Research - TBY-2 Radio

This radio was developed for the Navy in the late 1930s and used prominently by the Marine Corps. It was prominent in the film "Windtalkers".
They were often used as ship-to-shore radios and could be found on the vessels docked at Pearl Harbour. This was the reason for their inclusion, they were an iconic piece of equipment for the U.S. Navy and as such I felt that it should be included in a presentation that focuses upon the tragedy that befell, primarily, the soldiers of this branch of the American Armed Forces.

Research - Station HYPO, Hawaii

Station HYPO, also known as Fleet Radio Unit Pacific (FRUPAC), was the U.S. Navy Intelligence Base at Pearl Harbour, Hawaii. It was one of two Allied Signal Intelligence Units (Fleet Radio Units), the other being Frumel in Melbourne, Australia.
It was under the control of OP-20-G (Office of Chief of Naval Operation/OPNAV, 20th Division of the Office of Naval Communications, G-Section/Communication), based in Washington and housed in the Old Administration Building at Pearl Harbour.
It was tasked with Cryptanalytic assignments relating to the Japanese along with a couple of other stations, namely CAST at Cavite and Corregidor in the Philippines.

The code they were most concerned with was called JN-25 which was the Japanese Naval Code.

There's no Smoke without Fire

As part of our tutorials, we were shown particle systems. Using these tools we were able to create smoke and fire which will come in handy when doing the final animation as fire and smoke are part and parcel in explosions.

This tutorial was also extremely useful for me as Particle Systems are the new technique that I wanted to develop. Because of this I made extensive notes based upon a couple of tutorial videos and the techniques that we were shown in class.

I created both the smoke and fire based upon tutorial notes and through watching some tutorial videos.

First I started by creating a Super Spray particle system by choosing the Particle Systems creator. Once this was selected it was much the same as other basic objects in placing in the scene, just drag and drop. When placing the system initially, you have control over its size. This can be altered later.

Once the Particle System has been placed, we must set it up in terms of how it will look. With the system in the view port we are presented with various modifying options in the modifier tab.

The number of particles used per frame was the first task, this is found within the Particle Generation Tab, Particle Quantity then Use rate. Similarly for Particle Size and Timing. The Timing controls when the particles are emitted from and to.

We can also change the type of particles emitted. Initially I chose Facing. The Facing particles will always face the viewer, no matter what angles they are seen from. Later I changed this the spherical ones as I felt these gave a more realistic smoke effect.

Now that the basic particle system was established, I could then start to add materials to it so that it was actually smoke coloured. This process was similar to adding materials to any other model, by using the Material Editor.

By going into the Maps tab followed by the Diffuse colour option and then choosing particle age, we can edit the colour of the the particles as they age. They will be one colour when emitted, another half way through the animation and then a final colour before they disappear.

Similarly with the Opacity. We are presented with two channels, Map and Mask. Within the Map channel I placed the Noise Map to give a dappled effect and Gradient in the Mask channel to make the colour transitions smooth.

After a few goes and messing around with colours I was left with smoke and fire.

Models - The Office Chair

I started to model the code breaking offices with a basic piece of furniture, the humble office chair.

This model was created with basic objects. Cylinders were used for the legs of the chair, they were bent and their Z Axis squashed. The back-rest handle was created from a flattened cylinder which had had some of its polygons deleted. When deleting these faces holes were left in the shape. I had to plug these by using the Cap tool in the Border selection.

Although the actual modelling was not too challenging with this model, I have tried to make it as detailed as possible with the inclusion of screws holding it all together.

A simple model but a start to the decoding offices.

Project Research

The first task that we assigned ourselves was to split the animation and modelling aspects of our project into tasks for each member.
My modelling role was to look into the code breaking aspects of Pearl Harbour. This involved the equipment that was used and the layout of the offices that they worked in.
I researched the type of equipment that the U.S. military was using in 1941 in their code breaking and intelligence offices.
I also looked into other code breaking offices such as Bletchley Park in order to see the similarities and differences between the operations. The layout of the offices, techniques and equipment used were very similar.

The German Enigma Machine:

This Machine was originally developed Nazi Germany and used to encryt their messages. When the Japanese developed their naval ode they based it upon this Enigma machine, although not strictly present at the Naval Offices at Pearl Harbour, I wanted to include it to highlight the backing that Japan had. It wasn't just them acting alone, they were supported by Nazi forces.

Station HYPO in Hawaii:



Office Chair used in 1941:

Olympia Robust, military issue typewriter:

The document that rumoured an attack upon Pearl Harbour:

Bletchley Park, UK

My New Technique

As part of the group project, we all had to choose an aspect of modelling that we wanted to develop within this module. With the topic of Pearl Harbour being the focus, explosions will play a part. I felt that this was a good opportunity to look into particle systems which can be used for the explosion and smoke effects.
Since I did not incorporate this technique in the last modelling module this was something that I would need to develop because of the numerous applications it offers.

Low Poly Building

This tutorial demonstrates a simple way of building a background cityscape using simple Low Poly buildings. By using the standard plane primitive, comprised of a single polygon, an image of a building was placed onto it like any other texture. Converting this to an editable poly allowed us to use the Quickslice Tool to add edges for the windows. After the edges were placed we could then select the created polygons for the windows and then extrude them to create depth. Simple but effective.