Mary Effler: Project 2 - Sonic Screwdriver Flashlight

For my flashlight model, I wanted to create a model of the 10th Doctor's sonic screwdriver. Given in the show, the only effect is it lights up when turned on, it seemed appropriate to use it as a flashlight.

View of a toy version of the screwdriver

Showing the tip of it lighting up.

I made some changes in the design to accommodate the particular flashlight we were given. I stuck to just the main body instead of the top bit where it sticks out. I took some of the design from near the lit portion, where it looks like it has cutouts. I then ignored the bit with the wire running through it, and just connected that straight through to the main body. I changed some of the main body design to be easier to model, largely because as you can see in the two pictures, there are conflicting ideas as to what that bit looks like anyway.

To model it, I made the design in Maya originally, starting from a basic polygon cylinder. Well, that's not the whole story. I took the guidelines in from Rhino, and extruded them out to make the shape, but that wasn't able to be edited well. So I made a poly cylinder, matching it up to the same height and width as the extrusion. At the end when I made the inner portion, I made sure to match it up again so that the inner sleeve would be the proper size. As a result, the flashlight will have rougher edges, but I have a lot more experience with polygons at this point, so I'm still struggling to get the hang of surfaces modeling again. I like to think on some level, the flashlight will be easier to hold as a result. :P The center part is largely just the original cylinder, then the details on the ends were extruded out and molded while extruding. The cutouts, fine indentations, and button/indent along the side were done by making more edge loops and tweaking them.


I did leave the edges rougher, so the internal sleeve is sized to 1 inch so that the flashlight can slide in easily.

No naked edges!

From Maya - Wireframe on Shaded view

 The Rhino shaded view

To render it with materials, I went back into Maya and extracted bits of the model to be able to add different textures to it. As you can see, there are 3 sections, the pure smooth silver, the middle crackled texture, and then the black base. But I'm having an issue with Keyshot - it's not importing these layers at all...just the full thing. So I can't assign the different textures like I want to. I need to ask how to get this to work properly, because nothing I try is getting it done. I'm exporting as both an STL and an OBJ file, but nothing is working.

3 clear different layers with the objects assigned.

And a good mesh via the Check command in Rhino

And Shapeways approved it! Though I got it printed in the UTD Tech Store for about 13 bucks instead of this ridiculous price.

And here's the finished product! I like that it can be inverted and turned into something of a lantern too, thanks to the holes at the base. I could take this camping to have a little mini-lantern on my side of the tent :)