Alyssa Phillips - Capstone

When I first set out to create my Capstone project, I wanted to create a set of solar-powered toys, but then realized that that was way too ambitious, so I settled on creating one. I wanted to create something that incorporated everything I am interested in: self-sufficient systems, 3D modeling, digital fabrication, and toys. I wanted to make a toy for kids of today, who are carrying around cellphones and other devices at the age of 8. My toy is not only a flashlight, but also a phone charger. For the model, I drew inspiration from some of my oddball friends, Adventure Time, and from all of the collectible vinyl toys I have acquired over the years. This is how Lux was born. 

Modeling her took a lot of time, as I continued to add to her and refine her. I also decided to slice her body in half and create 2 separate pieces, so that I could place all of her electrical components inside without any trouble. For the electrical parts, I had to do some research...

                                  

After looking at other things that did what I was trying to do, I understood that I needed 2 simple circuits going through Lux. These would be connected to a photovoltaic cell (solar panel) generating a current that would feed into 2 rechargeable AA batteries. The first simple circuit, connected via a switch on her back, would power the 2 LED lights that are her eyes. Each of these LEDs would be connected to a resistor and looped individually from the switch (feeding the positive current) and connected back to the batteries on the negative end. The second circuit would be feeding a USB charging circuit board, with the positive wire feeding current into the board, which returns, completing the circuit at the negative end. 

Once my model was done in Maya, I threw it into Rhino in order to scale her appropriately and cut out holes for the electronic components that were a specific size. Then, she was ready to be printed. The printing process took about 52 hours, not including bath time. 

 

                                            

After sanding her down (some of the pieces did not fit perfectly when she came out), I proceeded to paint her with acrylic paint, and then put a top coat of acrylic finish on her. After that, I began the soldering process inside, connecting all of the parts.

  

       

Once the inside was done, I glued her together with Loctite and popped her legs in their sockets. Et Voila.

There were definitely issues that arose during the whole process that I had to work around. For example, getting the model just right for the components to fit and assuming that she would be smoothed out when printed. You can still see the polygonal shapes that make her up and her legs will not rotate for her to sit down because the sockets came out as hexagons instead of rounded out holes. Her hands also fell off because they were barely attached to the body piece. I simply glued these back on. Also, I did not realize until putting it all together, that each LED needed it's own resistor attached in order for the circuit to work. I also did not make a big enough hole for the USB port, so I attached a double-sided USB cord that went up into her body connecting to the port on the circuit board. Finally, the solar panel is only a 4V and there are only 2 batteries keeping everything going for 2 different circuits, so I am not sure how long she can charge a phone for a prolonged period. I would still like to create more toys that have the same functions, and maybe create molds of Lux to make more of her and refine the toy based on how the prototype turned out. Overall, I think she turned out really well! 

Hey guys! If you would like to check out a short presentation about my Capstone project, Click the link!

-Alyssa Phillips

AlyssaPhillips_Capstone_Fall2016

Darrius "Will" Williams- Big Frankie Final Project

For my pepikura model and serial sliced model I used the Bust model from the previous project. after is was sliced, taped and resined I added plumbers epoxy in the eye, lip and corner areas for more detail and resealing spots. I chose to keep more of the deeper recesses of the resin coat to give myself more to work with in the paint and mold making part of my process.

I primarily wanted a mold for future use of the model as well as to make test models to paint before i painted the bust and a future mask I want to make.







 I went with a black base coat with a layer of pink for undertones then burnt yellow and magenta for random highlights under the top layer. And a top coat of of to alternating greens as well as silver in neck wounds and mouth.

For my pepikura model I took my 500,00+ model and decimated it down to a model of 708 polygons, then checking it in rhino to break it down in pepikura.

It came out to 104 pieces.  Yay!!!

One of the pieces was cut off instead of mount line cuts. so i fixed it using a few cuts of printmaking paper(really strong paper) and made new flaps to install in the back.

Now assemblef and taped. I used two coats of wood shellac to prime and seal for paint.

                                                     I used two coats  of hammered copper paint.after it was dry i used expanding foam to add some rigidity to the neck.

Kenneth Kornfeld: Who Will You Feed? - Pepakura

 The next part of the Who Will You Feed? project will be to create a 4 foot Pepakura bust

As a reminder:

    "Who Will You Feed? was inspired by the Cherokee parable known as the Two Wolves (First People). This parable tells a story about a boy and his grandfather who teaches his grandson a concept that their is two wolves that exist in all of us who are in a constant state of battle. One wolf represents everything that is good and selfless while the other wolf represents everything that is evil and selfish. The boy asks his grandfather "How do you know which wolf will win the battle?"  The Grandfather replies "It is the one I choose to feed"(First People). 

