John W. Vanderbeck

This is our first major project of the block; hell of school period :) The last project, the bracket & conduit project, was our first graded project but it was still pretty small and basic. The coffee cart project on the other hand is much more complex.

For one, this is the first time we’ve really built anything to specific measurements. While modeling this coffee cart we have to do everythign numerically. 99% of it anyway. No eyeballing or guessing or “Right about here seems good..”. Our instructor, Tom, says “We’re building THIS coffee cart, not one sorta like it.”

This is a photo of the cart in question:

In the above photos they took the drawers out, but normally theyd be in place just below the top there.

This is a week long project that we started on Monday and is due on Friday. We have to model, texture, and I think animate this thing. It must be an accurate, clean, efficient, and well, sexy, model.

We started by modeling the top of the cart and then the basic body of the cart. IE the bulk of it, but not including the shelves and drawers, and doors and what not. This was Monday’s work. We also went through and assigned all the individual surfaces that would be needed when it comes time to texture. Basically every individual piece of wood is its own surface. Last I checked my model was pushing 100 unique surfaces. When they tell you surface naming is important.. holy crap pay attention to them!

Today, Tuesday, we started on more details. We built the drawers and the shelf that the drawers sit on, as well as the doors. I also got started on the middle shelf but it isn’t quit finished yet as can be seen. I still need to assign all the surfaces on the middle shelf as well as “tiny bevel trick” it :)

Oh and I only have the one door, but its easy to duplicate it and adjust as needed. I’ll do both of those things tonight after work. I’m also going to try and get Thursday off from work so I have time to finish up anything that needs to be done before its due on Friday. I’m guessing that Thursday in class we will cover texturing the model.

Here are some shots of what i’ve done so far: