I knew we had to choose something to model and I had a few ideas floating around in my head that I thought we be interesting such as a Japanese vase, ship in a bottle or a Victorian music box so it took me a little time to settle on something. After a lot of scrolling through images on Google I finally decided to go with modelling a Pocket watch. This was because I thought it had a lot of aspects that would help me improve me skills, such as curved shapes and there are a lot of different varieties for me to research into as well. These are a collection of images that really stood out for me, I knew there were all different types that had intricate designs I could create but I knew they would be a little too challenging for me in these early stages so I decided to go for a station masters pocket watch which looked simple and elegant.
Modelling
After my image research I had a crack at working on the model on the pocket watch, making sure everything was in proportion to each other and the right shape. I found this stage fairly easy as it was similar to work I had done before and having the reference image in the back certainly helped. After this was completed I quickly went on to adding the colour to the shape as I wanted to show the separate pieces of the model but I soon noticed that I had created a dome for the clock face and not a flat one with glass over the top so I had to go back and tweak this and I managed to sort it out fairly quickly.
Textures
After adding basic colour to break up all the pieces I was working with I decided to add the number grid as a texture to see what the UV mapping was like for my model. The front piece seemed to be perfect but the areas I had pieced together on the back were a little rough but I wasn't too worried about them as I knew I wouldn't need a texture for the metal of the watch itself, I could just use one of the lamberts used in Maya and change the settings of it to make it look realistic.
I then moved onto the clock face itself which was very simply done and I was able to line up the image nicely without too much trouble with the UV mapping so I was pretty pleased with how this piece turned out. I did actually have a go at trying to add a brass texture to the watch to see what it would look like but it didn't have the right effect and ended up looking like sand so I decided to remove it and stick with my previous idea of just tweaking the lighting and lambert options to give the right effect.
Lighting and editing the texture
Once I was happy with the colours I had chosen, I went onto working with the lighting. I have had experience with lighting models before in 3D max and I thought it difficult so I thought, that again I would find this a hard part of the process but I actually really enjoyed it this time around. Once my tutor Lothar had explained it I found it fairly easy and actually quite fun placing all the lighting and changing there strength and positioning, it helped give my model life and a more realistic feel. This also helped when I edited the reflectivity of the textures to make sure that whatever was near by could be partially seen in the glass and metal and also that the glass was opaque but still slightly visible.
Overall I am very happy with how this turned out, I think it looks really good for a first attempt and modelling a complete object. Next time I would like to have a go at modelling something a little worn and broken to try out new texture and lighting options.
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