Welcome to...
The Time Machine Page
All about Rick's Time machine models.
I have always been fascinated by the concept of time travel. I
grew up watching many movies and television shows about time travel.
Fantastic Journey, The Time Tunnel, The Time Machine, Buckaroo
Banzai, etc. 
When I first started building models from left over parts one of my
first models was this 'updated for the 1970's" time machine. The
model is shown here before it was painted. This last Christmas my
parents bought me Ray Dream Designer (3.0) as a gift. For my first
project I decided to recreate the time machine form George Pal's
1960's movie. I had just watched it on TNT the night before and
though it would be fun. I dug out my laser disk and started grabbing
frames so that I could study it in more detail. Out came my old
Starlog Photo guidebooks and Starlog magazines. Well here is the
finished image. It took me about a week to figure out how to use the
program. I really like the hierarchical (sp) object arrangement. I
also like the way objects are moved in 3-D space. I don't like the
centering points in the middle of object which are just to easy to
grab without even trying. Oh on the third day I found a new bug in
the program. I was trying to put a surface map onto the time machine
dish and as it turns out since all the points meet at that section of
the object, it could not be done. The people at Ray Dream they said
would be fixed in version 4. I now have Ray Dream Studio but have yet
to load it on my machine. The time machine started out simple but the
finished model was about 1.9mb on my disk. It has over 200 elements
and more surface maps that I have fingers and toes.
I
started out making the model by first creating a base with a beveled
edge. This did not look very realistic when seen from as far away as
I wanted it to be seen from so I ended up creating a base made up to
several pieces with different colored wood surface maps so that the
difference could be easily seen between the bottom and top
layers.
Next I added the 'time engine' which on the original machine was
bolted onto a flat piece of 'metal' and then onto the wooden base. To
the sides of this I added the golden (at least for now) 'time pods'
which in the final product were to look like metal grills with a red
light inside. I ended up having to re create these in sections so
that the surface maps of the grills did not cover the golden part of
the railing. Next I added the gold rails that ran around the machine
and started to work on the basic shape for the control console.
The control
console proved to be bothersome so I instead added the 'time dish'
and supporting hardware. The original time machine had several
colored wires that ran from the area where the dish connects to the
machine down to the 'time engine'. When I made then the correct size
they simply became invisible (for the most part) in the final
renders. I ended up making them thicker so that they could be
seen.
It was about at this point that I found a new 'bug' in Ray Dream
Designer. Evidently you should be able to apply a decal to almost any
side of a shape. However the central point where all the lines come
together in a circular shape (like a dish or a cylinder) will not
accept decals in a 'reasonable way' and eventually I was forced to
scrap my idea for a curved disk and adopt a flat time dish. I put a
fake curved back on it but it is still not the same. The tech support
people said that they would try and fix the problem in the next major
version (4.0) which is out and I finally have. I have not yet had
time to discover weather they did or did not fix this problem.
Eventually I will check and see but for now the model has a flat
disk. Also during this period of time I designed the chair. According
to what I have read the chair was built on an antique barber chair
which originally rotated. The frilly wooden base was added later. My
chair is every bit as interesting as the original. I even made
several bump maps to simulate the frilly bits. There are every rivets
to hold the material in place. In this picture I had not yet
completed the upper part of the arm rests which are visible in the
next picture down of the entire machine.
Now it was back
to the control console. This part of the machine had several lights
that should appear to be glowing. However, as I discovered, Ray
tracing is the only type of rendering engine this program has.
Glowing things are right out the window. I ended up simulating the
glow by using several lights which reflected off of the glass. Not
very practical as it really slowed down the rendering time but it did
look 'ok'. I wanted the machine to look authentic and I spent quite a
bit of time drawing the brass plaques that is on the driver's side.
The brass rivets also proved to be a problem so I ended up making a
small cylinder which ran through the console and duplicated it and
rotated it (and kept on repeating the process) until I had a ring of
rivets around the console. They may look a bit large in this picture,
but keep in mind that if they were smaller they would vanish
completely at a normal viewing distance. 
In this picture the machine is as close to being finished as it ever
got. Most of the lights were in place including the red one near the
center of the dish. The red glowing grillwork on the 'time pods' was
in place. The Chair was completely finished as well as the time
console. I also spent some time drawing out the surface map which
went on the front of the time console. I also added a bump map to the
time dish to give the spots near the edges a raised look. I found out
later that there are 365 sets of these bumps. One set of bumps for
each day of the year, however I think my model has significantly
less.
If
you click on this picture it will download a 640x480 'larger' version
of this picture. This final picture of the time machine was entered
in the Ray Dream Designer art contest in August of 1995. The picture
"My Time Machine" is ©1995 by Rick Hallock. Feel free to use in
multi media projects, other 3-D art, but not as a promotional pic for
BBS's. Can be included in CD-Rom collections, online services etc.
This .JPG file is about 61k in size. I was really happy with the room
I had built. My wife suggested several features to add including the
miniature time machine on the back table. The books on the same table
all have individual titles. They can be read in larger versions of
this picture. 
You can click on the picture to the left to download a medium sized
picture of my Tardis model. This picture was from one of my next
projects in RDD. I decided that it would be nice to have a TARDIS
model from the show Doctor Who. It took me
about six hours to design this model and to create and place the
decals. It is not quite perfect, but I rather like it. RDD version 3
had a few quirks when you tried and duplicate a primitive object with
a surface map on it. Sometimes the surface map will not be attached
to the newly copied object. Despite these problems, and the fact that
objects can not give off light, the finished product was rather nice.
you can e-mail me at virtvikki@attbi.com
