3D Modeling & Animation

For the first artifact, I decided to model the Sturmpanzerwagen A7V, a German attempt at a tank in the First World War. After the Entente forces began using their British tanks against the German lines, the Germans started designing their own tank designs to counter this new breakthrough in warfare. What they came up with was the Sturmpanzer A7V, an armored fighting vehicle that was a little over 7 meters long, 3 meters wide, and 3.3 meters tall. It weighed almost 32 tons and was armed with a total of six machine guns and a 57 mm cannon in the front of the tank. The British gave the tank the nickname "moving fortress," likely due to it's large profile and decent armament. However, the A7V was slow, had low ground clearance that led to getting bogged down in difficult terrain, and while intimidating with it's size, was also an easy target for both field guns and artillery fire due to said size. Only twenty A7V tanks were made in total by the German Empire in World War One before the Armistice, and today only one survives and is currently on display at the Queensland Museum in Brisbane, Australia. 

As for the artifact that I created, I began by making a box and making it segmented to have the proper values necessary to use in the editable poly modifier of 3Ds Max. I then manipulated the box into the required shape of the tank, extruding the midsection of the top of the box then moving the vertexes of the box to get the required shape of the slab sides that are characteristic of the tank itself. I made sure to define the features of the tanks correctly, which was a challenge with the vertex modifier since it had to be manipulated into the pike nose and the curved rear section of the tank. However, I made use of the line selection and selected multiple vertexes to move at once to pull the shape off into the required dimensions and angles for the model to look accurate to the real life pictures. I added the detail of the riveting through making a sphere, then compressing it into an oval-like shape and moving it to be with the model. I used the cloning tool to make multiple of the same copy and focused on  lining the edges of the model with these rivets to give it it's distinct riveted appearance, since this time period was before welding was invented. I made the detail of the exhaust pipe on the side of the tank using a cylinder and using a bend modifier to bend the end of it 90 degrees and used the inset and extrude modifier on the end face to give it a bit more depth. Continuing with the details, I added the cutouts for the drivers ports and the gun mounts with the modifiers inset and extrude, using the plane selector to select the correct faces to either extrude or chamfer into the correct situations and orientations. For the required weapons, I used cylinders and cones to correctly create the machine guns and the main cannon. For the machine guns, I used a larger cylinder to show the water jacket and made a smalled cylinder and chamfered the edges to make it appear less boxy. I then put a cone in the end to show the rudimentary muzzle break, then duplicated this machine gun six times after grouping it together and spaced it correctly, positioning each in the designated places which I had made to hold the machine guns in the model. To model the main cannon, I made two cylinders to represent the swivel cover and the end of the breech, then made a cone and used a Proboolean modifier to subtract the inside and make it hollow to give it some more realism of an actual cannon. Concerning the running tracks and suspension, I made several rows of simple boxes and modified them to have a dip and also used the extruder modifier to connect them all, making them seamlessly look like they're real tracks. For the suspension, I used the picture to model the proper suspension blocks and road wheels to give it the realism needed for the artifact to have the appearance of the Sturmpanzerwagen A7V. Finally, I put it all together, grouping the main body and the rivets together and moving the top body of the A7V onto the tracks and positioning it to make sure that the tracks don't extent past the body unrealistically, making sure the suspension is located at the correct height and the tracks match what is able to be seen in the pictures of the actual tank 'Mephisto' in the photos. The A7V model I created is made up of around 140 polys. This number would be much higher if I counted all of the rivets, but I grouped the main body of the model with the rivets to both make the model easier to move around and to also limit the poly count a good amount. For the rendering, I used the Scanline renderer and used a plane as a backdrop for the model. 

In this next phase of the PBM, I decided to go with a tank that is in the postwar period and is being left to rot, using a rougher metal texture with rust and wear to pull off the effect of an abandoned war relic that has been left to rust away. In real life, the markings A7V's were given usually were the insignia of the German Empire, a Maltese cross typically located on the front,  rear, sides, and top of A7Vs. The paint scheme of A7Vs had a base start of the standard grey uniform coating, but reports show that camouflage schemes were painted on the tanks as well, which could include a combination of greens, colors similar to reds and browns, and sandy colors to try and make them less of a noticeable target than a large moving grey box with guns attacking the enemy. However, I chose this texture to try and envision what the post-war fate for these fighting machines might have been, have there been any left. After the war, there was only a few examples that survived and eventually even these were scrapped or destroyed. Most of the 20 A7Vs that were made were either captured by the Entente powers, scrapped by the German forces for the resources, or destroyed by artillery and other ways that were devised to combat these early armored vehicles.

