Pascaline 3D Models by Anthony Vanden Eede
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This year, Indian Creek High School welcomed
a foreign exchange student from Belgium to join our school & robotics
team. Anthony Vanden Eede came to us armed with a Macbook Pro & a
genuine desire to learn. After gaining some experience in 3D design from
one of the high school’s Technology Education courses, he quickly
set out to learn AutoDesk Maya on his own. With the objective of recreating
Blaise Pascal’s mechanical calculator for the robotics team’s
safety animation video, he downloaded as many tutorials as he could find on how
to create authentic models in Maya. Having had no previous knowledge of the Pascaline,
he also had to collect what little documentation exists about the look of the
machine and about how the components move. |
Satisfied that he had an understanding of how the
machine functions, he began the modeling process to recreate the Pascaline.
Once all of the major components were modeled, Anthony took on the tedious
task of animating each of the gears, the ratcheting system, the carry
arm, and the digits to simulate the counting process. Since the final
script called for an animation that counts to numbers in the millions,
it required long days and late nights for Anthony to key frame the authentic
movement of the Pascaline. Not satisfied with taking short cuts to create
the animation, he chose to animate every component of the machine in
exactly the way the real one would if museums would allow us to use it.
In fact, it took almost an entire week for his computer to render the
final video due to the meticulous movements
in the animation. |
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