Alexandra Escobedo: Week 15 Prosthetic Model

Prosthetic Model (Voice Generation Device)

Inspiration

The inspiration behind this model was making an improved voice generation device (VGD) for those who lost their ability to speak. I wanted to make something that was both useful and potentially life changing for people who can no longer utilize their voice. If I were to have this concept fully realized, I would want the voice modulator to sound as natural as a normal human voice, rather than keep a robotic voice that is currently in use.

Process

The process involved making the output piece for the VGD which would be a torus shape. On the sides of the torus, I added the attachment pieces using the rectangle shape tool; this would be what attaches the prosthetic to the person’s neck and throat. The circular elements were created with the circle shape tool, and these are the screws that would keep the VGD in place.

Materials and Techniques

The materials I used were bronze, titanium, and a mesh for the VGD pieces given that certain parts would realistically be made of those materials. Some of the tools I used were the torus shape tool, rectangle shape tool, pyramid shape tool, polar array tool, and the circle shape tool. The main technique that was utilized was the polar array technique to make perfect copies of the attachment elements of the VGD.

Alexandra Escobedo: Weeks 12-15 Architectonic Lamp

Lamp Model (Flower)

Inspiration

The inspiration behind this model was a peace lily plant and the shape of their petals. The tear drop shape was something I wanted to mimic in my model and was able to do so successfully. I wanted to make a lamp that I would personally use, and that was able to match the aesthetic I had in mind. 

Process

The process involved making petal shapes using curves. After making one petal, I used the loft technique to make it look like a solid flower petal shape. Once completing the first petal, I then utilized the polar array technique to make exact copies of the flower petals. I then created the base for the lamp utilizing the torus shape.

Materials and Techniques

The material I used was plywood to demonstrate what it would look like in real life. Some of the techniques I used involved the curve tool to make the petals; polar array technique to make perfect copies of the petals; and utilized the loft technique to make the petals look more solid in structure. 

Alexandra Escobedo: Weeks 9-11 Serial Slicing

Serial Slice Model (Flower Tower)

Inspiration

The inspiration behind this model was the coil spring toy that I used to play with as a kid. They would come in a variety of colors and shapes, including stars, flowers, and more geometric shapes. I wanted to keep this simple given my limited experience, but I also wanted to make something that would tuck at people’s nostalgia.

Process

The process involved using the star shape tool, solid extrusion command, and the filet corners command to a 1.5 radius. These were the main tools and commands that I utilized to “stretch” the basic shape of the star, smooth the points of the star shape, and then twist the elongated shape using the Twist command.

Materials and Techniques

The material used was plywood to make it look similar to how it would in real life. Some of the techniques I used involve star shape tools, solid extrusion command, filet corners, and the Twist command. 

Alexandra Escobedo: Week 7 Flashlight Cover

 

Como la Flor (Like the Flower)

Inspiration and Influences

The inspiration behind this floral flashlight cover was Selena Quintanilla's song "Como la Flor". I chose this concept to honor Hispanic Heritage Month and to honor Selena. I had the idea of a simple lily for a more tangible concept, and the color palette I chose was inspired by the Autumn season which tends to be associated with warm colors like orange, yellow, and red.

Techniques and Material Choices

Some of the techniques I utilized were the polar arrays, the boolean difference command, poly-surface extrusion, and the join command. As for material choices, I used multiple materials for particular pieces of the model: the center of the flower was jewelry with yellow hue; the big petals were flaky tangelo with a magic texture and a burnt orange hue; the smaller petals were of soap bubbles; the base was of polished walnut; the stem was of galvanized steel with a glossy texture; the cap (upside down petals) are of flaky tangelo with a magic texture.

Project 1- Castle, Jonathan Conde

 Concept: I wanted to do a simple, but at the same time, recognizable castle for this project where people can automatically see what it is. The reference I use is the Tower of London in England. I chose this reference because my parents recently visited this location and it looks like a stereotypical castle people usually think of. 

