Introduction

This session the class was tasked with modelling a 3D hard surface object.

Once the model is finished, we are going to animate the model rotating on a turntable, with a wireframe shader that changes to an ambient occlusion render.

My Model

The object that I have chosen to model is a Pentax K1000 film camera.

It is an SLR camera that takes 35 mm film and was made by the Japanese company Asahi Optical Co. in their ‘Pentax’ line of SLR cameras. It is mechanically operated, and only requires a battery for the light meter inside the camera (a device used to measure light in order to manually set the exposure to the correct setting). It uses a simple hot shoe on top of the camera for mounting a flash, and on the bottom is the mount for a tripod. The K1000 is a completely manual camera and so it has controls on top of the camera for the exposure and aperture (or shutter speed) settings. The depth of field and focus can be controlled with whichever lens is attached to the camera.

I will be modelling the camera with an SMC Pentax 50mm 1:2 lens on it, a normal lens for everyday photography. The K1000 camera has a bayonet style lens mount called the Pentax K-mount, which is used to attach different styles of lens to a 35 mm SLR camera.

Here is an image of the lens mount on the actual camera.

Here is a picture of a bayonet style lens mount. The lens will have two pins either side of it that fit into the camera’s slots. It’s called a bayonet mount because it’s based on the mechanism used to fasten a bayonet to a rifle.

The Pentax K1000 was manufactured between 1976 and 1997 in Japan, Hong Kong and China.

Here is a moodboard I created using reference images of the camera and lens.

The model is not going to be animated. If it was, I would need to animate the following:

• The disc on top that you pull upward to open the back of the camera
• The back of the camera opening up to show the film reel
• The rotation of the film reel mechanism
• The movement of the lever which sets a new film cell in front of the shutter
• The rotation of the knobs that control the shutter speed and exposure settings
• The lens rotating clockwise and anti-clockwise to adjust the focus of the image
• The button that presses in to take a photo (shutter release)
• The shutter opening and closing

And that is basically step by step of what happens when you take a photo.

My model is going to be a hero asset, meaning that it takes the forefront of a scene.

I am going to use the cube and cylinder primitives to create the basic shapes of the camera.

Modelling