Jeremiah Baker: Week 8 3D Print

ghosted painted black

ghosted with keyshot material assignments

keyshot render 1

keyshot render 2

raw 3D print

finished 3D print

Concept: I took inspiration from John Edmark's work with phi-based blooms and created my own version of his design. The sculpture starts with one shape (in this case, a leaf sort of model) and is duplicated many times and transformed using the golden angle (137.5) to create a flower like structure. The static structure, while pretty cool in and of itself, is designed to be spun. When the structure is spun at 550RPM and viewed through either a synchronized camera or strobe rig, will animate itself. You can see this phenomenon here.

Modeling Techniques: To create this complex design, I had to use multiple programs. I modeled the original leaf in Rhino, then exported the mesh as an object file. I pulled this single model into Maya, duplicated it 80 times, and created a hierarchy from the duplicates. I then selected all the duplicates and applied a very specific transformation (namely rotating 137.5 degrees around the origin), which resulted in the bloom. I then exported the sculpted duplicates back to Rhino, where I cut the majority of the bottom half of the sculpture off and created a cylinder base. Then, to prep the model for printing, I rescaled to inches and got the measurements from the bounding box to double check them. In finishing this object, I first used tweezers to get rid of all the imperfections that were at the tips of the leafs (it was a bit stringy), then used the Krylon Clear spray paint to seal the printed object, then used blue and black metallic spray paint to give the model an interesting three tone appearance.

Materials Used In Concept: I used the Axalta materials for the bloom itself because it has a really nice reflective quality and makes the shapes look that more interesting. I also chose to use the gold one because it isn't a color you would often see a shape like this in. It's like a metallic flower. I used slightly tinted glass for the base to add to the effect of the metallic look of the bloom. I cranked up the refraction index, so the reflections are really apparent, giving a sort of mirror like appearance.