3D Model of Buddy Rich's Drums

As a drummer who began playing in 1964 and loves jazz, I was naturally influenced by Buddy Rich. When I later developed an interest in 3D graphics, this seemed like an obvious project to do. I'm presenting the model here for your entertainment, and for no other purpose. So have fun, but don't take any of it too seriously.

You have my permisssion to download these and to use them for any non-commercial purpose. (All images and animations are ©Copyright by Mike James.) All I ask is that if you credit me as the author, and provide a link to my site. (The URL is "www.mikejamesjazz.com") Fair enough?

Why did I bother with this?

In 1985, I was lucky enough to obtain some (circa 1938) Slingerland "Radio King" drums, which I still play today, and so I was able to measure the actual drums. It was a pain! I had to model all the parts from scratch, including all the lugs, heads, shells, hoops, etc.. But at the end, it was gratifying, and I hope you'll enjoy it too. The original model was created in 2000.

The other reason I made these models is that there has been talk about a possible movie on the life of Buddy Rich. I assumed that some parts of that movie would have to be synthetic, and so I refined this model a bit, to emulate Buddy's drums.

The images first - ("Geek Talk" at the bottom of the page)

Here's a pretty realistic rendering, from the viewpoint of the audience.

An earlier rendering, before I added the "BR" logo.

An on-stage view...

A couple of movies of this model rotating

Danger! "Geek Talk" Ahead

First, the "easy" parts...

For those of you interested in CAD and 3D graphics, here's a little info on how this model was created. It's got approximately 500 hours in it, from start to finish, and was done in "Carrara Studio", from (Eovia). My approach was to model the easiest parts first, to get the project going, adding the more difficult details later.

Before modeling the drums themselves, I began with a 4ft. X 8ft. piece of "plywood", which was nearly always used as a base for Buddy's drums in real life. This gave me a reference on which to place everything else. All of these sub-assemblies had to be done with the models at "zero/zero"... equivalent to "sitting on the ground". Why? Because, if I were to pre-position the drums at their final angles, then attaching the drum heads, hoops, lugs, and other parts would be a nightmare. With the shells all sitting vertically (or horizontally) the angles are all "zero" or "ninety degrees". ... Much easier. So, having made all the physical measurements of the actual drums, I then began with the drum shells. Since the interior doesn't show, I was able to use simple cylinders of various diameters, extruded to the proper lengths. The same idea was used to create the drum seat and it's separate "leather" top section.

Next, I created a generic drum head, which could be duplicated and scaled to the appropriate size for each drum. The "BR" logo on the front of the bass drum head was created at the end, referenced from many available photos, and applied to the head as a texture map. I created a generic "drum hoop" in the same way, duplicating it, then scaling it's diameter to the appropriate size for each drum.

Next, the medium-difficulty parts...

The cymbals couldn't be created using a generic approach, because the smaller cymbals, for example, have different proportions and curves than the large ones. I had to create separate models for each cymbal, using reference material and my own cymbals as a guide. Once the shape was done, I then had to create a "procedural shader" for each cymbal, to simulate the lathed-in circular grooves in the actual cymbals, along with another shader to simulate the color, reflection, shininess, etc.. This took quite a while.

Finally, the most difficult parts...

Next I modeled all the hardware, including the hardware that attaches to the drums, the lugs and tension rods, the bass drum-mounted cymbal holders, bass drum-mounted spurs, the pearl-inlaid bass drum hoops, and other small details. After that, I created the floor-type cymbal stands, the hi-hat stand, the snare drum stand, floor tom legs, and the bass drum pedal.

Grouping the sub-assemblies, so they could be handled...

I had to then "group" these things into sub-assemblies, so that, for example, a cymbal stand with a cymbal on it could be moved as a unit. If you don't do this, you'll find that when you move the cymbal stand, the cymbal doesn't move with it. (irritating) ...Imagine the horror of dragging the bass drum to a new position in 3D, only to discover that the lugs, hoops, etc., all remained in their original location. These parts needed to be "grouped" into an object simply called "bass drum", so it could be handled. Same story for all the other components.

Other details include both (simulated) "felt" washers between the cymbal stands' metal washers and the cymbals, the simulated rubber tips on the legs of all the hardware, the simulated white felt pad on the rear bass drum head, and the metal reinforcing ring around the bottom of the seat.

Then there's the basic "setup"...
This is roughly equivalent to opening a bunch of boxes at home. We have drums, cymbals, hardware, etc., which all need to be assembled, as a real drummer would do. All the drums, cymbals, and hardware had to be moved to the appropriate general location, for final "tweaking". (below)

Positioning all the parts...

Finally, there was a drum set, but it needed to be "set up" properly". This wasn't as difficult as it might seem. Since I'm a drummer myself, and since there are a huge number of photos available of Buddy Rich's drums, I had plenty of reference material. This is where I tilted the drums to their appropriate angles, and further tweaked the position of each item. (You might notice in the images above that I even bothered to model a pair of drumsticks, and place them on the bass drum.)

Adding the color finish and lighting

The last step was to do (quite a few!) tests to recreate the "marine pearl" finish that Buddy most often had on his drums, and to position lights around the set, to make it look the way it looked on stage. The end results are good, but more detail could be added, such as little nuts and bolts, wing nuts, etc..

That's probably more information than you needed, so I'll stop here. I hope you find this challenging project interesting.
- Mike James