Santiago Perez-Isaza: Week 1 Castle

 

Concept:

    When this project was assigned, I knew I wanted to do a castle that combined the brutalist style of architecture with the stereotypical castle look. I knew I wanted to steer in the direction of a cathedral and fortress look, with some sci-fi elements. The overall mood I wanted to achieve was like a fortress protecting a portal to another dimension. I based a lot of the details from existing buildings from the 60's and 70's of Socialist eastern Europe. 

Process:

    Finding inspiration wasn't a challenge since this has been something I've wanted to attempt for awhile. Instagram was my go to resource, since there was plenty of architecture pages to look at. 

    At first it was a challenge remembering the names of the commands in Rhino. My project required a lot of lofting and edge surface commands. It was very intuitive to draw the basic shapes of the design then connecting everything together with those commands. After a few hours I got into a rhythm of forming, lofting, and cutting.

    The front wooden face of the building was the most challenging because instead of creating separate shapes then combining them, I made one block and started to cut out the specific shapes. This way I had more control if I wanted to change any angles in the front instead of having to go back and rebuild the shape. It was here that I realized my project was going more in the direction of a cathedral shape rather than a large fortress. 

    I actually started the project with the walls and a couple of other "sketches" for the building. I found this design for the wall pillars from an old diving board that had a similar shape. I really liked the way it moved visually and it fit the overall theme of the project. I wanted to create these tall stone pillars with metal walls although the texturing for that didn't come out the way I expected.

    The portal in the background was a last minute addition because I wanted to add some story to the building, to give it a purpose. I was surprised to see that Keyshot had this neat texture that looked like it could be a portal. With some fine adjustments to the roughness and size of the texture, I was able to get a convincing effect.

    For the material renderings in Keyshot, I wanted to stick to stone materials and a minimal amount of wood. When texturing the project, I was thinking about the Norwegian architects that mix concrete and wood to create an interesting mixture of the two. So I attempted that style and in my opinion it could've been done better. In the future when we use keyshot again, I hope to be able to make each material my own and make it look exactly the way I envision it.

Sarah Cepeda

 

So I chose to do the duck as opposed to the castle.

I knew I wanted a stylized cartoon duck since realistic would be way out of my wheelhouse. 3D graphics have never been my forte. Anyway, this was my original reference:

I knew this would still be too complex for my limited skills, so I created a much, much simpler sketch and solidified it in the form of a vector graphic in Adobe Illustrator. I made a side profile so that I could have multiple references and made use of the guidelines to help keep my proportions at least somewhat similar in Illustrator. 

After exporting the Illustrator files as PNGs, I imported them into Rhino (Surface > Plane > Picture). I adjusted them as I saw fit, locked them as their own separate layer and began mentally breaking down the most efficient way I thought to make the more complex shapes. 

The beak was arguably the hardest thing since it was the first bit I started with and had such an odd shape. I made it once using Loft, but then found the result to be too misshapen. I re-made it again with Loft, this time with a slightly simpler approach by simply breaking down the beak from the highest and widest points and marked essentially where the curves went. 

It's difficult to explain, but picture cutting one of those 1/8 sheet cakes, the long rectangles, but only cutting in one direction and everyone just getting equal slivers of cake. Now picture the cake in some weird shape like that of a shoe or something. The cuts still going the same way, I essentially mapped out the shape of those cuts from a side view and then lofted. 

The result was a much cleaner bill shape, but from my experience in other 3D modeling software, some of the edges are pretty rough and I don't yet know how that will translate into 3D printing.  

Honestly, after that, everything was much easier by comparison. I moved onto the bottom part of the bill which I simply made by cutting a sphere out of a sphere and angling and warping it to fit my reference. I did come across the issue around this point where because I didn't properly measure and set-up my reference images, I was having to eyeball one axis of the bit I was working on and then move it so I could adjust the axis I didn't have lined up with the other reference image. In hindsight, I should have just fixed that before moving on, but I was still riding off of the high from having solved the duck bill issue. The tongue was similarly made, a sphere warped and angled until satisfactory. 

I made the head next, which was just a warped sphere, simple. The neck stumped me for a bit because I essentially wanted a tapered cylinder, but then I remembered that I could just stack circles in the sizes I needed and then Loft again. So I did that, problem solved.  

The body was a bit stranger as it had varying dimensions that wouldn't be easy for me to control on one single sphere. I made one for the front area, warped it to match my reference (for the most part) and then added another warped sphere for the elongated body with smaller proportions. I booleaned these together and moved on to the tail feathers. 

