Draven Ashorn-Hejl: 3D Scan Project - Isabelle Statue

Concept: In the game Animal Crossing: New Leaf, the player becomes the new Mayor of whatever town they move to, and to aid them in their mayoral duties comes the obscenely-hard-working-and-ever-peppy-yet-sleeps-2-hours-every-night secretary Isabelle. However, despite all she does for you, she never gets any real reward outside of occasionally being given a day off if you know how. I feel like it's time to change that, so I wanted to give her a nice sturdy statue that could be put in town to celebrate all her hard work.

Techniques: I followed standard procedure to create this 3D scan. I scanned the chosen object with the NextEngine scanner and ScanStudio software and tediously aligned the alignment pins (while learning there's a limit of nine pins) to ensure the best alignment I could. I then moved the scan into RapidWorks to fuse all the meshes and did some cleaning to get rid of the bumps caused by my alignment paint dots and added some general smoothing to ease the remaining general roughness. I lastly put the model into Keyshot and created the final renders.

Materials: For my scanned object I used an Isabelle Amiibo which was scanned by the lab's NextEngine Scanner. For the Keyshot material I used Pink Granite, a material sturdy enough to match the perpetual-motion secretary herself but in a nice cute color and a slight shine to it to match the adorkably cute secretary and her shining personality. For the real-world backdrop, I used a shot of the yard outside my dorm, as for some reason it has a lawn ornament on one side but not the other, so I decided to place my scan on the blank side of the lawn as it seemed only fitting to do.

Draven Ashorn-Hejl: Box Project - Starlight

Concept: For the box project, after seeing people make boxes to use for things I decided I wanted to try that. One thing that's very common in the homes of my family are small light features, like candles and decorative lights. Also, the running theme in my family's homes tends to be rustic, western style decor. Thus, with this project I decided to make a box to serve as a light feature I could give to my family that would fit in with their decor, and to that end I went with an idea common in western stories: the celestial bodies, namely the Sun, Moon, and Stars.

Techniques: I used Box Maker to create the outer shape of the box panels, then imported that into Illustrator, where I added the Star shapes for inner cuts and added vector images of the Sun and Moon for raster engraving, and also cut a hole in the bottom to place an electric tea light to light the box.

Materials: I bought a sheet of plywood from Home Depot that was just barely smaller than the laser cutter window for the material for the box itself (out of which I got 5 boxes), and used the UTD Fab Lab's laser cutter to do the cutting and engraving of the panels. I then used superglue to ensure the boxes held together and added a small electric tea light for the illumination.

Draven Ashorn-Hejl: Laser Engraving Project - Skateboard

Concept: Ever since I was little playing Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 on rented PlayStations I'd wanted my own custom skateboard like all the skaters had, with a cool design based on their personal branding. With this project I finally got to fulfill that wish and designed a board based on my personal branding that I've built up online. For a while I had trouble coming up with what to put on the board besides my branding (just like real skaters) and a hex grid (because hex grids are cool), but then it hit me: I could make a tableau listing my completed projects, so that when I had the board kicked up and in hand like a cool skater it would serve as a list of my accomplishments while proudly displaying the branding I had completed them under.

Technique: I used Illustrator to design the board, using layering, masking, and some numerical parameter tweaking to get everything just right and all fitting onto the board. All of the engraving done by the laser cutter was done raster style at maximum depth for a solid, deep engrave.

Materials: I bought one of the skateboards Professor Scott recommended because I trust his judgement, and used the laser cutter at the UTD Fab Lab to handle the engraving.

Draven Ashorn-Hejl: Week 8 - 3D Print

Concept: My favorite game is Final Fantasy XIV, and in it your character wears a lot of accessories, including a pair of rings. One of the armor sets in the game is the Halone's Champion set, an angelic set of armor with a focus on wing imagery. Unlike many sets of armor in the game however, the Halone's Champion set does not have an accompanying accessory set, so I decided to make my own idea of what the rings of the set would look like.

Process: For the model of the ring, I kept things simple, as in Final Fantasy XIV their ring designs are all simple bands focused on highlighting one feature. In this ring's case, the focus was on the wings at the top, which I made by manipulating a sphere with Gumball until it was flattened, then cut a notch into it using BooleanDifference to add detail and some dimension. I then grouped multiple "feathers" together into a wing, then mirrored the first group to the other side of the ring to make the matching wing. To keep the wings solidly attached to the core band, I used simple cubes the length of the band to fill in the small gaps between the feathers. For some extra detail and flair, I added a 7-sided pyramid to the top as a small decorative gem, and cut small gaps into the core band of the ring so that it wasn't plain and flat all around. After the model was printed, I hand brushed on 2 coats of XTC-3D and then hand painted it with acrylic paint to finish it.

Materials: In Keyshot, I used Brushed Metal in gray and yellow for the core ring band and the wings respectively, but tweaked them to be more silver and gold. For the gemstone I used Blue Gem Stone, tweaked to be less transparent and rougher, with a deeper blue hue. For the physical ring, it was printed with basic 3D printer plastic, and I hand painted the ring with acrylic paints.

Draven Ashorn-Hejl: Week 2 Duck

Concept: Whenever I think of a duck, thanks to reading the webcomic El Goonish Shive I generally end up thinking of those hilarious little demon-themed rubber duck toys. Since I am ridiculously new to modeling, a simple toy seemed like an attainable goal, so I went for that.

Modeling Techniques: Since I don't know much about 3D modeling, I mostly followed the tutorial. I used multiple spheres and then deformed them to create the body, head, bill, and eyes of the duck itself. To keep from exactly copying the tutorial, I focused a bit more on trying to make spread wings on the duck. I also added horns for the signature touch of the demonic duck idea.

Materials: For the materials, I simply used the Rubber material for all of the pieces due to my goal being to replicate a toy rubber duck, and recolored the material for each individual part to create the look and coloring I was going for.

Draven Ashorn-Hejl: Week 1 Castle

Concept: This is the first time I'd ever used a 3D modeling program before, so I wanted to keep things nice and simple. In many videogames that use sprites, a castle is depicted as a wall with a single keep inside of it, so that tends to be how I think of them. It is this simple idea that I went with to recreate in 3D.

Modeling Techniques: As this was the first thing I'd ever made with 3D modeling I kept things extremely basic, using only basic cubes, cones, and a cylinder to make my castle, using specific number coordinates to place each piece to keep it from becoming a mess. To keep it from being too boring, I used Boolean Difference to cut a gate into the outer wall and hollowed out the central keep to create a 2-story inside, and I also added windows to it so you can see inside.

Materials: For my castle's render I went with an Obsidian texture to give it a dark sheen, enforced by me removing the marbling by customizing the texture to be just the pure black. I also used a glass texture for the central keep's windows so that they could keep their function of letting you look inside the keep.