Jesus Javier Vela: Week 9 Laser Cutting

Vertical View

Concept

     Thinking of the recurring wave of organically shaped buildings around the world, I decided to build an architectonic piece. Like Capital Gate tower, I wanted the side of my piece to contour diagonally towards the ground. Three pillars make the piece free-standing while other smaller pillars add support between sections of the piece.

Approximate Rendering of Blend Operation

Techniques

     Flatfab, a 2D to 3D fabrication design software was used to make the piece. I first drew the top-most section. Then I attached a support pillar to it. I used the revolve operation to create the other two support pillars. Next, I added the bottom-most section to the opposite end of the first support pillar. I had to make sure this section interconnected the all three pillars. Using a blend operation, ten more sections were generated (twelve sections, total). Once the piece was down, I downloaded the flattened slab geometry as a .obg file. I formatted the file in Rhino, extended lines to intersections, transforming text into objects, and reviewing that the dimensions were accurate. Unfortunately, I didn't save the .txt file, so the piece was lost. Hence, a .obj file could not be generated to render in Keyshot.

Formatting in Rhino

Materials

     Before I sent the piece for laser printing, I made two prototypes. First, I printed the file using copy paper. The thinness of the material made it impossible for the piece to be free-standing. Next, I made a prototype using card-stock. The material was thicker, so the piece was able to stand on its side. When I finally laser printed the file using cardboard, the piece was able to stand vertically as well as horizontally.

Horizontal View

Jesus Javier Vela: Week 12 Laser Engraved Skateboard Deck

Original Photo

Concept

     While this project's first direction moved towards developing an abstract image, it eventually modulated towards realism as opportunities for visual interpretation became apparent. The final concept was recreating a photo of my friend attempting to look at her phone while wearing an over-sized panda head. Emphasis was placed on the panda head as well as the phone because they establish the visual conflict of the piece.

Layers on Adobe Illustrator

Techniques

     The design was developed using Adobe Illustrator. A photo of my taking was minimized with a three-color image trace. While some areas of the image were reduced to few lines, others were sustained by a field of blotches fighting for space. The image was then extended into objects and ungrouped. The objects were easily selected by similar color and sorted into layers designated by engraving weight. After playing around with the design, the final weights were raster, medium, and deep.

Laser Engraved Skateboard

Materials

     I used a blank 7.5" skateboard deck for the engraving at the Machine Shop. Given that the surface of the canvas was not entirely flat, certain areas of the board were engraved deeper than others. I am still pleased with the results, but the unintended consequence did undermine some of my effort to create depth in the design by adjusting the engraving weight relative to the distance of objects in the image.

Jesus Javier Vela: Project 2 Week 11 Polyhedra

Illuminated Polyhedra

Concept

     Given the semi dome-shaped appearance of the Half Truncated Icosidodecahedron helped envision the sun as a motif in this piece. Shapes were borrowed from past vector graphics I have designed, so it was interesting to re-purpose icons. This piece can be observed as an enclosed space where light enters through openings, and it can also be perceived as a lamp that projects symbols in the environment.

Formatting on Adobe Illustrator

Techniques

     Adobe Illustrator was used to develop the format of the polyhedra. Lines were sorted into layers designating guides, outer cuts, and inner cuts. Because some shapes in the polyhedra were not aligned to neither the X or Y axis, reference lines between shapes' anchors were used for alignment. Making the inner cuts required creating a dotted stroke path as well as simplifying the path.

Front View

Back View

Materials

     The piece was laser printing onto cardboard. the piece was able to stand vertically as well as horizontally. Assembling it required folding the inner cuts then glues the edges together using super glue. In the future, I will consider painting the polyhedra in a metallic color. The color could hint at architecture like the Walt Disney Concert Hall. The color is also industrial, so perceiving the object as a lamp will be feasible.

Carol Newhard Week 3 Castle

The concept for this project was a farm house with wrap around porches. As I began to work I put a more eclectic and unorthodox spin on the porch idea. My ideas were to add objects to this structure to make it have an unusual appearance. I wanted it to look like something no one has seen before.

The modeling techniques used were very basic and elementary. I used basic objects from the tool bar and tried to combine them in away that would create interest.

The materials used in Keyshot were  all elements are shiny white plastic. This was done to give the image a look of a industrial colony. By industrial colony I mean a corporate owned town. The lighting was meant to highlight this somewhat sterile environment. 

Carol Newhard Skateboard Deck Laser Engraving Week 15

My laser engraving project for the skateboard deck was influenced by the Three Musketeers. I began this project by photographing my grandsons together. I selected a photo with my oldest grandson in the middle and the 4 year old to the right as you look at the picture and the youngest to the left. My next step was to bring the photo into my computer to use as a template for vectorizing the image. After vectorizing the image in Vinyl Express Sign making software I saved it as an AI file and sent it to the machine shop for engraving.