     To represent the Two Wolves parable I sculpted a wolf skull onto a bust in Autodesk program Mudbox. The left side the skull is dirty, scratched and scared to represent the bad wolf and the right side is almost untouched to represent the good wolf. After I finished the skull I brought it into the Autodesk program Maya to remove the skull from its original bust because the model had become to dense with polygons. When I was done removing the skull from the but I imported back into a mud box and placed it on top of a new bust. I kept the face of the bust featureless so that it would be more ambiguous and I added a hoodie to add an influence of Little Red Riding Hood and the Grim Reaper. I felt that the Grim Reaper was an appropriate representation of the wolf in Native American culture since the wolf is often represented as judge, jury and executioner. I sculpted wolf ears onto the hoodie so it would look more like a wolf."

You can read more about the project here:

You can read more about the project here:

Kenneth Kornfeld: Week 1 Who Will You Feed?

Kenneth Kornfeld: Who Will You Feed? - Serial Slices

    The first step was deleting the base to the bust and bringing in the model to Mudbox to create a reduced mesh of my original model. From their a drew out the curves for my edges so that the retopology tool will have some idea of where I want some of the more important edge loops in my model. When that was done I used to tool and try to reduce the mesh as much as I could. This took a lot of trial and error to get it just the way I wanted it. 

Once I got the model reduced as far as I could I exported the model to Maya and tried the reduce mesh tools a few different times. Once I again this took some trial an error with me tweaking the setting each time. I could only get it down to about 1600 faces with out loosing some of the more important details. So I had to go back in by hand and do a lot of manual retopology. The whole process took about 2 weeks.

    Once the model was finished in Maya I brought it into Keyshot and rendered it see what it would look like made of metal.

     Now it was time to bring it into Pepakura and unfold the model onto a 2' x 4' sheets for the laser cutter. To do this I drew out every single open edge and then told it to unfold. After that I seperated and joined edges so that they would better fit the sheets and be in bigger pieces so that it would be easier to put together. I made sure all the edge ID's were the and the flaps where the way I wanted them. The teeth around the front of the nose were the most difficult and had many little piece in the long run. Joining them together would not have worked for this model.

      Once I was finished with Pepakura I exported the file to Adobe Illustrator and then to rhino. Illustrator only acted as a bridge between the two programs. Once in rhino I reformatted all the lines to be what they needed to be in order to be cut accurately by the laser printer..  I had to make sure the line where the right thickness and all the colors were correct. While also making sure I can tell the difference between a valley fold line and a mountain fold line. This way it will be easier to assemble.

Once it was laser cut I brought it home and started to assemble my statue. It was important to plan out where you start when assembling a Pepakura project. If you choose the wrong spot it will be a lot harder to put together. The tools I used to put it together were Loctite Professional, scissors and ruler to help fold the lines. 

After all the cardboard piece were put together it was time to apply masking tape to seal the edges and I coated it with Shellac to protect the statue.

     Once the shellac was applied it was time to paint the sculpture. I had to paint it 2 coats of silver and 3 coats of copper for it to get its full effect. I added turquoise paint to the copper using a dry brush technique to add more texture to the piece and I used a dark gray to the silver.

     To stabilize the bust I added a spray foam called "Great Stuff" to the inside of the chest cavity and a few pieces of styro-foam to the base of sculpture.

     The Silver metal represents the super ego which is the part of our personality that developed to live in society standards. The copper represents the core of our personality including the Id and ego. The Id is the part of us that is driven by instinct and the ego is the part of us that develops when we start make choices on our own. In other words the steel hoodie covers up an hides the true self, the copper mask.

Muhammad Martinez - 3D scanned object

Original sumo next to sumo after 

being prepped for scanning

Concept:
These stress toy sumo's were being given away at a tech conference and I thought scanning them would be a fun use.

Techniques:

Scan Studio output after alignment

RapidWorks mesh

 The original colors and textures were too reflective for an adequate scan, so it had to be painted. They are just over 4 inches high, so a macro distance was used. I tuned the output to 5k triangles then gathered my audit layers from Keyshot. I lowered the shadows and highlights to better match the background's.

Material:
Software include Keyshot, RapidWorks, ScanStudio, and Photoshop