Techniques: The first thing I did was make a large flat base for my castle. I then built a tower with one cube and added the details on the top where the lookout terrace would be after just out of the cubes. I selected all the objects of the tower and copied and pasted them three times. For the windows, it was a bit of a learning curve. I made the outlines of the window frames with the line tool and extrude them by approximately 2 units to make them 3D, and closed up the empty spaces by adding surfaces to them. How I made the door and the frames for it was also similar, except this was scaled bigger. 

The walls that connect the four towers was just a tall, narrow cube without details. The door was placed on one of the walls between two of the towers.  

This is the part where my model looks different from the reference I used. In the middle of the four towers inside the walls, there is a bigger tower. It has a door, a window on each side, and on the top, has the same details as the four smaller towers. 

Materials: I wanted my castle to be stone-textured, similar to The Tower of London reference. However, there weren't any textures I would like to use in Keyshot. I made the walls of the castle whiteish light gray, the door and window frames gray, the windows black, and the doors brown. For the floor inside the walls of the castle on top of the towers, I used picked the color gray so it will have contrast with the white color of the castle. I used dark green for the base. 

Hunter Smitherman: Week 12 Pepakura Creature

Individual Portion:

Concept:

    The concept for this final project was based on the prompt of creating a unique creature to build with the pepakura technique at a 3-foot scale. To create a unique creature I first researched some bi-pedal animals, because I wanted something that could stand. I found interest in the unique characteristics of a kangaroo and decided I wanted to pair this animal with a small animal with similarly interesting characteristics. I researched more and found a picture of a duck and thought that the head and neck would fit perfectly onto a kangaroo's body. I then drew my concept, mixing the two animals and starting modeling within Autodesk Maya.

Techniques:

    I brought my concept drawings into Autodesk Maya and began modeling my pepakura creature. I first began modeling with a simple primitive cylinder and began extruding this cylinder at the beak of the creature. I worked my way down the drawing making sure to model the whole body and then come back to model the limbs. When working on the bottom of the creature I wanted to include a tail similar to that of a duck, but also use this tail as standing support so that the sculpture has 3 points of contact with the floor. I kept myself aware of the low-poly style that was required in the assignment and made sure to not include too many details that would not be visible in the final sculpture. I next modeled the legs and arms and also used a cylinder and extruded the feet, legs, and thighs of the creature. I made the hands and arms of the creature thin to resemble some of the reference imagery I had. After modeling the limbs of the creature I used Boolean Union to combine all the parts to create my creature. I used the multi-cut tool to fix some of the polygons so the final pepakura sculpture would fold properly. I also used the Mesh > Reduce command to cut the polygon count to a usable amount.

    My class used the Pepakura Designer Application to slice our 3D models into vector layouts to laser cut our projects from thin cardboard. This Pepakura Application allowed us to slice our 3D models and had an interface where we could lay out the cut slices on certain sizes of boxes. I found this application very easy to use and the best way to cut my model was to slice it into rings.

Materials:

    After modeling and slicing my pepakura creature, I used the 3D model of my creature in Keyshot to give a representation of my ideas for the real-life sculpture. I decided to use a grass texture to give the creature "hair" and I colored this texture a brownish color to match my reference imagery. I also wanted to give the creature a different material on the beak to make it look more duck-like. I also used this beak material for the front of the feet and the hands and created a darker-colored grass material for the tail. For the lighting, I used the environmental lighting and positioned the light where and how bright I wanted it. For the environment image, I placed the creature in a deserted type area as I felt that's the most logical place this kind of creature would be in.  

Group Portion:

    My group was comprised of myself, Zachary Alameri, and Clay Purdy. The group discussed after we all finished our 3D models and we chose my design to build with pepakura. The sculpture is called "Duckaroo" because it's a combination of a Duck and a Kangaroo. This model was chosen due to the simple and low-polygonal structure of the model, the practicality of build time and post-processing, and the uniqueness of the creature's characteristics. 

