maybe this can become a collaborative fun project - or a big fail - who knows. As far as I know it is the first time something like this and of that scale is proposed here, but why not try it
RickyBlender mentioned the Colossus computer recently. “Colossus was the name of a series of computers developed by British codebreakers in 1943-1945 to help in the cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher. Colossus used thermionic valves (vacuum tubes) and thyratrons to perform Boolean and counting operations. Colossus is thus regarded as the world’s first programmable, electronic, digital computer, although it was programmed by plugs and switches and not by a stored program.” (Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_computer)
Build this thing together in Blender and Cycles as a collaborative project.
Scale will be real world scale 1:1 in Blender.
Model and render it as realistic and as detailed as we can.
Use only Free and Open Source Software.
The result will be shared under an appropriate CC license.
Use CC resources only for texturing (with appropriate credits).
Document the progress here.
No hurry.
No blaming - help each other - accept constructive critiques - let us grow together.
Have as much fun as possible!
Who can participate?
Everyone is welcome.
The phases
Phase 1)
Discuss the set up.
[LIST]
How can we set up a collaborative project like this?
Are the proposed phases a good workflow (see next points)?
Where do we keep the files?
How can we coordinate the tasks?
How can we contribute?
How can we avoid double work?
How can we assemble it from single items?
Do we need a “board” to take care of “administrative tasks” like reviews of project status, quality and sponsors (render farms?), maybe?
Do we need polls from time to time to decide which way to go, or shall we simply let everything flow the way this project evolves?
Shall we take care of promoting this project in the CG society (in a general sense) and in the respective media?
And so on …
[/LIST]
Phase 2)
Collect and build a pool of reference images. Once we are set with the set up and general rules we need all possible references. That will be hard, because there isn’t much about it in the internet out there.
Phase 3)
Modeling. The computer is build out of small items and components. So we will model them one by one and assemble it on the go.
Phase 4)
Texturing. Building up the materials and doing test renders.
Phase 5)
Lighting and beauty renders - not much more to say, except everyone can contribute beauty renders at this stage.
Phase 7)
Final public relations - if we decide to do so. But it would be a pity if we would not roll the drums for what Blender and the fine Blender community is capable of.
Well, I guess that’s enough for an opening post. Let the game begin, guys and gals. Phase I is open, tear my suggestions apart
you can count me in
that is an historical a piece of equipment that probably shorten the WWII war by at least 2 years.
Collosus project
is there is anyone living close to the museum that could go there meet the peoples and asks
if they would be willing to provide pictures/photos and reference drawings ?
that might help a lot more instead of just an E-Mail !
i can see several equipments racks
we could do one render for the front of all equipments
then the back with all the tubes ect.
1 - Paper machine
2 - teletype machine
3 - racks with lot of tube might requiere more time to do
4 - other smaller racks much easier to do
5 - possibly if pics/photos available for the room or building in which it was located
do we do the inside with all the electronics components if photos and reference drawings availabe?
an there may be more to be added later on
for licence i think we should stick with as much good procedural textures
and some photos for some specific UV mapping if not possible with procedural textures.
and i think we should go with CC0 and only requirement would be to at least name the model designers
and upload files on blendswap when completed
J rack holding the master control panel
K rack which contained the very large main switch panel
S rack which held the relays used for buffering counter output and making up the typewriter drive logic.
C rack which held the counter control logic on the front and the decade counters on the back.
rear bay of Colossus spaced 5ft (1.6m)
R rack holding the staticiser and delta boards for the paper tape reader output
M rack for the M-wheel staticisers and S-wheel motion logic.
The very large W rack held, on one side all the thyratrons making up the wheel rings
end rack of the back bay held the power packs
edit note
this was for the first MK1
the MK2 seems to have 12 bays
not including the power supply
keseyrage, great. There will be plenty of modeling and texturing tasks
rjshae, thanks a lot
Ricky, I was counting on you already before But great that you joined also. Good idea with the museum. It could be really helpful, if the museum guys could contribute more and better reference material.
I also think that we should break the Colossus into smaller and manageable items, like you started to do. I was searching for an open source tool that would allow us to manage the items and to keep track of who models them and what the status of each item is. I believe shotgun would be a professional tool for this purpose. Unfortunately I haven’t had much success finding an OSS alternative to that so far. There is Tactic but I haven’t managed to do a test installation of my machine by now (which is more due to a certain lack of time). Maybe Google Spreadsheets could work also to a certain extend, but it would be nice if we could manage reference images for the single items with the software also. And being able to build a hierarchy of the individual parts would be nice and helpful also to keep things organized.
