Water Drawing Device Final Visualization Video Chris Jordan Grad Fall'15

Here is the final Video for my adviser's  consideration



process book: http://davincirecreation.blogspot.com/

VolleyGunFinalVisualization Chris Jordan Grad Thesis Fall'15

Here is the final Video for my adviser's  consideration

Musical Accompaniment For Videos

For the Volley Gun Video I have chosen The Old Country by Plusplus for it acoustic nature portraying a sense of resigned resolve.



Free Music Archive: Plusplus - The Old Country



Radmall, Adam, Bryan Styles, and Rob Sillitoe, perfs. The Old Country. Plusplus. La Bèl Netlabel, 2012. Free Music Archive. Web. 08 Dec. 2015. <http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Plusplus/Game_Over/07_Plusplus_-_The_Old_Country>.







For the Water Drawing Device Video I have chosen Isn't the Rain Nice Today? by BBATV primarily for the symbolism of the bell xylophone work that was done in the piece representing the rain (or in this case water spray) as well that comparable work that tried to depict rain had an over reliance of electronic syth music that I felt was wrong for this video.

Free Music Archive: bbatv - , isn't the rain nice today?

Bbatv, and Hannah Patel, perfs. By Robert Currie. , Isn't the Rain Nice Today? Bbatv. CcCommunity, 2015. Free Music Archive. Web. 09 Dec. 2015.<http://freemusicarchive.org/music/bbatv/PEACE_is_king_here/bbatv_-_PEACE_is_king_here_-_08__isnt_the_rain_nice_today->.

Water Drawing Device vid section 5

A view of the diverted water flow collecting in the reservoir, that is collected by the cups and deposited in the trough.

Water Drawing Device vid section 2,3 & 4

Reversed view of water drawing device showing the final product of the device.

Flow view of device, showing how water enters and drives the functioning of the device.







A focused view on the gear work of the device.

Water Drawing Device vid section 1

Here is the camera 1 animation showing Da Vinci's water drawing device from his Codex Atlanticus running. The water pouring from the cups is just visible between the slats of the device while water pouring from the water wheel and flung droplets are clearly visible to the viewer

Volley Gun Pt2 final

What the difference a day makes. The smoke is comped better and I made a half speed copy of the rotation animation.

Volley Gun animation part 1 composite (done?)

This is the first half of the volley gun animation depicting a 360 degree rotation of the camera around the volley gun device while it goes through its barrel elevation animation.







This is the second half of the volley gun animation depicting a the animation of the barrel elevation animation, the vent hatch opening & closing animation, the linstock animation and the firing animation linked to the passage of the linstock over the device's barrel vents.





issues

- I had a recurring artifact in the specularity information pass layer (a flickering light off the elevation screw) that had to be masked over (a first for me to do), this resolved the issue.



-Since this is the first time for me to composite in an effect layer like the smoke effect for this animation I hit a snag on how to blend in the smoke from the effect layer with the device, maybe I would have an easier time doing this if I made the ground  surface and the device into separate render passes but I don't know. I'm thinking that a series of masks around the back end of the effects will help, hopefully?





Currently the opacity of the smoke effect has been lowered in order to facilitate my accurate masking and will be raised back to full before final completion.

Smoke Effect test for volleygun animation

As I am currently 1/3rd of the way done with the final render of the volleygun animation here is a test of the flame effect that I will add to the linstock found in the animation. This effect was done using the 3d Fluid effect. Since it is primarily a static flame touching black powder far in the mid-ground ergo is will be tiny and it will be further obscured by the associated smoke effect thus the effect is not animated beyond the procedural calculations of the actual effect.









Here is a test of the smoke effect that I will add to the vents and barrels of the volleygun found in the animation.  This effect was done with a transparent image being emitted as a nParticle via Maya 2013.  The effect was further animated in synch with the firing & recoil animation data found in the trail, bullets, wheels and vent box lid. 20 smoke effects were created with 10 paired sets depicting the eruption of smoke from the lighting of powder in the vent followed by  a later eruption of smoke coming from the barrel.  Since Da Vinci's design does not depict a powder pan for the device thus allowing it to be able to fire all 10 barrels simultaneously I animated the pairs of smoke effects to go off as the linstock touches the vent of the barrel thus having all 10 barrels fire in sequence.

test animation Water Drawing Device by Da Vinci

from Codex Atlanticus author added intermediate gear for device to function as Da Vinci intended





things to add for final draft



-depth pass

-occlusion pass

-water effects

-shadow pass

-spec pass?

- splice in separate fly though cam animation? or just change camera angle

- add more fill lights

Water Drawing Device Pt2.

The Water Drawing Device has been textured via a 3 map setup: diffuse/color map to show the wood grain, grain and clefts in the stone and the roughness of the iron casting of the metallic assets, bump/normal map to show raised and depressed textures on the surface of the wood & metal as well as the seams between each slab of stone and a spec map make to control the degree of shine on the metallic parts of the design in addition to the pieces of the mesh that are supposed to be covered in water.

Base textures used in diffuse map:

LuGher 3D. Medeval Big Well Lid. Digital image. LuGher Textures. LuGher 3D, n.d. Web. 5 Oct. 2015. <http://www.lughertexture.com/metals-iron-steel-aluminium-hires-textures/metal-ornaments-textures/medieval-big-well-lid-1680>.

