Second model - Barrels

For my second model I will be making ammunition barrels, which will sit beside my machine gun in my animation. I will be following a YouTube tutorial to make one barrel, I will then copy the model several times so that they can be stacked.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSWbXYKopK0 

The first stage of making a barrel is to make a tall thin rectangle about 15 segments high, and convert the shape to editable poly.

Then using the array tool ( see tutorial week 2) copy the shape 20 times leaving a gap of about 5 between the axis, this shape will make the outside of the barrel.

I then attached all the shapes together, and used the bend tool to curve the y axis 360 degrees, to make an oval shape.

 The next stage is to highlight the shape, and scale the shape to create a tube.

Once the tube has been made, the metal rings for the outside of the barrel can be made. I began by making a tube around the edge of the larger cylinder. 

The next step is to align the outer tube to the larger one; this is achieved by selecting the outer ring and clicking 'tools' 'align', and then select the shape you want to align with, in this case the larger tube. I then changed the current objects position to 'centre' and the target object to 'centre'. This aligns the outer ring perfectly around the larger tube. I then used the scale tool to reduce the size of the ring to sit on top of the larger tube.

Once the ring was aligned I copied the shape three times and spaced them out evenly.

 I have now made my basic outer casing for my barrel, which I then grouped.

 Now that my shapes have been grouped, I can now change the dimensions of the model to make a shape of a barrel. I did this by firstly converting to editable poly then selecting 'modifiers. 'free form deformers' then 'FFD cylinder'

 
 
The FFD cylinder modifier then puts a wire frame around the shape in which each vertex can be edited. Using the side view port I highlighted the two middle sections of the frame and pulled the axis out, this then bends the shape into a barrel.

Now that the shape of my barrel has been made, I just need to add a lid to the top and base, just by making a thin cylinder and positioning it just under the edge of the barrel frame.

  

 Once I was happy with the positioning of the lids, I ungrouped the barrel so that I can add materials to each section.

I used a dark wood texture for the barrel, as I want them to look used, and the same rusty texture for the rings as I did on my wheels for my machine gun.

 

Now that my materials have been added I can select every shape of the barrel and copy several times to make a stack. I removed one of the lids, and laid a barrel on it's side so that I can have the contents spilled on the floor.

The cannon balls are made by using spheres and then adding the rusty texture material, and then positioning them around one of the barrels, to make it look like they've been spilled.

  

 The trickiest part was to position the spheres inside the barrel, which took some time, as I had to work from many angles to make sure the spheres weren't sitting in one another, but make sure they were still positioned correctly as the barrel is curved.
 

Final render of barrels