Dinosaur Dolan Designs

  Well, it's time to tackle the chess set and the first step is ideation. I like to start with a mindmap or at least some concept categories, so that's exactly what I did. I started off pretty run of the mill, but after re-reading the assignment I remembered Bryan's admonishment - keep it weird. So ... I picked a concept that had a lot of meat but wasn't toooo weird and started with that one to have a backup plan. Beings from Cree stories My ethnic background is full of stories about non-human beings. It's kinda a safe bet because it's very familiar to me, and there's lots of alternatives to choose from if I need to. But I really love a specific story that tells about the dangers of laughing at other's misfortunes so, I also did a chess set based on the story of the man who was devoured by rabbits.  The story of the man devoured by rabbits There's a couple of things I really appreciate there - it's a great story. The chess pieces encapsulate that...

  I was really intrigued by the modelling possibilities of the Rhino tools we have learnt over the last few months - previously I would have expected to return to mesh modelling to create something this organic.  Knowing that I had moved beyond simple geometric shapes, I wanted to create a ring that felt more handcrafted and less shapebased. I found the diameter I wanted to use, and created a second circle to indicate the exterior periphery - that gave me the inner and out limits of the wibbly branch shape. After flowing my shape around the exterior circle, I made sure it had several contact points along the inner circle so it would brace against the finger surface.  I then assigned some materials and rendered the above.  Proofing is important, so I also proofed through make2d and print settings.  shapeways highlighted some of the thinner sections - but I was expecting those to be on the delicate end and I'm not super concerned about it - switching it from plast...

  Putting in the extra time to figure out the v-ray issue really paid off - I don't think this model would be nearly so successful if the reflective surfaces and glass had remained flat and undifferentiated.

I think it's safe to say that the render machine hates me.  Case in point: in render, the inside of the light assembly does not render? But it's fine when I snip it directly from rhino? Changing the angle of the light does nothing, and I'm working at final quality so I'm a bit stumped. I'm going to keep searching for a solution though.  Render two came out a bit better- I futzed with the iors on some materials, changed some reflectivities and was able to get some advice from a CAD technologist - I will continue to mess with the ray tracing options and adjust the textures. It's just not an acceptable solution for the interior chrome details to be one washedout plane. 

  This has certainly been a journey. We reviewed deform tools and rendering and then went on our way to work this project out.  I really wish I had discovered interpolated curves before Bryan had a chance to teach it. Because wow, you can get pretty organic with those! Let's review the trip through this project via the screenshots I documented. (Additionally, blogger wouldn't accept my photos and that was a whole trip to solve :O) torches need guts, so I made them. I really really appreciate shell - being able to offset a surface was very nice.  It was very satisfying to boolean subtract the divot out of the bottom of this feature and have it work nicely the first time. Boolean hasn't always been my friend but this project gave me a lot of practice.  So the larger assembly that the on off button sat on drove me NUTS. It was oddly shaped, and I didn't want to have to draw all the cross sections when I knew there was a simple mathematical solution.  Make sure your...

  As pleasant as this pattern was visually, there was just NO WAY it was going to be replicable within 4x4" - it was just too detailed with some really minuscule elements that didn't carry across rescaling.  Once that was clear, I spent a class redesigning the pattern, from its original inspiration sources, into something familiar to the above concept but lasercut-able.  Knowing it was going to be cut from its background, but also that it could only be coloured through burning, I worked to those limitations/ possibilities. I reworked the pattern so that it would also work in greyscale, and then set up a series of small delicate lines and rings that would be hard to fashion without the precision of a laser. Paper or softer plastics would be floppy, so it was important to me that the wood's faktura would be appreciated instead of overlooked.  The red lines indicate where the laser would cut - knowing that wood could stand some carving out, I really leant into those fra...