What did the BF use for the Gooseberry project and asset creation? I read that they built something for their own purposes, which they called “attract”, but it seems to be focused on animation shots. Does anyone know of such a CG Asset production Management software, that is open source and ideally web based?
Hm, maybe I do think too complicated, but when I look at Colossus I see various elements that repeat over and over. Therefore I thought it would be a possible approach to identify these items and to do some distributed modeling by a team of modelers. This way every repetitive item has to be modeled only once.
If one person models a complete rack for example many elements would be modeled twice or more.
Everyone who want’s to participate can grab any open item by entering his or her name in the spreadsheet. (I realize that I have problems to name and describe these items properly, because English isn’t my main language and I’m not much into electrical engineering). The item numbers in the spreadsheet refer to the numbers marked in the image.
but we should try to keep this thread as clean as possible
and if there are things to be shared then can be done in other other thread
otherwise this thread will become clogs with 100 of post and difficult to find things
or for final we could open a new thread and put all final things there !
Well as you English is not my first language too
so is there someone who has English as first language and could write an nice E-Mail to the Museum
and ask if someone there could provide us with more photos high res for the different bays
and more technical details may be?
But before sending may be show us the E-Mail content so we can review it and comments
by the way we work on the MARK II the latest model of colossus not the MARK I !
I already made some radios with tubes for WWII in another thread
and I got a list of tubes for Colossus
I can prepare some high res and medium res tubes for these
can have it done for next week
will open a new thread for this and give link back here for comments.
minoribus
on your table you could add a column to show parts being done
also any idea on what you want to start
like one specific bay
one specific part is the Paper reader structure with the paper reader
another one would be the bay for power supply
another one would be the electric typewriter.
relays and the special stepping switch with motor uniselectors
and your right some of the bay have repeating sections
like the counters and a set of five 6-bit FIFO shift registers.
ect
note 1 :
still missing the final tube that was used for the paper reader
probably an RCA phototube - I do have a picture of it but no number / model
also there may have been some CRT tube used but not certain if it was only for testing debugging during construction
or used for operation of the MARK II!
note 2:
here is a nice reference document with some pictures
Hey,
this really sounds like an ambitious project. I am wondering how you’re going to organise all of this? Are you going to create some kind of list where all the tiny parts are listed by a number? And how are you going to bring everything together for a final render? Is there a similar way like in maya to set up a “master” file and reference all other small files into it ?
I’d be quite curious about learning of this, and of course how it all turns out!
Hi Polygonjunkd, yes, there will be a list of all single items to be modelled. This list will be available here. And in my opinion our artist members should pick their work items from this list. To throw the hat in the ring, so to say Although the project is not a challenge by its nature.
I also think that the modelling tasks can easily be done in parallel, because our baby consists of so many different and self containing parts.
But we are still discussing the best way to distribute the work and also how we will assemble the whole computer at last. So we are still open to suggestions, if someone has ever done something like this before or if anyone has another good idea.
In the meantime Ricky and me wrote a letter to ask for some contribution and help from people who have access to more material than we can find on the internet.
Speed7 was so kind and generous to polish all the kinks and errors out of my English :o and this evening I sent this letter by e-mail to the Crypto Museum in the Netherlands and to the The National Museum of Computing in the UK. We asked them if they could provide us with more references and additional material, because we do need much more than we currently have.
If I finish my new wip in a short time, I can think of cooperating with this beautiful work. I do not promise anything, (my work takes me a very long time) but I’ll try to reach you as soon as possible !! I follow with great interest the development
Hi Medal71, thank you very much and welcome on board. With your hard surface modelling skills you will be a great help!
I have replies from both of the museums by now.
We were able to enthuse Paul Reuvers from the Crypto Museum for our project. He likes our idea. And he allowed us to use the images from his website for our project. Furthermore he promised to dig through his archives to see if he can find additional material.
Thanks a lot, Paul! Our project has its first official sponsor now.
I received an e-mail form The National Museum of Computing also. The person in charge is currently on vacation. So we have to wait a little longer. Good news is, that they did forward my mail also to the Colossus Rebuild Chief Engineer. It would be so great if our project would find his favor.
Still wondering what would be the final polycount…
Here’s something resembling that stepping switch. Proportions might be off here and there, some smaller things not quite here but it’s a start i guess… http://www.pasteall.org/pic/show.php?id=104948
But great that you joined also. Good idea with the museum. It could be really helpful, if the museum guys could contribute more and better reference material.
