Toaster Project
For my project I decided to create my own toaster. This toaster not only toasts bread, but eggs as well. This makes my toaster a must-have for breakfast enthusiasts and casual eaters alike!
I wanted my toaster to be in a relevant environment so I found a picture of a kitchen table (which also appears to be rendered with an un-named program) and used it as a bit-map background. I also wanted my toaster to have dark reflective body with a shiny metal frame, but soon discovered a problem; when an object is set to be reflective and there is a bit-map present, the only way Brazil knows how to make the object "reflect" is to make it semi-transparent. This is because it has no other objects (in Rhino) to reflect off of, so it's only option is attempt to reflect the background by making causing transparency. This "see-through toaster" look was not exactly what I had in mind for my project, so I tweaked with the settings and discovered that when the reflectivity settings are low enough, the transparency is light enough that you can still see the background but not clearly, giving an illusion of a normal reflection. I believe this newly-discovered technique allowed my project to maintain its quality and will also help me with projects in the future.
An attribute I wanted my toaster to have was to be able to cook eggs but to also allow the customer to be able to see them without compromising the quality of the product. I decided that a thick semi-transparent plastic cover over the eggs would be the best answer to this problem, but I was having problems on finding the correct material in Brazil because none of the pre-set surfaces had the look that I was going for. I decided to create my own material and after testing several different levels of transparencies, colors of gray and white, and levels of reflectivity I found the ideal combination that gave the plastic cover a realistic grainy but apparently thick appearance.
I also decided to render my toaster, to show how it was set up. I connected the wires that support the bread to the lever that starts the toasting process. This allows for the bread to be lowered at the same time the lever is pulled, like in real life. I felt that this gave the animation a more realistic view.
Animation
| toaster_toasting_toast...and_eggs.wmv |
