Modeling Project: Hourglass - February 2021

 Modeling Project - Part 1: Hourglass

February 2021

For this project, I aimed to brush up on my modeling skills, starting out with a simple hourglass. In addition, I tried out and added a particle simulation to the finished product.

This model took only a week to complete, as far as this part of the project is concerned. The first step was fairly easy, starting with primitive shapes and slowly modeling them into the necessary forms. Only three unique shapes needed to be modeled individually, as the base and top share the same base form, as do the two poles. Meanwhile, the glass itself is one whole shape, with two sand shapes being booleans which were scaled down to give the illusion of mass within the glass.

After the initial modeling, I marked and unfolded the UVs, and proceeded to organize them for texture mapping. For this project, I used a single sheet for the hourglass components, and another for the sand. If I were to optimize it for more professional use, I would condense the UVs all into a single map. But for experimental purposes, I elected to keep the sand texture separate. The sand texture in particular was interesting to work on, because I used displacement and randomization nodes to help add more depth and detail to the render, despite the object having flat geometry, with a flat texture. It was especially fun to see that in renders in conjunction with the glass which gives its own distortion of the inner objects.

 

Once finished with the modeling portion, I wanted to take it a step further. Since this was meant to be a semi-realistic hourglass, I wanted to add sand actually falling from the top of the glass to the bottom. Initially, it would have been ideal to forego the faux sand shapes and instead use a particle simulation to then generate a mass amount of "sand" to fill and fall through the hourglass. However, seeing as particle simulations are very taxing on renders and computer processing and I am new to the subject of particle simulations, I opted for something much easier. Implementing a simple particle spawnpoint in the neck of the glass, I only needed to set up the amount, velocity, and constraints on the sand particles. This particle simulation only needs to flow in one direction, with the particles only requiring collision feedback from 1-2 surfaces: the lower sand, and the glass if necessary. In addition, I learned how to randomize factors for the simulation such as color, size, dampening, and friction upon collision.

 

Overall, this project was a very fun way to brush up on modeling again, as well as learn some new skills that may come in handy for future endeavors. The toughest part was definitely getting re-acquainted with UV organization. While not the perfect or most realistic model in the end, I think this hourglass is a good starting point for even better final products.