Retro Device
For my Retro Device project, I have decided to make an Ancient-Roman Treadmill. Since modern treadmills use electricity and they obviously didn’t have electricity in Ancient Rome I had to figure out a way that a treadmill would work if it had existed in that time period.
The main mechanism for this will be the wheels rotating to make the leather platform move as someone is running on it. The ropes will attach to one end of the platform and can be adjusted to create an incline, increasing the difficulty.
Most artifacts from this period had very interesting detailed designs and patterns so I will try to replicate that with this model. I have researched the types of materials that they typically made things out of in this time period, such as marble, stone, wood, leather, bronze and rope, which I will use to create my treadmill model.
The Story
This treadmill is owned by a famous gladiator who has become very rich from his success. He uses it to stay healthy and to train for his fights. Rather then the wooden and stone training equipment of his competitors, he can afford this more expensive piece of equipment; made from marble, bronze and leather. The lion design in the middle motivates him, as he trains to be the strongest and fittest gladiator he can be.
Mood Board
I collected reference images of things that would help me design a believable model. This also helped tp give me an idea of what materials the romans used in that time period.
I used PureRef, which allowed me to organize all my reference photos and to view them as I worked.
Sketch
I drew a rough sketch of my concept to help give me an idea of what the model was going to look like. This helped when I started modelling, as it allowed me to easily visualize each piece that I needed to create. It also gave me an idea of how it would move when it came to animating it.
Modelling
I began modelling in Maya, blocking out the main forms using the primitive shapes. Once I had completed the block out, I started to add more detail.
From studying the reference photos that I had collected, I found that the romans made a lot of sculptures of animals that represented different things. Since I was creating a treadmill which is used for athletes to train, I wanted to sculpt an animal that represents strength – a lion.
I sculpted the lion head in Zbrush and mounted it onto the body of the treadmill. I also sculpted various patterns and designs that were common on ancient roman walls and sculptures.
I used 3DCoat to retopologize the high poly models and create low poly versions. I then unwrapped the low poly models and created the UVs for baking and texturing.
Texturing
I used Substance Designer to create the materials that I would use to texture the treadmill and used Substance Painter to apply them onto the different parts. I made materials that they would have used in Ancient Rome such as, marble, bronze, wood, leather and rope.
When looking at the references that I collected, I really liked the mosaic designs that they used a lot and decided I wanted to incorporate this into my model. This was very challenging to create in substance designer, but with a lot of trial and error, I was eventually able to make a mosaic material that I was happy with. I sampled the colours from my references to make it more believable.
Rigging & Animation
I wanted to animate the treadmill to show how it would work. So I had to make the wheels spin, the leather go around it like a conveyor belt and the adjustment beam change the incline of the platform.
The trickiest part of this was definitely the leather going around because I couldn’t just rotate it. To accomplish this, I used a technique where I created a hollowed out cylinder and applied a wire deformer to stretch it to fit around the wheels. I then created a control for this which allowed me to rotate the leather around like a conveyor belt.
Render