Jeremiah Baker - Pepakura

ghosted with material assignments

ghosted painted black

process images

final build

Concept:

      Given our restriction on poly count, we wanted to do something that was blocky but interesting. We were poking around Google images and found some interesting pieces that kind of followed the concept we went with. I really liked the nesting square concept, but I didn't want to just do what someone else had done, so I decided to add a twist to each layer and see what it would look like if it wasn't a square. Anything more than 5 sides looked too busy, so we went with a pentagon. 

Modeling Techniques:

      I started by creating the main pentagon shape. I made sure that it didn't exceed 2 feet by 2 feet so that each of the faces would be able to be cut in one piece on the laser cutter. I then extruded the pentagon and duplicated it 8 times. I then scaled and rotated each inside piece accordingly to create a sort of stamp to cut out the shape with. I then just used a simple boolean difference command to cut out the negative space. I then messed with the orientation of the model and used more boolean difference commands to make the structure less symmetrical and to give it some interest. 

Materials Used:

      For the keyshot renders, I used a rough bump map on solid colors to emulate the look of cardboard. I thought it would add some cool contrast if I used a slightly darker shade for each face layer of the structure. The sides and edge loops would be left white to provide contrast and really make the faces pop. 

Assembly:

      Assembly was just the worst. We began by painting the pentagonal faces with a blue acrylic. We used a brush to give it a cool two tone effect, which really throws off the eyes once all assembled. We started with finishing because they were the only pieces getting a final coat, and it was far easier to paint them before assembly. Then we began assembly of the inside. The flaps were a bit small and difficult to work with, so we ended up using the hot glue gun instead of the locktite to get a better grip. Ideally, we wouldn't use hot glue because it is very messy, but since no one would see the inside, it didn't really matter what it looked like. We taped the mountain folds as we went on this portion, which ended up creating a really cool lip effect. After assembling both sides of the inside, we formed 3 of the 5 faces for the outside and began attaching the back side to the model. This is where we ran into a significant problem. Because we had built a thing inside of another thing, there were some unforeseen tolerance issues. The thickness of the cardboard layers added up on the inside, making the outside dimension of the casing about an inch short. Instead of scrapping the thing and starting over (we were 2 days into assembly at this point), we made some 'L' brackets with some scrap cardboard to bridge the gap. After solving that very annoying problem, we attached the last two faces and taped the remaining edges. To finish it off, we covered the openings on either side, and applied a slight gloss to the outside to make it stand out a bit.