Hey, here I’ve been trying to work on a basic trebuchet, hoping to turn it into something nice in the future. I don’t really know what I should do from here, so I figured I’d come to you guys for advise. C+C are more than welcome.
First of all, change your background color to black. Secondly, get some more light in there, I can hardly see a thing.
I think a white background will work better… you should add more details like some stones next to it, and the thing you use to actually throw stuff…
Seems to me that it should be much taller. That’s based off of Age of Empires II, of course. I did see a program on the Discovery Channel or something that showed a group who recreated a trebuchet and launched some boulder-sized rocks quite a distance.
Yeah, it’d have to be taller and the arm longer to get any sort of leverage.
Perhaps I’ll post pics of my trebuchet later on to help you out a bit as far as proportions go…
nice idea to model, Here is a helpfull reference pic
http://homepage.mac.com/amacoy/wirenfaire/04/trebuchet.jpg
Some C+C. The wieght needs a joint so that it can rotate. Once you’ve added a joint you will be able to see that the weight’s shape is incorrect. It needs to start above vertival and thuss either nees a slit for the arm or nees to have angeld sides (see above link if that doesn’t make sense 
) I agree with BlackBoe, the proportions need to alter, the arm length to the weight should be as long as possible without the weight hitting the ground on its swing. The arm section to the projectile should be at lest 2 - 3 time the length of the section to the weight. The reason the trebuchet must be higher is so that the projectile arm section can be attached to the base of it, also the extra height means the weight can fall further which means it’ll throw the projectile further…
O.k. enuf from me (ps I’m an enginer which is why I complain about such things 
)
I’ve altered it.
The main axle seems awful long and skinny to withstand the huge forces firing a treb generates…
[Edit] Here’s some references from my trebuchet.
treb1
treb2
treb3
treb4
1 Like
Some more changes. I was thinking of bringing the weight down more.
Sup,
Nice work Depinux it’s looking much better and the axil looks a lot more sturdy now, very cool . I agree with you though the weight should drop more, remember the force is generated via the length of the arm from the centre axil to the joint for the weight, the longer the more force generated… only other crit would be to leave slightly more space between the weight and the edges of the structure as in reality there neads to be some clearance there.
Nice one though, it’s lookin’ good.
A.vector
Hey, I added more to the base for support wise, and some other things.
This is where my newb skills take over. I’m not sure what else I need to do before I even think about texturing and all that jazz.
Also, I’m going to be fairly busy for a while with school work, so I may not have much spare time to work on this, but the time I do, I assure you I will work on it. I really want this to be very good in the end, so please any suggestions you may have, any comments, any anything, please let me know.
Sup Depinux,
That is look much better :yes: Just check your lens on your camera, it probably is quite low with your camera close to the treb. This leads to the top of the treb looking so much wider than the bottom which is further away. Try moving the camera further out and increasing the lens (under buttons panel, Editing button and camera tab), that should give a less distant distorted render (i think ).
A.Vector