Sign In
Sign in
English

    TopBanners19090202.jpg  


September 9, 2019 8:00 AM

by B. N. Reporter

In addition to the Render of the Week Award, 
www.BlenderNews.org is featuring 
PRODUCT VISUALIZATION IN BLENDER a regular series, showcasing quality product viz realized in Blender, 
selected from published artworks for (a) given week(s).  If you would like to have your works featured in this series, please submit your professional-quality product vidz to  www.blenderartist.org  or to the  Member's Gallery  of this site, or Contact Us  to show where your work is available on the internet.

- Editor in Chief 


How good Blender can be for your product design & visualization needs? You might find the answers in the arts and comments made by the following artist(s):


The Pennsylvaniasarus - PRR T1 Steam Locomotive
by Steve Harlow
https://www.artstation.com/stev

Final Renders
PVIB190902.gif PVIB19090201.jpg PVIB19090202.jpg PVIB19090203.jpg PVIB19090204.jpg

Making-of Video

Artist's Comments

About Me:
I'm Steve Harlow, a mechanically inclined hard surface modeler from Vancouver BC. I've always loved cars, machines or any kind of complicated mechanism. I compulsively tinker with 
things well above my head, and the more moving parts the better. I'm primarily interested in the modernist era of design, both in terms of engineering and visual design. Sleek and 
modern streamliners, the flashing rods and fantastic personality of steam locomotives, model A hot rods, bathtub styled Hudsons, Bonus Built Fords and the hilariously inefficient 
burbling of a Flathead, I'm all about it.

About "The Pennsylvaniasarus - PRR T1 Steam Locomotive:"
I did the course at Think Tank training center in North Vancouver, for which the "final" is producing a demo reel. And I knew my reel was going to be was going to be a mechanically
focused hard surface hero asset. My original idea was to remake an old project, a realistic and practical steampunk style monster truck I called "The Brass Beast". However, I was also 
aware of an organization attempting to build a new continuation of a lost class of steam locomotive, readily the most unique, beautiful and mechanically interesting ever built,
the PRR T1. On a whim, I reached out to Brad Noble, founder of the T1 Trust, and offered them a deal. In exchange for access to their library of all the original technical drawings
for the class, I'd provide them with a 1-1 recreation in 3d and renders to use for promotional material. And they agreed.

So I got access to their repository of technical drawings extracted from the Pennsylvania state archives, which numbered in the thousands, from the largest 12 foot long "A" drawings,
to the smallest drawings for the most mundane fastener, and I got to work. It took 8 months of "full time" work to replicate the locomotive, including textures. There's really no fancy workflows or at play here, I simply opened the relevant blueprints for each part and replicated it as accurately as the nature of subdivision allows. Everything's there, and everything works. 
You could take a camera through the boiler, through the drypipe, through the superheater, down the hot steam pipes, past the valves, and up through the blast nozzles in the smokebox. Though there are a few fancy tricks, such as using hair instancing to do the rivets and staybolts on the boiler and streamlining, I took no shortcuts anywhere.

The rig is also fully functional, and animator friendly. It's scripted to translate it's movement along the rail bezier accurately to the wheels, with a basic python script that takes that movement, divides it by the circumference of the appropriate wheel, and converts that to Radian rotation, from which the running gear derives its motion. The locomotive, tender, trucks and
pilot also accurately track the rail, effectively having each distinct rigid wheelbase as a separate entity tracking an IK follower on the track, and function appropriately for their wheelbase. The locomotive and tender also each have center of gravity style controls to easily animate the locomotive, plus individual controls for each axle, with automatic and fully functional
suspension that reacts appropriately to the sprung mass's motion. A brief demonstration of all this can be seen in the reel's breakdown.

Admittedly, the weakest part of the project is the materials. I was used to a real-time style pipeline, and had never done this style of workflow before, and it showed. Texturing isn't really my game already, and instead of making masks for layered, physically accurate high quality and malleable tiling materials, it was textured the old fashioned way, of one "fixed" texture
per UDIM tile, which dragged the materials down even further. But they were at least effective enough to get the job done. If you're in to steam locomotives, art deco/modernist design,
or just cool mechanical stuff in general, I'd highly recommend checking out the T1 trust here
(https://prrt1steamlocomotivetrust.org/). 
They're good people doing good work, and donations allowing, I have absolutely no doubt they can make 5550 happen, despite the monumental nature of that task. I myself have 
moved on to try to get a game company off the ground (https://compucolorpictures.com/), which should be making some public noise within the coming year. And in the meantime, 
you can find me and my absurd projects on my artstation page here (https://www.artstation.com/stev).

