Jack Purcell: Week 13 - Laser Scanning

Concept:  For my scanning project I wanted to scan in something meaningful to me. I scanned a miniature Terracotta warrior that my great grandfather had given me. I thought that this would be perfect as not only would it preserve a piece of history, but also the fact this was a smaller version of the much larger warriors and that I could scale it up to its full size digitally.

Processes: I used the NextEngine 3D scanner to create the initial scans of the objects and aligned them in the NextEngine software. I then fused the models together in RapidWorks and exported a very high resolution mesh and a nurbs patch file. Because there were people waiting behind me to use the scanner I opted to lower the resolution of the mesh later in Blender.

Materials: I chose to represent the Terracotta Warrior with a low poly and brass aesthetic because I feel it would bring a modern element and show the fact that it was digitally scanned while also having the look and timeless feel of a brass statue.

Matthew Durham: Week 13 - Laser Scanning

Concept:

       For my concept I wanted to have a tentacle popping up in random spots around campus. As if there was a Kraken under the earth. 

Scanning Process:
      I used NextEngine scanner process to scan the tentacle i carved out of green floral foam. Since i glued it on the quarter-twenty screw i did not have to worry about the aligning the object after words. They only thing i had to do was trim and patch holes in Rapidworks.

Rendering Process:
    Once I had all my scan data completed I imported it into Rhino to check edges after i sent it to Keyshot. I used the perspective to get the tentacle positioned correctly and used the sun height and rotation to get the angle correct. After that I did a batch render and brought it into to Photoshop for final editing. For the first render I had to create the reflection on the glass. All I did was make a duplicate of the tentacle, lowered the opacity and then played with the perspective just a little bit.

Taylor Volquardsen : Week 13 - Laser Scanning in Detail

Scanned Object

Ghosted Image Painted Black

Render 1

Render 2

Concept: When I first started this project, I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to scan. I've had this little red dachshund eraser for a while now, and when I saw it it reminded me of those chrome balloon animal statues by Jeff Koons. I thought it would be cool to play off of that idea and scan the dog and make it out of chrome.

Scanning Process: Like everyone else, I scanned my object once from the side and once from the bottoms to make sure I got all the parts in. It was a bit difficult positioning the dogs since the thinner parts like the legs and tail could bend and offset the scan if I wasn't careful. The first set of scans I did without any guide dots, and I wasn't confident that I had aligned them correctly so I ended up rescanning the whole thing again with markers placed all around my dog. In the end, it wasn't all that hard, the real challenge only came from the fact that I was working with technology and software I was unfamiliar with, unlike in other projects where I at least had some experience with the programs involved.

Rendering Process: This was probably the easiest part for me since unlike with scanning I actually have a little experience with Keyshot from previous projects, and a lot of knowledge of photoshop in general.  I chose the front of the visitor's center because that grassy area in front is a prime spot for a statue, especially a large one like the dog I placed. Getting the model to match the environment was the trickiest part since the shadows didn't want to work with me, but the rest was pretty smooth sailing. I ended up tweaking the shadows using photoshop anyways since the statue looked like it was hovering just slightly above the ground no matter what I did in Keyshot.

Brandon Wehenkel: 3D Scanned Object

  Final Concept & Design

 Work Station

Concept:
I've been wanting to do this project the entire time I've been at this school.  My goal is to buy a scanner to manipulate my sculptures in a more detailed digital fashion.  My design was to recreate one of my drawings into a sculpture.  I made a character when I was in ARTS 1201 (Drawing Fundamentals) at my previous school.  I'm quite fascinated with primates and anthropomorphism.  So I used my original drawing and the original picture as an inspiration to make my sculpture.

This is Bubbah he is my character, he's based off of the Common Chimpanzee or Pan Troglodyte species. He is currently a newborn shapen into my mind. Bubbah is a kind and intelligent half-breed. He didn't transform into how he is. He was merely born half man half Chimpanzee.


Modeling Techniques:
I started off with, I believe 12 gauge wire, no bigger than a coat hangar, and created a helix with a drill to build strength.  I just made a circle for the base and a 4x twisted spine.  I forgot to photograph it.  But trust me there's metal inside.

I bought about $100 worth of polymer clay of grey, black, and fair skin color.  I saw tutorials in the past to mix the black with other colors to make the clay softer.  It works but not as much as I wanted it to.  I ended up with about 10 lbs of clay into one gigantic marbleized clay block.  I ran into quite a bit of trouble mixing the clay together to make the shade I have now.  I bought an electric pasta maker to aid in my battle and it broke after 10 minutes of work.  I got my money back.  Next, I tried a meat grinder.  This lasted me 2 weeks.  The handle broke from excessive heat build up in the working process.  Because that crap was made out of cast aluminum I bought a cast iron one instead which you can see in the Work Station photo.  This worked a lot better to an extent.  I had to go and buy some clay softener liquid to use the machine more efficiently.  But I found out that it was much quicker to do everything by hand after I spent more time screwing around with machines.

Tools

None of the tools I use are meant for clay but I've repurposed them for my work.  I've got 2 crochet needles, 4 dental needles, a jeweler's flat head screwdriver & hammer, pliers, a spoon, an unsharpened knife, an eyedropper, and a plastic rolling pin.

Because the clay was such a disaster to work with I managed to smash it with the jewlers hammer when it was very hard to save my hands, thats when the rolling pin worked its magic as well. I asked around and learned that a hair dryer works too. Also the most efficient way is to heat up water and placing the clay into a plastic bag while it sits in the water for about 30 seconds. When I was able to get the clay into a swirled mess I put it inside the meat grinder.  That only worked for about as much as two handfuls of clay.  I gave up on the meat grinder after wasting about 4 hours cranking it to no avail.  Once I had about 30 balls of clay I started putting it on the armature and making the sculpture.

  Reference Images & WIP

 Facial Detailing

I was using a magnifying glass mounted to the table with some dental tools to remove all the burs that were left behind, left picture.  Right picture shows less burrs.  Burrs are the little pieces of clay that clump up when you slide a piece of metal into it kinda like how cheese curds.

  Ditched Design Idea

I originally had him planned as a bust design inspired by Gian L. Bernini, but I ditched the idea because the object was getting too tall. I would need to chop the bottom off and that would get in the way of the armature (also seen a part of my armature already cut, which came from the neck). Bad design on my part.  Next time I'll just make a thinner spine armature and not worry about making a wire base.


Materials:
Polymer Clay, Polymer Clay softener, 16 gauge galvanized steel wire, various tools I mentioned above,  NextEngine, ScanStuido, Rapidworks, Mudbox, Photoshop

 Scan Stuido Align Process

Next Engine 6.3M poly reduction to 900k

 Mudbox (Colored)

I ran into a problem where I couldn't get the paint effect to export to any other program.  Never used this program so its probably some very simple solution.  But I tried importaing as .obj to Keyshot, Maya, 3DSMax.  So here is an unrendered colored version of how my character looks in Mudbox.  The lighting is also quite wasky in mudbox.  I wasn't completely sure how to change them.  Their default presets were pretty awful.

Mudbox

Keyshot

Keyshot

Keyshot