating a cross section of the items. I then saved the objects and imported them into 3Ds. Once they had been successfully imported, I used the lathe tool in the modify tab to turn the basic spline into a 3D model.

Cannon Cross Section

Lathed Cannon

Top of the Tank - The Spike

 The wheels on the tank were another challenge, as I was advised not to use Boolean all the time due to problems I would face when rendering the final product (I was told it would make the rendering process a lot longer). So taking this advice in mind, I decided to create my wheel from cylinder and just delete faces where I wanted gaps. I then encountered a problem in the fact that all 3D shapes created in 3Ds are hollow, thus I had many gaps and holes in my wheel where there shouldn't be. I over came this problem by creating faces in these unwanted gaps. The faces were created in the modify tab. I also wanted to make the wheel look more like one from the time (wood in the middle and forged metal for reinforcement on the outside). To do this I selected part of the wheel that I wanted to be metal and changed their set ID to 2 in the modify tab (the rest of the wheel will have the ID set to 1). I then created a multi/sub object material and made sure there were 2 materials to add.

The Wheel

Finished Tank