Cutaway of a lens with short video

Artwork Finished Projects
#1

Hello

I would like to share my latest work with you. This time I have created a cutaway of a lens.
The entire project was realized with Blender. Since I always wanted to create a cutaway of an technical object, I decided to give it a try with the new Bmesh system and the Carve-Booleans. Rendering was done in Cycles.

The basic workflow is easy:

  1. Create a mesh of your choice.
  2. Create a boolean mesh you want to subtract from your basic mesh for the cutaway.
  3. Animate the boolean object and make it invisible for the renderer

The major problem occurred when I was moving through the timeline during viewport preview or rendering, because on every new frame the booleans had to be recalculated. Accidentally hitting CTRL + Z for undo was also very time consuming :wink: because I had six boolean objects running simultaneously.

I had to rerender some frames ‘by hand’, because for an unknown reason the boolean modifier switched from ‘difference’ to ‘intersection’ and back a few times.

(While working on this I had a strong desire for a mesh bake tool, that saves a mesh on each frame into a bobj file (like in fluid sim):p)

Enjoy!

still image 1080p:

cutawayLensLarge.jpg1920×1080 123 KB

#2

that’s amazing! how many samples did you need to get that without noise?

#3

Good work, and sleek use of DOF.

#4

Amazing work, congrats. What about stopping more seconds onto the finished cutaway, before blurring with dof? It deserves more seconds to catch up details and looking carefully at your work.

Kind regards

#5

Thank you very much for your comments and feedback!

how many samples did you need to get that without noise?
Each frame was rendered with 400 samples. In fact there is still some noise ;), but I did not want to set the samples too high and risk white dot artifacts.

What about stopping more seconds onto the finished cutaway, before blurring with dof? It deserves more seconds to catch up details and looking carefully at your work.
I think it is a matter of taste and focus. On second thought I would say you are right :yes:. While I was working on this I focused mainly on the boolean animation the look of the final cutaway was secondary.

How many frames / seconds extra would you give to it?

#6

That is really great looking, I too like your use of DOF. Brings to mind The Third and the Seventh.

#7

As a camera repair tech I have taken many lenses apart. What I see missing is the aperture itself. Also the ribbon cables that transfer the control signals from the those contact points to the various servos and electro magnets that move things are missing. You have cast it as if it were aluminum without a helicoil to offer zoom movement.

It is nice to see animated booleans and the exterior looks great.

#8

As a camera repair tech I have taken many lenses apart. What I see missing is the aperture itself. Also the ribbon cables that transfer the control signals from the those contact points to the various servos and electro magnets that move things are missing. You have cast it as if it were aluminum without a helicoil to offer zoom movement.
Thank you.

I had only one reference picture of the inside of the lense. Since I have no idea how those parts work together I used the reference picture for the outline only. Then I used the spin tool. Also the rear part of the lens was very inaccurate. (In reality it is not symmetrical). Thats why I am not showing it in the video.