The first thing I wanted to figure out in Maya was the main structure/stem of my design as I figured it’d be one of the only more organic-looking shapes.
I’d learnt and practiced with Bezier curves and sweep meshes in previous weeks, so I figured it would be perfect for this part of my model.
I thought I would try the door of my structure next. Initially I had made it up of separate cubes which I had added edges and verts to and manipulated, but after a later talk with Mike he said it would be better if, instead of mashing primitives together, I try to make the shapes I want by manipulating and extruding (etc). I’m very glad that was said to me as I think my second iteration of the door and doorframe are much more successful.
To my surprise I didn’t find this waterwheel as difficult as I thought I would. Using mostly cubes and two pipes, I think I was able to achieve a pretty good result that’s very reflective of what I had in my head.
I’ve thought about the fact that having a water wheel as a part of a windmill is probably redundant in reality, but reality doesn’t have super-sized floral windmills so I think it can be excused.
I had thought about going for more complex structures for the blades of the mill, but after trying my initial idea out I thought that the silhouette was perfect and very readable, so I kept the circle of flattened cylinders with the flattened sphere and torus rotor.
Before I added this structure at the back of the flower head, there was nothing connecting the stem and the blades beyond the bare point of the sweep mesh. I thought it looked odd so I looked to real life and noticed that wind turbines have a sort of cuboid structure behind their blades, which gave me proper inspiration and reference for this little addition, which really completes that sector of the model in my view.