Twinkle Shah Week 8 Assignment 2 Pendant

Keyshot Main View of Pendant

3D Printed Pendant with Attached Chain

Concept:
At first, I tried playing  around in Rhino to see what I could come up with because I didn't have anything in mind. I didn't make anything that was worth printing in my opinion, so I tried to step away from Rhino for a bit and think about what I like. I own a lot of jewelry and really like wearing it, so I thought it would be a good idea to make something I could actually wear--perhaps a pendant that I could put on a necklace. I'm fond of astronomy, and an emblem that I feel attracted to is of the sun with the moon wrapped around it. I decided then that I'd make a pendant of this emblem.

Ghosted Image Painted Black Rhino

Process:
I started with a small sketch on paper, then I created a single curved line within a circle, to make the moon inside a circle. I turned both into pipes and I trimmed the excess part of the curve with the circle. I then joined the two. To create the sun's rays, I created a small, slender cone, oriented it onto the torus, and used ArrayPolar to duplicate it 3 times for some rays coming out of half the circle--making that part look like the sun. To add more interest to the moon's side, I created some small stars with the star tool, extruding them, and ArrayPolar. Then I used Boolean Difference to cut star shapes into the torus. 

All Views of Pendant in Rhino

Materials:
In Keyshot, the materials I used were Anodized Titanium Champagne Brushed 90%. I liked the delicate look it gave and I think it suited the celestial objects. The pendant was 3D printed in PLA Black at a bit under 2 in x 2 in x .13 in. I liked the black color for it as well, although I think it gave a very different vibe to the piece. Unfortunately, the engraved stars I had made with the Boolean Difference didn't turn out so well because they were so small. According to the man at MakerTree, this was because it was printed in PLA. He recommended that I choose FDM for more detail-oriented prints in the future. 

Keyshot Material Assignments

Keyshot Perspective View

Twinkle Shah: Project 1 Castle

Concept: 
When most people think of a castle, they think of a medieval, historic castle made of stone and with large pillars. Although not technically a "castle" by definition, I thought of the Taj Mahal. I wanted to make a more modern version of an old castle with some aspects that resembled the Taj Mahal. In particular, I liked the concept of the 4 pillars that surround the structure, and want to include that in my project. I do not intend to include many other concepts besides the pillars from the Taj Mahal, because I want my castle to have a minimalistic, modern, and futuristic feel.

Taj Mahal-Inspiration

Here is what I came up with:

Ghosted Castle Painted Black

Castle in KeyShot with Materials

Bird's Eye View of Castle

Pedestrian View of Castle

Process:
I started by constructing the base of the structure, which I created using the pentagon form tool. I then used the same tool to stack one more pentagonal prism above the first one. These made the two tiers of my architectonic structure. Next, I added the 4 pillars surrounding my structure that resemble the Taj Mahal. These were also pentagonal prisms, continuing the repetition of the pentagon throughout my design. Hovering above the 4 pillars, I created a ring that serves as a futuristic force field to protect the fortress. I oriented each of the pillars so that a flat edge was lined up with the ring above it. I then added detailing with some small spheres on the points of the two main pentagons and the ArrayPolar command. I wanted to be sure not to overdo the details so that I can stick to my minimalist look. I then added some cones that intersect the 5 sides of the top pentagonal prism, also using ArrayPolar.  

Materials:
For the hovering ring, I used glass (solid grey) because I liked the translucent effect it had. For the top tier and the spheres on it, I used anodized titanium brushed pink, and for the cones, I used a very reflective anodized niobium polished green. The bottom tier is marble (black advanced translucent), giving nice reflections and providing some striking color contrast. The 4 pillars are copper polished, also producing nice reflections of the inner structures. For the lighting environment, I used a lighting with 2 large light sources for ample light. I increased the contrast and included ground shadows and reflections for a nice finish. 

Brandon Wehenkel: Independent Study (Update 3)

The purpose of this study here, for a turntable, go here.

I need to make the file 3D printer friendly, which has taken all four weeks.  Still behind but slowly getting things done.  My goal for this session was to create keys for all of my geometry so I can finalize my file for printing and make my goal for removable parts valid.  The biggest problem is that it took ages to do anything because Maya crapped on me every place I tried.  At home, in the lab, and in the student lab on the 2nd floor; my personal computer was much faster than all other locations, and it was a snail’s pace. I tried Zbrush to clean up the hole but I am all too uninformed on the application, so it was not very helpful this time around.  I will need to know how to use that application when I want to do this process again,

Problem 1:
First thing to mention, as I was working on transferring data from Mudbox to Rhino back and forth, I came across a minor issue with Rhino increasing the size of all the .obj imports.  I discovered that 500k polys for the body and sitting figure are still too much.  Rhino craps out when the objects are booleaned or trimmed in any way.  So I had to go back into Mudbox to decimate again.  The torso, legs, and sitting figure are below 150K polys.  The arm is at 70k polys.