The photo above is the photo I used as my template for my skateboard design,

This photo is of my completed skateboard deck.

Carol Newhard 3D Scan Week 14

Paige Ramos and I worked together on the 3D scanning project. Initially we were going to use a small furry bear figurine the texture of this figurine mad for a poor scan. We switched our focus to a rock we found in the landscaping around the ATEC Building. This proved to be a good choice. The rock had multiple features that we could use to match up and get a good rendering to close all the holes in the scan. 

The picture above is the final rendering of the rock.

Carol Newhard Polyhedra week 11

My polyhedra was inspired by an amathest ring that I saw a few years ago. The jewel in the ring was very large and rounded with no facets on top. I created the patern for this model using Vinyl Express Sign making software and then I pulled it into Rhino and put in the layers and saved it for lazer cutting.

The techniques I used were geometric shapes welded together and then I exploded them in Rhino and put them to gether with dashed lines as shown in several Polyhedra examples on the internet. After having it laser cut I glued the joints and painted it with 3 coats of spray paint to get a gloosy appearance.

Carol Newhard Week 10 Laser Cutting Flat Fab Heart Table

My concept was to have a table that used heart shapes. The top of the table is a heart with a curl at the point. I didn't save my flat fab geometry so I placed the table in a poolside setting with photoshop. The photo at the below shows my assembled model.

This table was created so that it can be used either way, with the points facing upwards or facing down. If I created this table in a life size format I would use mahagany with a glossy varnish.

Nikki C: Laser Engraved Skateboard

Concept: I was just looking up designs on how to use the blend tool and I came across this tutorial to make flowers using the pen and blend tools and liked the idea so I used that process to create my flowers

Process: I used Adobe Illustrator and the pen, blend, ellipse, pattern, rotate and text tools to create the original design for this board

Materials: I used a Blank Decks Warning Skateboard Deck from Amazon and then got it laser engraved at the Machine Shop.

Nikki C: 3D Scan

Context: I found this starfish I had and I liked it.
Process: I accidentally broke a leg off of it which helped it stand so I did 2 360 scans and aligned them and then cleaned up the scans in RapidWorks and then brought the scans into Keyshot and photoshop and fixed up the matching and lighting.
Materials: I used a clay starfish I had and the NextEngine Scanner with ScanStudio, RapidWorks, Keyshot and Photoshop

Marvin Robinson Lasercut

Concept: Had an idea to create a space ship and that was inspired by the whales and I thought to myself that whales are rarely alone so why not create a fleet of whale ships.

Processes: The process involved using Flat-Fab where the model was built procedural as a 3D figure then output into Rhino to refine edges and properly layer objects to be proceed and cut by a laser to have clean cross sections. Once the process of laser cutting is finished the piece is constructed by hand exactly how it was imaged in a Flatlab.  

Materials: The materials use were cardboard for rapid prototyping and cost effective assembly.

3D scanning Project- Paige S Ramos

Originally, my partner Carol and I were going to scan a miniature toy bear, but we decided on something more simpler. She and I decided to take a rock from the UTD campus landscaping.

As I gotten the .obj file back, I new what to base my rendering on. Since I am a big Marvel fan, having recently seen Endgame-- I decided to base my render on the power stone. One of my favorite infinity stones. It first appeared in Guardians of the Galaxy.

After taking it through Keyshot, I decided to make the rendered rock purple, like the infinity stone it self, giving some jewel lighting, and making sure it looks shiny enough like a gem itself. Then I made sure it was huge in size, and levitates. Giving it an out-of-this-world fell to it, and placed it next to a Mexican temple within Photoshop.

Laser Cut Skateboard-Paige S Ramos

Inspiration:

My brother has different kinds of skateboards that he buys on occasion. Having a variety of different styles, from different artists. I decided to take my own variation of these different types of styles, and create my own.

Process:

I drew this on my art program and did a full on sketch of it on Auto-desk Sketch Book Pro. Making sure to have extra detail in the woman's hair and even in her eyes as well. Even her lips has scoring in the picture as well.

After I was done with it, I transferred it into an .ai file and sent it into the machine shop here on campus.

Unfortunately, once it was done, some of the scoring that I had done didn't come out nor did the extra detail I had in the original image was transferred onto he board it self. Even if so, I am very proud of how it still came out, and how it has a holographic effect. I will make sure to put a final finish on it, so it stays preserved.

Ryland Smith Week 12 Laser Engrave Skateboard

Concept: I like the idea of synergizing with the skate community that is free form and intuitively inspired so I created a bit of a psychedelic design with the whimsical tag, "We Did It". "We did what" you ask... like I said on the board, "We Did It".

