Chelsea Griffin : Week 8 - 3D Print

I knew before I even began my model, I wanted to create some sort of luminary. I looked at many different 3D printed lamps for inspiration before I stumbled across a particularly beautiful lamp that was a tree with a sphere of light in it's roots. I really love the look of spherical lamps. I also often find myself incorporating trees into my work no matter what the medium may be. This is why I was pretty stoked when I came across the Tree Stump starting point model in Mudbox. This was my first experience using Mudbox, and I was pretty much immediately in love. My only other exposure to modeling was Maya (which was an incredibly painful experience) as well as Rhino (a much less painful experience). Now that I know about Mudbox/ZBrush/etc, modeling is a like a whole new world for me. I still am fairly new to modeling so it's very useful that Mudbox has starting points you can work with. I took a Tree Stump and shaved it down and messed with it a bit. I kind of felt I wanted the sphere of light to be consumed somehow, perhaps by some kind of black sludge. With this concept in mind, I kept playing around in Mudbox until I was satisfied. In order to easily place a light inside, I attempted to hollow out the sphere and the base by cutting a hole in each, offsetting the mesh to an eighth of an inch. The base seemed to be hollowed out fine, but when printed, the opening I had created for the sphere was closed, though fortunately it was still hollow inside. I will have to figure out where I went wrong with this in my Rhino model. I ended up burning a hole into the base of the printed sphere using a soldering iron. Unfortunately, there was some sort of support material stuck inside the sphere that I had not anticipated. This caused the inside of the sphere to have shadows when a light was placed inside. I contemplated scrapping the idea of creating a luminary and just painting the sphere a nice solid color. The Keyshot renderings of metallic purple were pretty charming to me. But I came this far so I figured I would try and work with it. My model somewhat resembled a sort of crystal ball. I researched mineral spheres and noticed all of the lovely various colors and designs embedded inside of these rocks. I decided to paint over the sphere in a muted purple, trying to get a sort of crystal/mineral-like design. I frosted the sphere before and after painting it purple in an attempt to make it look a little more natural. As for the base, I mixed ModPodge, black paint, and black sand, trying to get the texture I wanted. I initially liked the idea of a sleek black sludge, but realized I kind of wanted a texture that would contrast the smoothness of the sphere. I figured the sand would give a nice rough texture. I was pleased with the outcome of the base texture. I wish that I had maybe used some different type of paint than acrylic for the sphere. I like some of the effects cast from the paint when illuminated but I probably would have been more satisfied if I had given up on turning this model into a luminary. I might later attempt to paint the sphere with a metallic purple or silver.    

Chelsea Griffin - Week 1 - Castle

Concept

When I initially began, I was uncertain of what exactly my ideal castle would look like. I am pretty new to modeling and entirely new to Rhino, so I ended up just following the YouTube castle tutorial and messing around with different shapes. I knew that whatever I made, I wanted it to have a sort of lair-type vibe. I started off making the morning star balls and just kept coming up with ideas from there. I had an ellipse at the base of my model and decided that I wanted it to become an eye, as I really enjoy drawing and looking at eye art. I find eyes pretty profound and a lot of my work in various mediums has incorporated them in some way or another so it only made sense that they would be the center of my lair. 

Modeling Techniques

As I was learning about the Rhino environment, I found that I used the rotate and mirror tools quite often for the sake of symmetry. Pretty much every object, excluding the center eye, was mirrored or copied in one way or another. I utilized the pipe tool for the beams around the spheres, as well as the veins that lead into the eye. For the iris and pupil of the eye, I used the split tool as well as the extrude tool. I learned that I had to join these parts in order to avoid any naked edges. The scaling tool came in handy as well to create the larger spiked-beam-sphere centerpiece. The methods I used were fairly simple but I am satisfied with the outcome. 

Materials Used

Although my castle is abstract, it is still an edifice of sorts. As such, I felt the best materials would mainly be stone. I used granite for the iris and eyeball,since I imagine that that would be the actual living space of the castle. I also made the spheres a black granite for the same reason.The veins are mainly for aesthetic purposes as opposed to functional, so I figured it made sense that they would just be red glass. For the pupil, I wanted a sort of reflective pool, so I ended up using the coffee liquid material. The spikes are also mainly aesthetic, though I suppose they could serve as a defense. Either way, I felt using the glass effect worked well

Chelsea Griffin - Week 2 - Duck

Concept

This is Steve. My initial idea was to create a swan as opposed to a duck.  As you can see, I kind of got carried away. While making the swan, the feathers on the wings became a little too complex to execute for me and my newbie modeling skills. I had the body of the swan completed and I was pretty proud of it so I came to the conclusion that I would have to mutate the poor thing. I came up with the idea of bat wings, as those are significantly simpler than birds wings. After that, I decided that this monstrosity needed to have some pretty unique limbs as well, and that's how I came up with the idea for his tentacles. I came to the decision of the three eyes and head spikes in a similar manner. While being created in Rhino, Steve was mainly green and purple, sort of like a dragon. But once I brought him into Keyshot, nothing really seemed to look right in these colors. I began messing with metallics and came to find that Steve actually makes a pretty gnarly robot. And thus, Steve the mutant robot kaiju was born.    

Modeling Techniques 

Although Steve was a bit different from the original duck example, I tried to use most of the techniques that were used in the duck tutorial. For example, for the wings and the head, I used the project tool as well as blend surface to make the body parts blend naturally. I used the project tool for the tentacles as well. The eyes were also oriented on the surface, just like in the duck tutorial. I utilized the mirror tool for the wings as well as the tentacles. The most useful of all in creating Steve was creating the neck, wings, and tentacles using the curve and the pipe tool. 

Materials Used

As I had mentioned before, the final materials I chose for Steve were not what I had originally intended. When messing around with Keyshot, I came to find that scratched metal was perfect for him. I used the infrared gradient material for his eyes to complete the robot look. As for the tentacles, I still wanted that part of him to be natural and organic, to emphasize the fact that he is a mutant. Creepily, I found that the best effect for this was using the human skin texture, which I darkened quite a bit to look a little less human.