The Oil Lamp

For added effect and detail we thought as a group that a few oil lamps dotted around the scene will create a much more realistic atmosphere, and would also explain the presence of light during a night time scene.
To start modeling the lamp I used a thin cylinder with 22 sides for a more smooth appearance. Converted the object to an editable poly and selected the top polygon and using the bevel function I pulled up and created the shape of the bottom of the lamp.

Adding a mesh smooth modifier created a good, rounded off and smooth surface.

On top of the object I created another cylinder surface which would be the flint area. Again using the bevel tool to manipulate the object into a suitable shape. Two box shapes on top of the cylinder add detail to the shape.

Ignoring the lighted area in the centre of the lamp I went on to create the top part of the lamp. Starting off with a thin cylinder and converting to editable poly and beveling the shape into the desired object.

I applied a mesh smooth on this section as well to round the shape off and make it more consistent with the shape positioned below.

Using the line tool with both properties set to 'smooth', I created a triangle shape which would be positioned on the very top and would act as a little handle. Once converted to an editable poly I could extrude the shape slightly and clone the object. With the cloned shape I booleaned the middle, leaving a handle shape.

The next stage was to create the long pieces of metal that act as handles and attaches the top to the bottom. I used the line tool again with smooth properties, I drew out the desired shape and converted to an editable poly which allowed me to extrude the shape into 3D. Using the border sub selection I could then cap the reverse side polygon.

The mirror tool was helpful for cloning the handle object to match on the opposite side. For added effect I applied a 'bend' modifier to the handles and with direction set to 44, angle to 27 and the bend axis on the Y axis I bent the handle into a more warped shape. I thought this made it look a bit more interesting.

Back to the top of the object, again I used the line tool to draw out the main handle. After the object was converted to an editable poly and extruded I cloned the object and rescaled it ready for boolean. At this point there seemed to be problems with getting the middle shape to boolean like the previous objects. I instead used the pro boolean option which worked as normal.

I applied another 'bend' modifier on this handle on the Y axis at -33 angle and 63 angle.

To finish the model I placed a small sphere into the centre of the lamp. Inside the material library I changed the diffuse colour settings to a light yellow, specular to white and lowered the opacity to 70. I thought that this gave the object a more realistic light effect.

After experimenting with a number of materials for the lamps metallic texture I found a simple, plain grey metallic texture with specular highlights enabled. I applied this texture to each part of the lamp. More detail could have been added during the texturing, such as different materials and bump mapping. However as this object isn't the focus of the scene the detail of the object wouldn't be seen and the extra detail would add to the rendering time of the scene.