Original concept sketch by the director for a needed trash can in the short film "First Flight": I knew this could get ugly if I trapped myself to manual modeling - I could see the art directors reasonably wanting "small changes" of the thickness of the posts and mesh wires, as well as the shape of the trash can. So I wrote a Mel script which took in 2 values for radius of both the mesh and post sizes, as well as an input profile curve for the arching shape of the can. This way I could easily build multiple combination of this prop with thinner or thicker mesh relationships, as well variations based on shape from the input profile curve. Of course, because I did this, they ended up being happy with the first version. :-P In essence, the script does the following:
For the frame, a seamless quarter side is built with an extrusion side post based on the input profile curve, with an added top loop. A similar extrusion is built for the bottom rail as well. Both the loop and bottom rail wrap around appropriately based on the thickness of the wireframe dialed in. For the mesh, it's a bit more complicated.
Yup, its "heavy" in geometry, but pretty much has to be to hold
the definition of the weave. It is not heavy at all to
render - Maya's render took about 15 seconds (on 2005 hardware)
to crunch out the renders below. It also tumbles in Maya
interactively at a decent clip, especially in Nurbs. This prop
is not for games, but fine for film needs. Basic Maya Renderings:
In a rather stereotypical Hollywood storyline, the production chose to drastically reduce the detail originally requested for this model in the final renderings of the film. I had fun making it regardless. :-) Maya Polygonal Base File - 12.5 Megs compressed: Maya Nurbs Base File - 3.4 Megs compressed:
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