Essay 7

This image is a rendered, unsurfaced, and untextured model of a pair of lungs and the trachea that i modeled two years ago.

The lungs began as a simple cube. Let's assume the left one was modeled first. If my memory serves correctly, a mirror modifier was placed on a single one along the y-axis. The mesh of the cube was then carefully changed. The top left corners would have been lowered to almost the mid point of the entire cube and then the vertices touching that corner were lowed and lined up accordingly. All of the edges along the top were also moved into a smoothed position to help form the slide of the lungs.

This same technique was used on the rest of the general shapes of the lungs to form the bean shape.

The interior of the lungs where they begin to connect with the trachea weren't as simple. There weren't many edges available to form into the dipped shape (it's there I promise, just difficult to see). I ended up having to create more edge loops in order to have the necessary pieces to create the dip.

Once I felt like the single left lung was modeled to perfection, I turned off or applied the modifier and made a copy of the lung. Once I had the copy in the correct position, I had to make some minor edits to it so that it wasn't backwards.

Once i was satisfied with the lungs, it was time for the trachea. The trachea is a tube with a lot of added edge loops in order to make it ribbed. The ribbing didn't take too long, but I was very picky about the spacing between the ribs.

After I felt like the lungs and the trachea were modeled to the best of my abilities, I unselected it all and added a sub surf modifier. This smoothed everything out and made it all very complete looking.

From this point, if there was anything that I felt looked awkward, I simply reentered edit mode and continued to model it until I liked it.