I would say I'm not exactly satisfied with them as I wish the edges would have been a smoother seam into the body, but working with little to no confidence, I started by making cones, I wanted a tufted feather look so they needed to angle up a bit, but I was unsure of how to do this. I used Loft, extrude surface, and quite a few other methods to try and work something out to no avail for a good long time. Finally, I learned that I could loft to a single tapered end point as well as that I could just extrude to an end point. I made one tale feather I was satisfied with then copied it going downward two more times. 

At this point I thought that I needed to start booleaning bits together. It didn't go well. I learned that I had to have closed shapes boolean with other closed shapes, so I closed the holes in the tail feathers. After that, I came across a separate issue, the tail feathers wouldn't boolean with the main body, I eventually had to cut out the bit of the tail feather out of the butt and delete the overlap then boolean them together. I honestly, don't know how I got the next one, but at some point I messed up and accidentally created a duplicate of the top tail feather and just decided to run with it. 

The eyes and eyebrows were made out of Ellipsoids and were just warped to fit the curvature of the face. The legs were a collection of a single 3 point star warped to make the shape below and then two circles lofted to make the thinner duck legs. 

Lastly, I had forgotten entirely that I had wings on my duck in the design and thought I would have an easy time of it. Unfortunately I could not remember how to make them symmetrical, so instead of Googling how to do that like a sane person, I opted to make him wave with the other hand. Wings were made with more Ellipsoids, by the way. Just cut them in half with a cube and Boolean Split to get that flat inside effect. 

Layers on the right side. Didn't bother color marking them since I had so few pieces. 

Edge Analysis. Took me a while to fill the holes, but I'm pretty sure I got all of them!

I'll admit, my color theory is lacking, kind of hated how it ended up, he reminds me too much now of one of those Kappas in Japanese folklore. 

Pedestrian viewpoint, which I was a bit confused on how to do since I think it was intended for the castle view. 

Finally, bird's eye view. He looks so tiny. Another viewpoint I think was intended for the castle, but I think this is okay?

For materials, I think I remember choosing mostly generic or flat because there weren't a lot of natural materials that would fit this little guy without being too unnatural. I think I chose plastic for some bits like the beak or eyes, essentially things that could be shiny to some degree. I played around a lot with other stuff, but most of it was too transparent and I needed opaque colors. 

In conclusion, I really had a lot of fun with this project! Though there were a lot of technical errors and time wasted and anxiety-ridden procrastination, I think I'm overall okay with how this little guy turned out. If given the chance to do it again, or rather if it was necessary to do it again, I might have added some more details to the face as well as some tufts of hair, something I opted out of because I managed my time too poorly. I probably also would have been more detailed with the feet, I feel like I didn't do enough with them when I could have really made them webbed or something. Oh, I'd also add nostrils! 

Winston Huo: Week 1 Castle

Nohrian Castle 1

Nohrian Castle 2

Nohrian Castle 3

Concept - I wanted to model a European style castle as those have very clean lines and tend to be very geometric in nature. The most commonly found objects tended to be rectangular or cylindrical in nature. For the actual castle, I turned to the my castle feature from the game Fire Emblem: Fates. Among the choosable castle designs was the Nohrian castle, based upon European style castles and featured the clean, geometric style that I was looking for

Ghosted

Materials

Edges

Techniques - For the most part, the techniques I used involved a lot of curve extrusions. I would start by drawing out the shapes of the castle wall and then extruding them and using trim to get rid of any overlapping areas. From there, I used boolean union to join the polysurfaces together to get rid of any naked edged. Since the castle is quite symmetrical and has clean breaks in the walls, I used mirror wherever possible to avoid having to redraw objects.

Overview

Bird's Eye View

Pedestrian View

Materials - As far as materials go, it was quite straightforward: cobblestone. Being a medieval European castle, there was a very straightforward choice staring me in the face, and so I used cobblestone for the walls and pillars of the castle. However, in my references there were also blue roof/topper tiles. For those I used a blue tile material and tweaked the reflectivity and roughness to give it the texture I desired.

Anthony Lopez: Week 2 Castle

Concept

My work is a castle courtyard inspired by two works of Italian architecture. The outer walls, towers, and entrance arch are based on those found in the Sirmione Castle in Sirmione, Italy. The structure inside the walls is a baptistery that is a modern take of the Baptistery of San Giovanni in Florence. This work is designed for a space in rural land. The outer walls act as a form of architecture that is traditional while the baptistery invokes curiosity and showcases what is now possible in architecture.