Contact:
https://www.artstation.com/stev

Related Links:
2. https://www.artstation.com/stev
List of Articles
Subject Date Views
Blender Retrospectives 2020 Blender Retrospective Feb 20, 2021 210990
Tutorials Free Online Blender Tutorials Released in 2019 Worthy of Your Note - for Animation & VFX file Jan 25, 2020 563096
Tutorials Free Online Blender Tutorials Released in 2019 Worthy of Your Note - for CG, Games & Viz file Jan 25, 2020 426200
Tutorials Top 12 Free Online Blender Tutorials Released in 2019 file Jan 25, 2020 431949
Tutorials Top 15 Highest-Rated Free Online Blender Tutorials Released in 2019 file Jan 25, 2020 375842
Tutorials Free Online Blender Tutorials Released in 2018 for Blender 2.8 file Jan 23, 2019 344959
Tutorials Free Online Blender Tutorials Released in 2018 Worthy of Your Note - for CG, Games & Viz file Jan 23, 2019 684267
Tutorials Free Online Blender Tutorials Released in 2018 Worthy of Your Note - for Animation & VFX file Jan 23, 2019 408355
Tutorials Top 12 Free Online Blender Tutorials Released in 2018 file Jan 23, 2019 344874
Render of the Year Render of the Year Awards 2018: Winners Annouced file Jan 02, 2019 381625
Blender Retrospectives 2018 Blender Retrospective file Jan 02, 2019 376018
Tutorials Top 12 Free Online Blender Tutorials Released in 2017 file Jan 09, 2018 968961
Blender Retrospectives 2017 Blender Retrospective file Jan 01, 2018 696740
Render of the Year Render of the Year Awards 2017: Winners Annouced file Dec 26, 2017 550707
Tutorials Top 12 Free Online Blender Tutorials (Videos) Released in 2016 file Jan 16, 2017 765374
Blender Retrospectives 2016 Blender Retrospective file Dec 29, 2016 1060262
Render of the Year Render of the Year Awards 2015: Seven Winners Annouced file Jan 20, 2016 790518
Blender Retrospectives 2015 Blender Retrospective file Jan 12, 2016 762238
Tutorials Top 12 Free Online Blender Tutorials Released in 2015 file Jun 26, 2015 805581
Render of the Year Render of the Year Awards 2014: Five Winners Annouced file Jan 02, 2015 813800
Tutorials Top 12 Free Online Blender Tutorials Released in 2014 file Dec 11, 2014 852674
Render of the Week 'Escape from the World' by Jan Flormann - the Winner of the Week of June 14, 2020 Jun 19, 2021 43216
Render of the Week '나는 마녀 니페리야'('I am the witch Niferia') by Mania Carta - the Winner of the Week of May 31, 2020 Jun 05, 2021 18417
Render of the Week 'Castle in the Sky' by Rémi Tou - the Winner of the Week of June 7, 2020 Jun 12, 2021 6813
Render of the Week 'Escape!' by Rasmus Poulsen - the Winner of the Week of March 22, 2021 Mar 24, 2021 7881
Architectural Visualization ARCHITECTURAL VISUALIZATION IN BLENDER for the week of June 7, 2021 Jun 12, 2021 7713
Render of the Week 'Ice Trilogy' by Alexander Volodkin - the Winner of the Week of May 24, 2021 May 29, 2021 6635
Render of the Week 'Into the Woods' by Maciej Drabik - the Winner of the Week of May 17, 2021 May 22, 2021 7261
Render of the Week 'K’threya, the Blind Priestess' by Marco Iacopetti - the Winner of the Week of May 10, 2021 May 14, 2021 9415
Render of the Week 'Lone Monk' by Monorender studio - the Winner of the Week of May 3, 2021 May 06, 2021 8019
Architectural Visualization ARCHITECTURAL VISUALIZATION IN BLENDER for the week of May 3, 2021 May 06, 2021 32575
Render of the Week 'Indiana Jones/Harrison Ford' by George Siskas - the Winner of the Week of April 26, 2021 May 01, 2021 7087
Render of the Week 'Anchiornis Huxleyi' by Joanna Kobierska - the Winner of the Week of April 19, 2021 Apr 22, 2021 6964
Render of the Week 'Lost Sanity' by Surya Teja - the Winner of the Week of April 12, 2020 Apr 15, 2021 7197
Architectural Visualization ARCHITECTURAL VISUALIZATION IN BLENDER for the week of April 12, 2021 Apr 15, 2021 7973
Render of the Week 'Layered World' by Yanick Dusseault - the Winner of the Week of April 5, 2020 Apr 07, 2021 7462
Product Visualization PRODUCT VISUALIZATION IN BLENDER for the week of April 5, 2021 Apr 07, 2021 7562
Production Focus '814' - Interview with Gerrit Kudge the VFX Artist for the Short Film Mar 31, 2021 5687
Render of the Week 'Carousel' by Daniel Gryningstjerna - the Winner of the Week of March 29, 2020 Mar 31, 2021 6769
Product Visualization PRODUCT VISUALIZATION IN BLENDER for the week of March 22, 2020 Mar 24, 2021 6983
Render of the Week 'The 4th Wall' by Roman Lysenko - the Winner of the Week of March 15, 2021 Mar 16, 2021 160488