Cutting reference

Problem 2:

Working in Maya is slow!!!  Imagine doing append a poly once every 17 minutes, and you have to repeat the command 46 times. I needed to cut the models in parts to fit the 3D printer.  What I discovered was that Rhino and Mudbox do not fill holes very well.  Rhino's hole fill tool does not clean the topography when applied. It creates triangles with a lot of connecting points in the middle creating an ugly seam and pinches the geometry when required to extrude.  When importing into Mudbox after modeling in Rhino creates multiple overlapping layers with holes as well as jacks up the topography when cleaned with the patch tool, making it not worth my time.  So I was stuck in Maya to fix this problem.  After spending about 3 hours and only appending 16 faces out of 46, I had to think of something else.  Maya has a fill hole tool as well, it only does half the work, unfortunately, requiring the use of the interactive split tool.  Extrude took 2 hours at most for some locations on the arm.   Hole fill takes 3 hours to complete.

From 11:50 am Sunday, March 26 to 3:26 am Monday, March 27th I appended one polygon.  I do not know what the problem is but Maya does not like my arm mesh.  Saving, restarting the computer cleaned up some of this wait time.

 MUDBOX HOLES

Referring to what I mentioned earlier, after working in Rhino and importing back into Mudbox.  The .obj creates holes in the topography and recreates topography errors denoted by the red dots.  The black texture problems around the fingers were not being picked up as errors but were in fact errors.  Every black section is a hole where the geometry is overlapping.  I did not continue to work with this mess.  I returned to Maya and used filled holes to start the key instead.

A part of problem 2, I needed to create a key, but the program took ages even to get this far.  This took 3 hours to get this far.  Restarting the computer managed to alleviate the time issue, but it still took about 4-20 minutes per each append poly/ insert edge loop/ interactive split tool/ merge vertex command.

Modeling Techniques:

The very first thing I had to do was cut all the pieces in the way I wanted.  I used all three programs, Rhino, Mudbox, and Maya to make these cuts.  I figured out that Maya was the more accurate program to do these cuts.

Photo of all cut pieces.

Cutting took about two weeks, unfortunately. How do you ask? It seemed like a simple task, but I needed to go back and forth between Mudbox and Rhino to see the parts and how they aligned up.  I would cut then fix the geometry, revert then cut again, fix the geometry, then revert and it took about three days to do that for the torso alone. I had to align the files overlapping each other till I found the most accurate place to slice.  It was a bit annoying for me because in real life you could pick up the objects and place them where you wanted.  In the 3d view window there isn't resistance when overlapping, so parts such as the fingers would be intersecting in the hooves while the other half of the geometry would be perfectly aligned in the arm.  It took much finesse to find the right spot.  I saved the perfect alignment pieces as an.Obj and imported it into Mudbox to clean up the geometry again, so that the seams were cleaner for cutting.The most straightforward part to cut was the arm.  However, it still was annoying because the geometry from my sculpted object is not completely round.  I fixed it as best as I could, but there's still some post work I will need to do with my Dremel tool hopefully in April.


Problem 3:

Rhino does not like the number of polys I have in one file so doing any modeling was terrible.  I tried to do boolean commands, but nothing worked how I wanted.  Most of the commands froze and crashed the program.


Mudbox created holes, third photo above.


In Maya, I used the interactive split tool and split polygon tool with edge selection turned on to cut the objects. I used the splitting objects & detaching commands to make the program know its two different objects.  Unlike Rhino when you use a boolean (to do the same process), Maya still thought the objects were the same, so I needed to delete the history for it to forget the changes.


I watched a video on youtube for making keys (pegs for the models to interlock) in Zbrush and used some of that knowledge for making it in Maya.  I would be better off in ZBrush, based on the struggles I have had so far.  I needed to make keys for my models.  I started with the smallest polygonal mesh (70k), the arm, on 22 March, four days later it still wasn't finished.

 The highlighted poly took 3 hours to create, 

and the geometry still looks like garbage.

I used extrude tool to begin the peg. I used the interactive split tool, append a poly, and merge tool to create the skeleton of the peg.  The topography was not right by 11:50 am Sunday, March 26.  Moreover, as of 5:28 Monday, March 27 the shape, direction, and topography of the peg has changed minimally.  The whole process is not worth the wait in Maya.
After completing the key for the arm, I have to repeat the process for the torso. Then I can invert the geometry scale it slightly and insert it into the holes of the arm (of the legs geometry) and sitting/legs portion.  Not sure exactly what the problem is regarding why everything is so slow because nothing is more significant than 150K polys.  Does Maya not like that many polys?


 Problem 4:

As of 4/2/18 12:08am, just as I thought I could continue to the next step of my process (making inverse keys) I find this odd colored geometry intersecting the eye and ear.  This wasn't here before when I was working in mudbox.  All these .obj conversions between mudbox, maya, and Rhino really screw things up. Deleting the colored mess creates boundary errors.  I gotta figure out how to quickly close open boundaries in Maya.  Edge merge doesn't seem to work for me.


What I have left regarding printing is to create an inverted key for the other parts.