making of my gramophone

this is the reference image i used to model my gramophone however i am not making a complete copy as i want to add my own touches. 

the two reasons i chose a gramophone over something like an old tape player are:

1. an old tape player would be to simple in geometry terms and allot of the detail would be texture and normal map based, this is fine for LO2 but doesn't really over LO1
2. the second reason that i chose to make a gramophone is because it fits the old Victorian setting my level is set in.

LO1

one of the most import parts of this model is the horn, to make the horn i started out with a cylinder which i scaled wider at one end, from this starting shape i then extruded the other end so that the horn was greater in length, i deleted the face at the widest end and once happy with the length of the horn i began adding connects along the length to shape the form.

the reason i added more geometry here is because the player is going to be getting close to this part of the object.

the next step was to make the first bend in the horn, to achieve this i rotated the end verts around 45 degrees and then extruded straight down, to straighten the edges i used the move widget to move the base until all the edges were inline vertically.
the reason i took the time to do this is i don't want the horn to be wonky later on as once ive added more geometry this problem will be harder to fix.
the last part of this step was to inset the base so that i could extrude out the thinner pipe under the mane horn, i inset about 1/10 the width of the overall bases.

for the next step i extruded the thinner pipe down a few inches and then extruded a second part down and then out to the right,this in the beginning of the second bend in the horn, the reason i chose to extrude this by eye rather than use a torus is because of saving polys.

the image above shows the bend on completion, as you can see again I've flattened out the end but this time i used the scale widget to pull all the vertexes into line.

for the next step i made a box to the exact size that i wanted my gramophone base to be, this box will become the base but for now i will use it as a reference to re scale the horn to the correct size and proportions.
i extruded the pipe to almost the end of the box and then scaled the end in like on the reference image, this scaled in end is where the final bend and pipe is extruded from.

i worked more on the base next, first i extruded the base down and scaled it out before extruding again to create the bottom of the base, once this was done i deleted the bottom face to save on polys.
selecting the four side edges on the original cube i used the connect to split it into three parts, the top and bottom parts much smaller than the middle, once this was done i selected the four middle faces and extruded them inwards to get the result seen above.

making the vinyl
i took a cylinder with thirty segments and scaled it down to the point that it was almost flat, i inset the top faces inwards until there was a small circle in the middle of the cylinder,  i deleted the bottom and the faces in the inner circle for two reasons, the first reason is to lower the poly count as much as possible and the second reason is to leave a hole for the pin that the vinyl spins on.
i made another cylinder to became the platform that the vinyl spins on, this has less segments because it isn't seen very much by the player.
once converted to editable poly i inset the top faces to a smaller circle than the one in the vinyl and the extruded up through the hole, after this i scaled the bottom of the platform and shaped it with connects to give it a more rounded feel, finally i deleted the top and bottom of this object leaving just the sides and the pin.

to make the handle i took a torus and cut 3/4 of it way, from here i caped both ends and extruded them out, i then duplicated the bend part and welded it to the bottom of the handle facing the opposite way to the original.

i deleted the end of the handle that is connected to my model to save polys and then extruded and shaped the other end into a handle using connects to add more geometry.

i added four boxes for legs, i deleted there tops and bottoms as these areas would not be seen by the player, after i added the legs i took a quick render to see my progress.

to make the stand i used the (spline) line tool to draw out the shape and then once i have converted it to editable poly i cut the shape into quads using the cut tool, i selected all the faces and extruded the flat shape to give it some form, finally i bridged the other end to complete the shape.
the reason i used a spline is it gives me greater control over the shape and it shows i can use multiple techniques.

i added metal ray materials to my object to give me a feel of would it would look like if i had the skill to create maps of the same quality. (just a tester)

i unwraped my model in separate parts and then attached them afterwards, this made the map less confusing when it came to putting all the parts together.
the UV map is shown above.

texturing in progress

i had the material saved as a PDF file while applied to my object, this allows me to see the effects of my rendering in real time.

LO2
the following are the maps i made for this object:
site where i got the textures: cgtextures.com
diffuse map

 normal map

 spec map

 black and white (the normal map wasnt working in max but worked in udk)

LO3

for this model i have used volume lighting to light my scene.

volume lighting involves an area light and a directional light which admit particals through a hole in geometry such as a window, one of the problems i had was working out how many particles to use for the size of environment i crated, one of the main draws of using this kind of lighting is its natural look however this lighting set up adds allot to render time,  below is the tutorial i used to learn about volume lighting.

tutorial used: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQbzbI61pqM

final render

this is the final result of all the work above, this model has turned out in the most part better than i was hoping for however i would have liked to have added more shine to the horn. 

i have also take my model into UDK

(i have no rights to elvis work its just to show how the gramophone could be used in a level)