Techniques

Fillet edges were crucial for forming the entrance arch. Alongside that, boolean difference was used to create the opening both in the arch and in the two slits in the middle of the structure. Next to the entrance is a straight wall in which I used split to form. Originally, it was so tall that it was going through the ground but I created another rectangular prism so I could use it as a divider. Afterwards I deleted the prism and the wall below it and the wall was complete.

When it came to forming the body of the baptistery I created a 2D polygon using curves, and I then extruded them to build the final shape. The roof was constructed with a pyramid but it still required a surface for the top of the roof. I achieved this by using the surface tool but since it only covers 4 points I made two surfaces then joined them as one. Lastly, I also filleted the edges of the towers to replicate the curvature of the towers found in the Sirmione Castle.

Materials

The outer walls of the castle are cement with a tile texture and the towers are travertine. The baptistery is what highlights the stark contrast between today’s works of architecture and those of the medieval/renaissance period. This is because the materials used on the baptistery could only be shaped in the way they are today. The body of the baptistery is built of blue and white marble and it holds two doors that are an extravagant blue built of anodized titanium. The roof is made entirely of glass and serves as a blue window. Unfortunately, I could not figure out how to simulate the transparency of a glass window but I did work with the lighting so that it had a realistic effect for reflections. In order to achieve this I chose to use 30 ray bounces for my environment.

Sigrid Rittby: Week 1 Castle

Concept

I wanted to emulate Lothric Castle from Dark Souls III. In the game, the castle has lots of turrets and other aspects of gothic architecture. Since I did not have enough skill or time to add a ton of extra detail, I decided to simplify it to use a large exterior wall mounted on a hill with some buildings inside it.

Techniques 

I made heavy use of Boolean Difference to add detail to objects. I made the exterior wall using several cylinders of different sizes and subtracting to make a thick wall with a thicker top half than the bottom half. I then chamfered the edges to make a smooth transition. 

To make the turret I used cylinders and more chamfered edges with a cone on the top. I made heavy use of the copy command with various reference points to duplicate the turrets while making them consistently spaced.

I made the ramparts by making a rectangle perpendicular to the outer edge of the wall, then revolving it for a fixed angle to make a solid. I then used the array command to repeat it around the wall's edge at fixed intervals. I did a similar process for the smaller towers with ramparts at the top.

To create the archways, I created a circle curve on one face of the solid, extruded it through the solid to the other face, and then did a boolean difference to create an arch.

In order to populate the interior of the castle a little bit, I created some planes to represent streets and boolean unioned some boxes to create pseudo-buildings. I also created a market square with some covered stalls scattered through.

Materials

I wanted to use some relatively realistic materials where possible while still maintaining contrast between the different surfaces. However, I was unable to find a good soil material for the dirt underside or a good roof shingle material for the rooftops. Instead, I went with a smooth and reflective brown material for the base, giving it a nice contrast with the otherwise rough castle surfaces. I had to use a brick surface for the rooftops as an emulation of a roof tile material.

For the market stalls, I used a dark wood material for the stall surface and a blue fabric material for the stall cover.

I used a stone brick surface for the main castle structures, and darkened that material for use in the turrets. I had to make several instances of the material with different scale factors to account for the different sizes of structures.

Hunter Smitherman: Project 1 Maker Case Lamp

Concept:

    When conceptualizing what design I would want to customize my Maker Case Lamp with, I first thought of my fascination with geometric patterns and their different styles as well as looks. I looked up various geometric patterns to see what kind of style I wanted to go for. After searching Google for some of these patterns, I chose a union jack type pattern for my design and found a reference image. I wanted to have this pattern on all outer sides of the Maker Case Lamp and I started with some Reference Lines. Since Professor Marder wanted us to style the Maker Case Lamp using paint, I thought about using wood stain to darken the rastered portions of the Maker Case Lamp's design to add some depth to the lines. When thinking about the lighting aspect of the Maker Case Lamp, I knew that I wanted to add some kind of openings in the sides of the lamp in order to increase the amount of light resonating from it.

