[Irinikus]

Today I started on a model for an improved design of the Waterman Edson Fountain pen (The first "proper" fountain pen that I bought).

This will see subtle changes to the section of the pen, giving it a slightly thicker girth and slightly more refined features. The real change will be the conversion of this design from being a cartridge filler to a much better piston filler design.

I want the pen to have a slightly thicker girth overall, more like that of an Montblanc 149, as I feel that the original design was too slender.

I would also like the precious resin parts being replaced with deep blue, lead crystal glass, giving the pen more weight and a much better feel in the hand. (As lead crystal glass has a really nice feel to it!)

This is what I've rendered so-far: 

I started off by creating the nib for the pen:




I then started on the section:

[Intuition]

Oh man, old R3 max!
I have that on a disc around here somewhere.
Had an old 500mhz pentium with it installed but have no idea what happened to that machine.

What is this running on?

Btw, nice model for sure.

[Irinikus]

Oh man, old R3 max!
I have that on a disc around here somewhere.
Had an old 500mhz pentium with it installed but have no idea what happened to that machine.

What is this running on?

Btw, nice model for sure.

It's running on my 320 Visual Workstation.

[Irinikus]

This is how far I got today, I will optimise the nib geometry and create the compensator tomorrow.

[kaigan]

That is beautiful. Amazing work!

[Irinikus]

I just improved the nib geometry: (Now that's enough for today!)

[Irinikus]

The outer casing of the section is now pretty much complete, I now have to start on the compensator, which is a rather complicated construction.

I really hope that I don't run out of the required compute power to shunt the vertices around, as this next structure will contain many thousands of vertices.

What I'll more than likely have to do, as I continue, is to have multiple scenes containing the various components of the pen, and then have a final render scene, where I bring all the components together, as it will become increasingly difficult to articulate the model as I continue! (Remember, only two Pentium III's are being used for this job!)

[Irinikus]

I've made a start on the compensator and the 320 seems to be handling it surprisingly well!

[Jacques]

Looking good there fella. I'm sure that dual Pentium system is up to the task!

See you have firefox on that Win2000 install, what's the latest version that will run and is it even usable? Or is it in the same state as the Irix version.

Windows 2000 and XP Pro were always my favourite versions of Windows.

[Intuition]

Is Max able to utilize both CPUs for rendering? I can't remember if they bundled Mental Ray with Max before Autodesk bought it.