TextureZ.com. Free Stone Texture (natural, Cleft, Grain). Digital image.TextureZ.com. TextureZ.com, n.d. Web. 8 Oct. 2015. <http://texturez.com/textures/stone/4152>.

Unknown. Wood plank. Digital image. Bgfons Download Texture Wood. Bgfons, n.d. Web. 10 Sept. 2015. <http://bgfons.com/download/3152>.

LuGher 3D. Metal Gold Brass. Digital image. LuGher Texture. LuGher 3D, n.d. Web. 1 Oct. 2015. <http://www.lughertexture.com/metals-iron-steel-aluminium-hires-textures/new-metal/metal-gold-brass-360>.

Currently used Diffuse Maps

Currently used Bump Maps

Currently used Spec Maps

Applied Textures

Animation test 1 DaVinci Volley Gun

Animation test for volley gun.



things to add

-occlusion pass

-depth pass

-separate shadow pass?

-spec pass?

-fire, smoke, flash effects

- animated flying shot and linstock

-maybe improve the presentation plane?

-shoot producing targa files

- add a 360 Degree rotation?

Recoil Effect is based on this similar caliber volley gun

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzfjLbKvfK8

Water Drawing Device

The second design of Da Vinici's that is to be brought to 3D life is a water drawing device from the atlanticus codex

Powered by a water wheel a second wheel brings water from a pool, feed by water diverted from the same stream that powers the device, and deposits its content in a trough at the apex of the second wheel.

Here is the completed mesh

However as the mesh was being started the author realized he fell into  two of Da Vinici's many deliberate mistakes on his sketches 

 Red =  In the original sketch the powering water wheel and the cup wheel that drew the water are both supposed to spin clockwise to do this the device is directly driven by the water wheel with teeth on the axle of coming into contact with a large gear attached to the axle of the cup wheel. This is not possible without an intervening gear that would allow the enforced counter clockwise movement of the next gear in line to be converted back into clockwise motion for the cup wheel to function.  A free standing gear was added that is attached to the opposing axle support by passing through a metal hole in the support, a pin holds the gear in place

Green = While it might be an issue of imagination on the author's part but the cup design did not look like it would function for it could not direct its contents into the trough but towards the axle of the cup wheel .  So the author added a separate brass cup to the design that will direct the water in to the trough.

Again here are the UV layouts, the author found that this device needed multiple layouts due to the number of parts found in the design

Volley Gun Pt. 2

The Volley Gun has been textured via a 3 map setup: diffuse/color map to show the wood grain and the roughness of the iron casting of the metallic assets, bump/normal map to show raised and depressed textures on the surface of the wood & metal and a spec map make to control the degree of shine on the metallic parts of the design.

Base textures used in diffuse map:

Unknown. Wood plank. Digital image. Bgfons Download Texture Wood. Bgfons, n.d. Web. 10 Sept. 2015. <http://bgfons.com/download/3152>.

Unknown. Iron Texture. Digital image. Download Iron Texture. 3dstudio-max, n.d. Web. 10 Sept. 2015. <http://www.3dstudio-max.com/download.php?id=8>.

Riverd-Stock. Leather Texture 2. Digital image. By Riverd-Stock on DeviantArt. DeviantArt, 21 May 2008. Web. 10 Sept. 2015. <http://riverd-stock.deviantart.com/art/Leather-Texture-2-82237406?offset=50#comments>.

Currently used Diffuse Maps

Currently used Bump maps

Currently used Spec map

I however have 2 problems: artifacts within the normals cropped up when this author was doing a transfer of the mesh file as an .obj file between Maya versions, now some have been eliminated others have not.  Second problem even at 2048x2048 the resolution of the diffuse texture is poor and increasing the resoultion to 4096x4096 or 8192x8192 is inadvisable due to system load during rendering.

Volley Gun Pt1.

The first design this author is going to tackle is the volley gun. A volley gun is a multi-barreled carriage weapon system that uses the principles of higher rate of fire and wider spread of projectiles to increase lethality which is achieved by having multiple smaller caliber barrels mounted on a carriage side by side or stacked on top of each other that are fired simultaneously or in sequence by their gunners.

Da Vinci had sketched out a number of volley gun designs the one this author selected is a model the that has improved the spread of the weapon by employing a duck foot arrangement to the barrel placement 200 years before the duck foot barrel arrangement becomes used in flintlock pistol construction in the 18th century

 The 3D mesh of this device is completed

This mesh has also been UV mapped to allow for the mesh to be textured

Sadly the amount of parts necessitate that was split between 2 UV maps: 1 focused on the frame of the gun, the trail and the lid over the barrel vents the other has all the other pieces

Planning Phase

Here are some sketches of these 3 designs I did while I was evaluating their suitability to be modeled and animated while being mindful of Da Vinci's penchant to adding mistakes on his sketches to prevent theft of his intellectual property. These notes have animation plans, comments on their functionality and modeling notes.

Volley Gun:

Water Drawing Device:

Water Pump:

The beginning

This is a blog recounting the creation of three Animated 3D representations of three separate Da Vinci sketches from the Atlanticus Codex and other sources as a Masters Graduate Thesis for the ATEC department of The University of Texas at Dallas.

The three designs this author has selected are the:

Duck Foot style volley gun design:

Volley Gun is upper center device

A large scale water powered water drawing device:

Water Drawing device is upper center device

A bellows powered water pump for an pre-established well: