First Complete Model: Barrels

This is my first completed final model: a pile of barrels containing gunpowder, with some powder falling out of one of them.

To make these, I started simply with a sphere and adjusted the radius of the object so that it looked more barrel shaped. I then chopped off the top and bottom part of the sphere to make it have a flat base and top, then added two circles for the lid and base. These were then edited as polys, then aligned so that they fitted in with the dimensions of the barrel. The barrel was then extruded by polygons, with a height of 4.5, to give it more depth and make it look more realistic. The material for the barrel is an old wooden texture that has had a lot of bump applied. It uses the Anisotropic shader. I then decided that the barrel looked slightly too squashed, so I scaled it to make it look a bit more realistic.

I have also added onto the bottom of the barrel, to make it seem more realistic, the words 'La polvere da sparo, 100lbs, Firenze'. This, in Italian, means 'Gunpowder, 100lbs, Florence.' I included this because when researching gunpowder barrels on the internet, they all had some form of writing on the base showing where they were made, how much powder was contained and the contents of the barrel. I translated from English to Italian to ensure authenticity.

For the metal parts of the barrel, I simply made a cylinder for the middle part, added a lot of segments and aligned it to the middle of the barrel. This was then copied for the top part of the barrel, and edited using vertexes, so that it wrapped around with the shape of the barrel. This was then mirrored and applied to the bottom part. The material for this used the Arch & Design template to give it a metallic yet slightly dirty finish.

For the cork in the top of the barrel, I simple made a cylinder with five segments and aligned it with the top of the barrel. I looked up a cork texture and applied it in the material editor.

The barrels were then cloned, rotated slightly so that they didn't all look like they were in exactly the same position, and stacked up in a way that might be seen in things such as films. One barrel was arranged so that it looked like it had fallen over, with the cork on the floor and a bitmap of some gunpowder flowing out of the place that the cork should have been.