Hey there guys, I have this mining machine to model and before I launch into the blade, just wondering if you have any advice on how I could easily model the blades, notice the red lines that show the curvature of them. And also the blade tube can detatch like with the green lines I have shown, any easy way to cut that out?
Thanks in advance.
Looking at this, it seems that every blade is identical and extends the same distance no matter the thickness and steps of the central cylinder. What I would do:
-First model the center cylinder without the teeth or blades, which should be pretty easy.
-Then, model a single tooth and blade as separate objects, place them where the very last blade is located on the end of the center tube, for a reference point.
-Duplicate and rotate them around the tube. Here, it could be useful to set your transform pivot to 3D cursor. Then, you can set your cursor to the center tube and rotate the teeth around it:
For cutting a section, it’s probable that the boolean tool could do it nicely. Or, if the teeth are separate like I would do, you can just use simple edge loops as the center cylinder will have clean topology.
This machine is angular enough that keeping the teeth as separate polygon islands should look fine (and be much easier to do), but if they absolutely need to be attached into a single smooth mass, I would remesh it all together at the very end (though my topology would be very messy, as I would use remesh+decimate).
Sorry for the delay spikeyxxx on the CGCookie forums had a good idea, ie use the Worm Gear (Shift A > Mesh > Gears > Worm) as a base and create it from that.