AI File

Techniques: I used Illustrator to make the design. I traced an image of the board and scaled it for the reference layer. I pulled in a design of a cow elk I made in photoshop as a raster engrave. I then formed the various shapes and set a fill at the same color with the stroke at .01. The laser engraver ends up forming the fill in raster but the edges are crisp using the vector stoke on the edge. After it was engraved the, "W" in "We Did It" had disappeared. So I masked off the letters and spray painted. There was bleed through the mask so I took a sharpie and outlined the text adding more contrast. Then I did a coat of polyurethane. After that coat dried I again went over the outline of the text with a sharpie and finally added a second thicker coat of polyurethane.

Mask

Just after spray paint

First coat polyurethane 

Materials: Baltic Birch Wood,  white spray paint color works well on wood, black sharpie for rich black outline of text, semi-glossy polyurethane. 

Final Board

Marvin Robinson: Tetrahedron

Concept: The was inspire by a child's toy such a mobile with easily recognizable shapes.

Processes: I first started in Adobe Illustrator and made sure the line width was with in tolerance and output the tetrahedron into rhino to refine layers for processing and laser cutting. Perforated lines were used to weaken the structure in order to for assembly. Once the cut was finish the tetrahedron  was assembled with adhesive.



Materials: The materials use were cardboard for rapid prototyping and cost effective assembly.

Marvin Robinson: Laser Engraning

Concept: The process and inspiration for my skateboard laser engraving was a no-brain'er, my brothers birth day is soon and he loves skateboards and I wanted to gift it to him. He's also a math wiz so I put some curve linear shapes on the board in order to represent his love for math.



Processes: The process was similar to the the tetrahedron was that layering is key to making sure the laser cutter understands how to process and cut each layer. 

Materials: The material is a small mahogany skateboard that is similar to the shape of a surfboard.

Ryland Smith Week 13 Laser Scanning

Concept: Two of the architectural spaces had water which led me to ponder what water based objects may work well for 3d scanning. The answer I came to was a shell.

Scan

Process: The scanning was done with a 3d scanner. This required several rotations, and a clean up process in Rapid Works. Took into rhino and chopped off the bottom in order to place it properly in a scene. Finally in key shot I rendered after camera matching and pulled into photoshop employing several passes to build the desired composition. 

In Rapid Works

Materials: In key shot I chose a black semi transparent plastic as the color would absorb light to give it form while the specularity would reflect its environment.

First Render

Revised render

Anna Phengsakmueang: Week 9 Laser Cutting

Concept

As a representation of nature, I based the general structure of the project off of a deer. To reflect the organic shapes that are found within nature, I made the parts of the structure to be more curved rather than sharp. To also balance out the structure, I ensured that the antlers were not to big but were still easily distinguishable to be that of a deer's.

Techniques

FlatFab Deer Creation

Using FlatFab, I began with the general face shape of the deer from the side using the X-axis perspective. Then I started to add more shapes along using the Z-axis perspective to add more dimension to the head of the deer. The added shapes were of the shape of a deer head if one were facing its eyes. The shapes were smaller in the front than the back, to add the realistic dimensions of an actual deer. After the head was created, I began with the neck and body using the same process. However, I did not position the head high enough, so the legs were made smaller in proportion to the rest of the body. Throughout the process of creating the deer, I used the guide tool to help make both sides of each part symmetrical. This tool made it effective when creating the antlers for the head. To finish up, I made sure that each part was connected to another, at least halfway, so that they could attach in a physical format. Once the deer figure was created, I imported the file into Rhino to adjust the cuts and add each aspect of the deer into layers for laser cutting. To adjust the cuts of where the pieces would connect with one another, I duplicated the cut and dragged it past the original while keeping it straight along the edges. This way, the pieces would be properly cut so that they would fit with one another more easily.

Rhino File for Laser Cutting

Materials

KeyShot

The material used to make the deer was a twenty-four inch by forty-eight inch piece of E-Flute cardboard that was 0.06 inch thick, which I sent to the Machine Shop on campus for laser cutting. While rendering it in KeyShot, I chose to use wood materials for the structure of the deer. For the different sections of the parts, I chose a different shade for each piece to add contrast to the subject.

Asa Rodriguez- Laser Scanning

Concept
I decided to scan a bluetooth speaker that I use pretty often, as I thought it would look interesting in an architectural context

Techniques
I used a single 360 degree scan and aligned and fused the scans, then took the file into rapidworks to clean up the scan with the sandpaper tool to smooth down bumps. Finally, I took the model into keyshot and set up the render.

Materials

For the main body of the speaker, I used an anodized aluminum to mimic the orange color of the real speaker. Though it's not super visible in the render, the holes have an inner mesh textured with a perforated black metal.