The model is now free for anyone, you can download it from my website
Download Edirol vc-50 HD .3dm file here
When you open the model all the styles/objects are hidden.
That's because on some computers it may be too heavy and crash.
Wanna see a Video of it? http://www.vimeo.com/8259155

Hello everyone,
This is a little project that I do for fun at home/work with MoI beta 2.

Motivation and ideas:
I was searching for something to model, was looking around geeky products and I found this one.
I choosed this "Edirol VC-50HD" because the main shape was easy and simple, while featuring lot of details and technical parts.
If you work in video you should know what is that thing, its a field recorder for video cameras, its the size of a 3.5 hard drive.
This was done with 3 images (front, left side, right side) and 2 drawings.

Here's the real object, credits to Edirol (Roland)


Mechanical shapes and product design are my favourites working area, even in 2d drawing im bad at organic or anatomy.
This is obviously not my first model that I made using MoI but its probably the most detailled yet, ive also done two watches
for a private client and some other models in other domains like medical or architecture.

Why do I use MoI
MoI is one of the most awesome piece of software ive ever seen. Its like the sketchup of Nurbs.
I cant imagine doing this type of work in any other software. MoI learning curve is very fast even for 2d artists.
Booleans in MoI are my weapon of choice, in polygonal software its usually buggy and slow.
Fillets and chamfers are also awesome because if they fail, its your fault! Its kinda a debuging tools for models :)
When working with MoI you go very fast, for me I go faster than box modelling and I keep the precision in my model.
Also buying MoI is helping one man who's awesome, and also supporting alternative software.
(by not giving your money to Autodesk or Adobe)

Screenshots:

Modelling - end of day 2




Modelling - end of day 3





Modelling - end of day 4




Renders - end of day 4 (experiments between MoI .lwo and Cinema 4d, testing different mesh density)









Timeline:
Day 1 Modelling - Setting up the images references, building the main shapes, detailling the front/right/back views.
Day 2 Modelling - Detailling the top and left view, and 2d work for all the text and flat shapes in this model.
Day 3 Modelling - Detailling everywhere possible, extruding all the text, renaming all the styles, cleaning the model.
Day 4 Modelling - Day 4 was 1/2 I was the morning at the Hospital (Its ok I have nothing bad) so it was just renaming solids
(all of them) and detailling a little bit more :) Also ive made an exploded MoI scene for the fun.
Day 5 Sharing - You can download the original 3dm file now :)

Goal of this model:
- Abusing MoI awesome booleans :)
- Exploring MoI tools when working with medium complexity models or high details.
- Pushing the computer to the limit.
- Speedtesting the MoI mesher.
- Decomposing all the parts by materials.
- Using MoI tools for pure 2d work, and using it as an alternative to a vector software.

What's next:
Share a model that's usefull for testing MoI speed in the viewport with your configuration.
To speedtest the mesher of MoI when exporting in various formats.
To test all the different MoI export formats.
Im not gonna do "video tutorials" because my english sucks.

look at these beautifull pink lines, yes MoI is damn sexy