To complete the second artifact, I was forced, due to technical difficulties and slowdowns, to apply one large texture to the main body and put specific textures on the main cannon in the front, the machine guns on the sides and rear, and the suspension blocks. Unfortunately, the issues I had with making the UVW maps for the second phase of the PBM made it so that I was unable to produce a unique UVW map to place markings like numbers, tank art and the recognizable Maltese cross that was symbolic with the German Empire on the tanks. These issues were slowing the computer down to such a degree that it wasn't worth the amount of time I spent on it waiting to load, so I made the decision to apply a texture to the A7V model instead of a detailed UVW map. To make the texture apply well to the whole of the tank, I used the UVW map modifier, then selected shrink-wrap before selecting the box application of the texture. For the main cannon, I used a different metal texture of a sort of pitted metal, trying to give the impression of worn but not rusted yet like the main body of the vehicle. I used the shrink-wrap option again, but when I attempted to use the cylinder the texture didn't have the best look to it. I instead decided to go for the box option again, to give it a uniform finish to the texture on the part of the model. Concerning the machine guns on the tank (MG 08 machine guns), I used a simple black texture to give the real-life look of the object. There wasn't any issue in the texture being applied properly, since there wasn't a UVW map used on this part of the model. The reason for this was with the UVW map again, which when I put the texture on the props made it so that the texture appeared almost fuzzy and misshapen, making it so that the model didn't look like the original model at all. Concerning the problem, there wasn't really a way around the problem of the UVW map, since it was the reason that the textures were warping and making it unrealistic. The way that this issue was resolved was through removing the UVW map as a whole, converting the model to a editable mesh to remove the UVW map then applying the texture without the effect of the bump map or the roughness map.  I added the extra detail of putting a texture on the slightly noticeable feature on the suspension blocks to give  the extra detail for the A7V . I deemed the tracks and roadwheels didn't really need a specific texture, as well as the fact that I didn't find a texture that I liked. I used a black color for both the track links and the roadwheels at the front and back, as well as the roadwheels of the suspension blocks on the A7V Sturmpanzerwagen. Putting all of this together made this something that I feel was a decent look for the abandoned feeling that I wanted this artifact to have.

For the third phase of the PBM, I made the loadout of the A7V Sturmpanzerwagen. This consisted of a box of 57 mm cannon shells for the 57mm Nordenfelt cannon and some spent casings, as well as several crates of the 8mm Mauser ammunition for the A7V's six maxim-style MG 08  machine guns. In real life, the standard loadout of an A7V would have a total of 180 cannon rounds, being a mix of canister, high explosive, and armor piercing. In reality, the A7V crews often took well over this official designation at 300 cannon rounds in preparation for combat. The MG 08 ammunition was stored in belts and the tank could carry between 40 and 60 belts of ammunition for the machine guns, making the total number of machine gun bullets available in the Sturmpanzerwagen around 10,000-15,000. For a fun addition, I decided to include a searchlight activated and lighting up the Sturmpanzer. The Germans did use searchlights in the First World War for multiple purposes. They deemed it "artificial moonlight", and they used searchlights to both illuminate no-mans-land  to prevent night attacks and to track enemy aircraft at night to allow the anti-aircraft gunners a target to shoot. 

During my completion of the third artifact, I found a solution to the problem concerning the distortion of textures on the models. This problem in question was the displacement factor, which was making the textures appear warped and more than there actually was in reality. After reducing this factor significantly, this allowed the texture to be applied to the objects in question without the problems that previously plagued this process. I made the machine gun bullets from a cylinder and edited using the vertex feature of the editable poly function to make the model more realistic. I created the larger 57 mm shells from a cylinder and a sphere that I stretched using the vertex editor in the editable poly tool. I made the addition of making the spent shell casings by removing the sphere from the top and using compound objects to subtract the inside of the shell using another cylinder and make the inside of the original cylinder hollow. I made the machine gun drums with ammunition by making a cylinder and editing a part of it to look like the ammunition feed through manipulating vertexes, inset and extrude modifiers in the edit poly selection. I decided to make the addition of a belt of ammunition as well, making it through copying the bullet model and connecting it with a simple poly to make it look like a belt chain of ammunition. I made the decision to make separate crates of 57mm and 7.92 mm ammunition, since putting both of them together would have looked strange and mismatched, at least from my perspective. I made the searchlight through first making the base, then going to compound objects and merging some polys and a small cylinder to make it seem like a swivel for the main body of the searchlight, which I constructed through merging a cylinder and a box poly, then hollowing out the cylinder portion with an inset and an extrude modifier. For lights, I kept it simple and constructed it through placing spotlights along the top to give it equal lighting overall. I gave the searchlight it's own light source to add to the realism of the model, and made it glow through putting another spotlight directed back into the searchlight to give it the realistic light effect. I did this because when I originally put the first spotlight in, the render didn't show the spotlight lighting up the searchlight interior. So I added the second spotlight to give the searchlight that realistic quality. I then positioned the searchlight so that it shone on the front of the A7V Sturmpanzerwagen and rendered the scene with consideration of the lighting effects and how they might affect the final render, making adjustments when it was necessary.