Technique:

    When starting off with this design, we were tasked to go to the Maker Case website to create a five-sided box layout to import into Rhino3D. When opening Rhino3D I first changed the units to inches and imported my layout from the Maker Case file that was downloaded. From this point, I was able to begin editing and creating new curves with the PolyLine tool in the left toolbar. I started with editing the bottom of the lamp in order to create openings to hold the lamp fixture about an inch high. To the bottom face, I also added air holes for the light to have ventilation. I also added arches to the bottom of the four main sides of the lamp to create legs for stability. After adding those crucial parts it was time to start creating my pattern using my reference image and reference lines. I started with various directional lines and used the Offset command to create lines on both sides of the reference lines. I also used the Trim tool in order to create the shapes I wanted in my pattern. I decided to also add various inner cuts on random portions of my pattern to create openings for more light to shine through.

    After I finished my pattern, I then began to color my vector lines the designated colors so I could begin laser cutting. I assigned my specific lines to my various color layers and hatched out my rastered portion of the pattern. This created my finished vector layout and I was able to begin my laser cutting after taking my materials to the Machine Shop. While my materials were in the shop for cutting, I began to extrude my model into three dimensions and style it how I wanted. This was a pesky task to get my desired look onto the extruded object, I used Boolean Subtract and Extrude Planar Curve to create indents within my three-dimensional model. After extruding my model into 3D, I rotated all the pieces of geometry to create a box so that I could render my model in Keyshot. I imported my 3D model into Keyshot and applied a light-colored wood texture in order to match my selected plywood. I added a plain backdrop to my scene and dragged in a lighting option to properly light my scene. I rendered various angles and saved the rendered images.

    I went to pick up my finished laser cut from the North Lab and brought it home to stain and assemble. The staining was very tedious as the lines were very thin, I had to be careful not to over stain onto the other pieces in the pattern. After finishing staining I was ready to assemble my Maker Case Lamp. I used my Loctite Professional Superglue to stick the pieces of my lamp together. After everything dried I then inserted the light fixture and bulb and turned it on to test it out. I am very happy with my result and how the light shines through the various inner cuts of my lamp. I also love the design and I think it turned out super cool.

Materials: 

• 5mm Plywood
• Varathane Premium Wood Stain "Dark Walnut"
• Loctite Professional Superglue
• Sylvania 60W B10 Candelabra Bulbs
• Commercial Electric 6ft. Candelabra Base Socket and Cord

Hope Sherman - Project 1 - Maker Case Lamp

 

*shadow box = lamp

Concept:

I already have made a box using Maker Case, however I did not print it out nor did I do the project correctly the first time. I decided to just go with a neat idea that I could incorporate what I already own and like into. I went with a Star Wars: The Clone Wars theme shadow box rather than a lamp so I could include one of my random clone figures inside it. The no top design on the piece means I also could switch out the figure inside so maybe if I’m feeling Ahsoka or Obi-Wan can be in The Box they can be as well. The symbols on the box are a clone trooper helmet and the Jedi symbol, with a sentiment to the Galactic Republic on the back. The front is meant to have a light paper covering to mimic a paper lamp.

*ghost view of the original 

Technique:

The box base was made using the website MakerCase.com I brought in 2 images added here to trace them using the curve tool in Rhino 5. I then was able to translate my file over into Rhino 7 and completed the outlining of the work there. It was then time to create the 3D models for the box. I took and extruded the inner and outer cut layers by going to Solid>Extrude Planar Curve>Straight to a depth of .25. After, I took the raster layer and extruded it the same way but this time to a depth of .11. I was able to use the Split Booleans function on the raster and solids part to engrave the 3D surface. Lastly, I did the same thing to the vector layer but instead extruded surfaces instead of solids to create a thick enough line to the rendered model. I used KeyShot 8 to render the piece using a metallic surface but in reality it will just be spray painted that way. 

To physically make the box I first spray painted the individual laser cut pieces with a gold layer to match the render. Unfortunately, I did have to make edits to my model after I rendered it due to some parts being unable to be cut, so the physical version does have some changes. The only one being the Jedi symbol side having a different area cut than before. Below are the changes I had to make as well as the layer window and measurements.

I proceeded to paint individual parts of the lamp sides to be a pale blue to match the paper I got to inline the lamp. I then sacrificed one of my clone figures to be placed inside as a lovely shadow décor piece. I secured him with Loctite then proceeded to move on to putting the fairy lights inside. The light doesn't have a lid on it, but that's okay since I needed it to produce as much light as possible and so I can still see Mr. CT 1031 aka Lamp.

Materials:

¼” 2x4 BC Plywood, matte gold and gloss gold spray paint, blue and white acrylics, a clone wars action figure, blue transparent paper, Loctite, and blue fairy lights. 

Overall I am pleased with how this turned out! It looks very nice on our coffee table.