    The duties of each member were divided up by each individual's expertise within the pipeline of creating this pepakura sculpture. I was involved in the process of the 3D model, Pepakura Designer, and Laser Cutting of this creature. I tweaked the 3D model to provide a workable and properly folding pepakura creature. I sliced the model using the Pepakura Designer and made sure the flaps had the correct orientation and included the edge id's to identify which edges line up. I also was taught how to format and cut the vector layouts with the laser machine at TheLab.ms Makerspace by Doug Emes. 

    When tweaking the 3D model, it was hard to fix everything wrong with the model in a single pass and I found myself constantly switching from Pepakura Designer back to Maya to fix any polygons that would otherwise be unusable. When attempting to cut this project it was very hard to find the time when the laser machine would be free of other classmates. The laser was simple to figure out and the correct settings to cut the cardboard were a little hard to find at first. The build portion when mostly well, with a couple bad flaps and tightly fitting pieces. 

    I also decided to 3D print this model to have a glimpse of what the final product would look like. This was one of my first ever 3D prints and I'm glad I was able to successfully bring this Duckaroo to life.

Hunter Smitherman: Week 7 Waffle Construction

Concept:

    When creating my concept for this project, I first wanted to develop my concept around creating a wax warming vessel. Since it is October, I wanted to create a wax warming pumpkin. However, this design concept needed more iterations to complete my full concept. I thought about the concept more and wanted to play with some shapes to create a unique design. Instead of a pumpkin, I took the basic shape of a gourd and wanted to create a squared vessel for my wax-warming waffle construction. I made the corners of the vessel come to a point and the sides have a significant curve. Since my design needed a light, I created a cylindrical well inside the 3D model with a section to hold the light and the wax-warming dish. I also constructed a lid to cover the warmer when it's not in use.

Technique:

    To create my 3D model, I started with designing the well for the inside space. I measured the dimensions of the wax-warming dish and created two polylines using the Polyline Tool. I revolved these two polylines to create a solid that I could subtract from my created waffle model later. I next started on the outer parts of the waffle construction, I used the Control Point Curve Tool to create the gourd shape with a rounded base and top. I then extruded the curve in 1-dimension using the Gumball Scaling Tool to create a curved plane. I copied this curved plane to create a four-sided object and trimmed the excess planar surface with the Trim Tool. I next needed to fill the two holes in on the top and bottom of the object, I used the Cap Planar Holes Tool to create a fully solid object. I then used the well I created earlier to subtract from the solid I had created. I used the Boolean Difference Command to create the well within the solid object. I also wanted the create a lid, I first created a curve that matched the outside of my object and met at a point. I extruded this curve and copied it to create multiple sides to the lid. I also used the Trim Tool to get rid of any unwanted planar surfaces. I used the inverse of the well to create a lip so the lid would fit into the base of the waffle construction. 

    When creating the slices for my object I first needed to cut radial slices, I created a bounding box using the Bounding Box Command and started cutting with the Section Command. I also needed horizontal slices, so I used the Contour Command to create horizontal cuts within my object. Next, I created planar surfaces using the Planar Surface Command and created intersection lines where the various planes intersected using the Intersect Command. I did not use the script provided to cut the various intersection points, I felt creating the intersection manually would give me a better final product. I created a cylinder at the midpoint of the intersection lines and duplicated it for the opposite side making sure to keep my radial ribs cut on the inside. I duplicated these cylinders up to the top of each individual radial rib. I split the cylinders from the ribs to create the indentations for each slice to fit. I used the massive unroll script to quickly layout my laser cutting layout and color-coded each curve to the correct color. I also extruded each one of my curves to create a sliced 3D model for rendering.

    When rendering I imported my file into Keyshot and began choosing a material, background, and lighting. I also create 2D-Drawings in rhino to create a side and top view of my design next to my rendered 3D model.

Materials:

    To choose the material I wanted for my final design and renderings, I knew that there would be no encouraged post-processing required. I added a light wood material to match similarly to the wood that I purchased for laser cutting. I altered some of the wood material settings to add a rougher texture to the model. I used a gray and black background as well as a table background to provide realistic images. I used a lighting background to provide realistic daytime lighting for all of my individual renderings.