Creating The Wheels

There are two large wheels on the engine that turn to drive some of the shafts. I took some pictures of the wheels to help me see all of the details to model.

(See referenced images below.)

To create the wheel for the engine I used a cylinder for the rim, and cloned the original cylinder then scaled the clone down slightly.

I then used the Boolean tool to extract the clone, leaving a ring. (1)

I then cloned the ring and scaled it down to create another smaller ring within the main rim. (2)

Then I went on to making the hub of the wheel, for this I used a cylinder and scaled it to size. (3)

Once the hub was the correct size and centered within the rim I went onto creating the spokes, for this I used a cylinder and applied the bend modifier and played around with the pivot point as to where the cylinder would bend to get the desired shape. (4)

Unfortunately this didn’t work as well as I hoped it would and doesn’t look as similar to the real spokes as planned. (5)

So I tried a different technique, I created a cylinder and converted it to an editable poly,(6) I then place the cylinder in position between the hub and the rims then selected vertex mode and pulled the vertices around to get the desired shape and to make sure the spoke it joined at both the hub and the rim. (7)

Once the spoke was complete I cloned it to get the right number as needed and moved them into position.

I then went on to add an extra fin in between 2 of the spokes as this is on the original wheel, to do this I used a box shape and used the parameters to create more segments which means I will be able to edit the shape with more detail,(8)

I then converted it to an editable poly and moved the vertices around to flow with the shape of the wheel.(9)

This was a bit tome consuming as the fin between the spokes is positioned to one side of the wheel which meant I had to change each segment of the box and each side of the box separately.

Here is a shot of the original wheel next to my 3d modelled wheel. (10)

After it was done I made a few small adjustments such as making the 2^nd hub that sits inside the original one and the black bolt that joins the 2 together. (11)

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