Yvonne Yu Project 3: Surface Population/Serial Slice

Concept:

The concept for my serial slice and surface population was inspired by the ocean, shadows, and reflections. In my surface population, I wanted to focus more on patterns similar to water reflections and shapes such as sea glass. My serial slice focused more on sea life and how light plays with shadows.

 

Process:

serial slice ghosted

When modeling my serial slice, I started by creating the body using ellipses and BooleanUnioned them together. I created the skeleton by tracing a sketch I had drawn with Interpolate Curves, Projected it onto the body, and then Patched them into surfaces. After Patching, I used OffsetSurface to make the bones into a thicker polysurfaces. I then used the Grasshopper script to slice the body and the bones. I BooleanDifferenced the sliced body with a smaller scaled version of the body to make the fish hollow so the skeleton would attach to the walls when printing.

surface population ghosted

To model my surface population, I begun with an ellipse and used ControlPointsOn so that I could translate and scale the points to create more of an egg shape. I then rotated certain points to create a more spiral shape. I created another ellipse and used the Grasshopper script to populate the egg shaped surface.

surface population keyshot

surface population keyshot close-up

In Keyshot, I used the Cloudy Blue Lagoon material to represent the transparency of water and the smoothness of sea glass or stone. I aimed to give my model a reflective look similar to the way light reflects and creates shadows in water. I also adjusted the refraction to create a bit more contrast between the shadows of each of the population objects.

serial slice keyshot

serial slice keyshot close-up

For my serial slice, I used a Plastic Cloudy Textured material on the sliced model and the base to mimic the clear glitter filament I used in my print. I also wanted to use a clearer material so that the bones would show through the body. I added a Hard Rough Plastic to the wire/LED I modeled and used Emissive Cool on a sphere to create the effect of an LED light.

 

Materials:

 

serial slice printed close-up

serial slice printed

I went through a few different prototypes as I wanted to minimize the use of materials outside of filament in conveying the shadowed effect of my print. My initial model included one skeleton in the center of the fish, however, the white filament, wall thickness, and the placement of the skeleton made the bones unreadable when light was shown through. I ended up changing the model so that the skeleton would be along the walls of the fish instead, but the bones were still too thin. I then thickened the bones and used a clear filament so the thicker areas of the model (where the bones were placed) would create stronger shadows that communicated the presence of the bones without using other materials such as paint.