Clay Purdy Week 12: Pepakura Creature

Concept: For my creature I combined a snow leopard and a horned owl to create an Owl Griffin. I like the beefy sturdy legs and thick tail that snow leopards have and wanted to incorporate that into my design. I also took inspiration from this old ceramic black panther sculpture my grandmother has in her house, I've always liked the fluidity of the piece and wanted to try and imitate it.

Techniques: I sculpted the model in Mudbox. I made the head, body, legs and tail separately, each starting out as spheres. I mirrored the front legs, then slightly altered one using the freeze tool to mask off areas on the part then the grab tool to change its pose, I did the same thing for the back legs. In Rhino, I boolean union-ed all the parts together then used the reduce mesh tool in Maya to fine tone the low poly look.

Materials: In Keyshot, I used a rough textured metal material. I used the curvature texture on top of that to add the highlights on the high points or "positive curves" of the model. I wanted to piece to looked like a buffed back, patinated bronze. I think the piece has a very brutalistic style to it, so I set it in an open, grey industrial wear house.

For our actual piece, my group chose Hunter's Duckaroo. We found that the piece had a clean design and came off as very displayable with its three points of contact base. We also found the piece to be really funny looking and thought it would be cool to see it on a large scale.

Hunter modeled the piece and both Zach and Hunter worked on getting ready for and running through the laser cutter. We all came together to assemble the separate larger pieces using loctite. I took those larger pieces home and worked on the larger assembly, post processing and surface application. 

During the building process, we filled the tail, feet and legs with expanding insulation foam to give the piece more stability. To finish the piece, I coated the entire thing in masking tape, starting with the edges then filling in the wholes. I did this to seal the cardboard and also create texture with the folds and wrinkles in the tape. Once the pieces were sealed, I coated them in a black spray on primer to prep the surface to be painted with acrylic paint and to seal it even further. After that, I applied a dark green base layer of paint and started to assemble the lager pieces into one. A challenge arose at this point with the larger pieces not quite fitting together perfectly. All the different little flaps being glued together just slightly off allowed for enough variance in shape on the larger scale creating gaps between pieces. I managed to cover the gaps using tape though. I used multiple layers of paint, varying in tint and hue, to give the surface more depth. To finish it off, I used metalic gold paint and a dry brush technique to hit the high points of the surfaces to give it a buffed, patinated bronze look.

 

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.

Clay Purdy: Week 7 Waffle Construction

 

Concept: I wanted to make something with a practical use. I took inspiration from old, ornate iron structures, specifically an antique school desk I have in my house. My original idea was to make a stand for my laptop, but decided to go with something requiring less specific measurements. So instead, I turned one of my sketches into a wall sconce with a big lightbulb.   

Techniques: I started building my model by revolving a curve to make the part that holds the bulb. I built the different parts of the model separately by drawing their shapes with curves on a plane then extruding them, creating square objects. To give the pieces their narrow shapes, I brought in a box, angled it then mirrored it, then used boolean difference to cut away the corners. To make the separate sections one piece I used boolean union. To create the waffle structure I followed Professor Scott's Waffles With Pipes tutorials on Youtube.  

Materials: I used a rough black plastic material for the model to resemble cast iron. I applied a warm light texture to a cylinder then placed it into a lightbulb I modeled in Rhino. I applied a clear glass texture to the bulb and changed the color to amber. I wanted it to look like it was in an old mansion so, for the environment I made a wall with a molding frame in Rhino then applied a dark wood planks texture. To create an old mansion atmosphere. I brought the environmental lighting down a lot, but not so much that you couldn't see the model anymore. 

For the physical model, I was planning on covering it with a coat of textured spray paint, then applying a coat of black metallic paint on top of that.