For the fourth phase of the PBM, I made totally normal movement of the A7V Sturmpanzerwagen. The A7V in real life was powered by two Daimler 4-cylinder engines mounted centrally, both engines delivering slightly over 100 horsepower each. This gave the A7V a top speed of 15 kilometers per hour on maintained roads and five kilometers per hour on rough or battlefield terrain. Concerning the mobility of the A7V, the ground clearance was between 7.5 inches and 15.7 inches. This low ground clearance didn't help the A7V in pushing across the muddy and war-torn battlefield of no-mans-land, which was filled with craters, mud, and uneven terrain. This low ground clearance, combined with a high center of gravity, let to A7Vs in the war getting stuck or flipping on their sides, causing either hard efforts to right the vehicle or simply abandoning the stuck A7V entirely. In addition, the driver's viewport was mounted on top of the vehicle, giving the A7V a massive blind spot in front for the driver. The suspension on the A7V was superior to the British tanks however, which consisted of 24 individually sprung roadwheels. All in all, though, the A7V Sturmpanzerwagen wasn't the best tank for crossing trenches and rough terrain due to it's low ground clearance and the likelihood that the weight and balance of the vehicle causing the vehicle to flip or get bogged down.

For the fourth artifact in question, I made it so that the A7V started outside of the camera angle, simply to make it more interesting than simply moving back and forth or something. I then made the A7V drop down into the lights and the camera angle, using a swivel modifier on the front cannon to make it move right then left. I used keyframes for the entirety of the animation, next making a 57 mm shell load into the cannon followed by the drums of machine gun ammunition being loaded as well. For the end, I decided to make all the tank parts spin simply to make the whole animation more outlandish and add to the confusion of a flying World War One German tank as well as levitating ammunition mysteriously phasing through the outer armor of the A7V and loading the tank. I used the rotate tool to make it so that all the selected objects rotated, which included the machine gun props, the cannon, main body, road wheels and suspension blocks, as well as the tracks themselves. The animation itself is greater than 5 seconds, but I felt this amount of time properly animated what I wanted to animate for the A7V project-wise. There were some challenges, mainly small ones like forgetting to turn on the 'set keyframes' button on the timeline, but these were addressed easily and the whole process went smoothly overall. To conclude the project, I feel as though I made Artifact 4 well, and that it shows creative thinking and inspiration by history.

(The animation was taking too long. Mr. B looked at it in class and told me to take the images on the left. They are set up in the carousels to show how the animation would have run.)

Not much left to cover on the A7V, so I'll just include some facts and history of its development. The A7V was designed by Joseph Vollmer, at the time one of Germany's foremost automobile designers under the commands of Germany's newest committee tasked with researching tank development. After a few designs were drawn up to meet the requirements set by the German high command, a universal model that would become the A7V was accepted for both armored and unarmored transport roles for use and production. The suspension of the A7V was initially based off of the American Holt tractor and it was named based on both it's classification and development - Allgemeines Kriegsdepartement, Abteilung 7 (Verkehrswesen) (Which is German War department section 7, transport). The word Sturmpanzerwagen translates into english roughly as "armored assault vehicle". Thus the designation to the tank A7V Sturmpanzerwagen.

Out of all the artifacts, I found this artifact to be the easiest one to produce overall. I decided to use a target camera to most accurately point to lens where I wanted the viewport to go. I made the lens 30 mm to have a good viewport without making the view too wide for the render. After making these adjustments, I put the camera into the actual project with the keyframes selected and placed the keyframes for both the target and the actual camera itself to mesh with the render overall to produce the effect I wanted overall, which was to have the camera follow the tank as it descended from the sky, go to the front where the main cannon moved, followed the tank shell into the tank, then watch it as the ammunition for the machine guns is loaded and then zooms out to look at the side of the tank overall. There really isn't all that much to describe about this project other than this, but I am most satisfied with my manipulation of the camera to properly show good perspectives of the A7V all around.

(Could not provide the rendered video due to complexity and time. Instead provided a carousel of images to show the order the frames would have gone in.)