Modeling a desk fan

Planning stage:

1. This fan is constructed 4 separated objects:

-         Fan Base/Stand

-         Motor

-         Vanes

-         Vane Cover

2. These items can be constructed separated in a scene. Fan base should be built 1^st, follow by the Motor, then the Vanes and ended by the Vane Cover.

3. Identical progress of the model construction needs to be captured for elaborating purpose.

4. Sketches of front and side view of a fan need to be placed in the viewing panel in order to create a more accurate model.

Front view sketch

Side view sketch

The Construction of Fan

Front view

Side view

 1.       Sketches of fan, both front and side views were brought into viewing panels by creating image planes.

2.       The sketches were darkening by lowering the Color Gain setting for minimizing the contrast between the viewing panels and the sketches.

Fan Stand in Perspective View

Fan Stand in Side View

The fan stand was constructed by extruding a Polycube. The whole fan stand is basically in one piece. The Motor part of the fan was created by compiling 3 objects, which are 2 cylinders and a cube. All 3 object were combined together once the form

Creating Fan Motor

 5.      A Hemisphere was reformed to be the back cover of the fan motor. All the vertices of both cylinder and hemisphere were merged.

Completed Fan Motor

6.      2 cylinders were created for being the axle and the socket of vane cover.

Fan Axle and Vane Cover Socket were done.

Fan Vane creation and placement

 7.      By altering the vertices and scaling the size of a sphere, a fan vane was created. The fan motor was hidden temporary.

Edited Duplicate Options Window

 8.      The vane was then duplicated into 2 more copies with above setting.

Duplicated Fan Vanes

Creating the vane cover

9.       A sphere was created to form the Vane Cover of the fan. 3 layers were created for the fan, to locate the parts of the fan. Then all of the parts except the vane cover were set as template.

Deforming a sphere to create the vane cover

3 Layers were created

 10. The faces on the sphere were selected and extruded. Then the extruded surfaces were deleted to form the wired-frame like vanes cover.

Selecting sphere faces for extruding

11. Both sides of the sphere faces were extruded and deleted until the final look was formed.

Completed Vanes Cover

12. A cube was created and rescaled to form the button of the fan. Then it was duplicated into 3 more copies.

Fan Speed Controlling Buttons

13. Next, 3 materials were created for the completed fan model.

14. Then a directional light together with an ambient light were created.

15. Once the Lighting setting was, the final output of a render image was created.

Materials on Fan

Rendered Fan Model

© Tan Wee Hoe 2001. All rights reserved.