Code Design

OK, here we go. This is the final design (the one il have at the interim), ive divided it into 11 different frames to show my point:

Fixing that Little Problem, with HEXAGONS

After talking to James (my tutor) about my problem with the STL files and the compression and blah blah blah he showed me something very cool. Solidworks has a very neat little feature that allows you to wrap sketches that you've made in the program around another object, like this :

and then extrude them. What he showed me was a hexagon pattern (there's also a button that allows you to make patterns, I'm liking this program more every day) wrapped around a cylinder, which was then hollowed out to make what he called a "futuristic capillary", I like it.

Needless to say I shamelessly copied his idea and immediately ported it into 3DS Max and it SOLVED MY PROBLEMS: here's what I whipped up (its a very basic render, i'll do a better one later):

Also one more thing; if you extrude inwards is it called intruding?

STL file woahs

So my original idea was to make some cylinders in Solidworks, save them as STL files and then port them over to 3DS Max where I can stretch and bend and warp em, make em look all muscle-and-tendon-y. Didn't work.

What I didnt realize is that when a file is saved as an STL it is compressed as much as it can possibly be, I guess that's for 3D printers. They'd probably shit themselves if they were asked to print something with millions of faces.

What this means for my process is that none of the cylinders have more than one face on the horizontal faces (up the sides), so when I make this:

and then convert it into STL format, it wont bend. Unfortunately I don't have a screen grab to show what I mean :P you'll just have to use your imagination.

Sketches

These are my first three sketches, i plan to do a few more over the coming days to help with ideas for my final models.

I was very wary of creating something that looked like an already existing form, after all most of my precedents were limbs or body parts. I didn't want to create an rm or a head, i wanted something that suggested muscles and machines and that's it. I also tried really hard not to allow either element to get too strong. I didn't want too many muscles or a machine with bits of meat on it, I wanted the form too seem like neither could exist or be held together without the other.

Textures (feels good)

After searching for a while these are my final textures.

This texture is of muscle fibers which I want to use for the more natural flowing parts of the model. One of my main inspirations was the human muscle structure so I thought it would be appropriate to have it as one of the primary textures.

This texture is human skin, which I again wanted to have as it fits with the natural, more "alive" parts of my form.

These textures are of synthetic materials that I really liked, I don't want something that just has a generic "shiny metal" coating on it, I want it to look like its made out of a plastic or other pitted material.

damnItCodeIHateYew

Well theres an interim presentation tomorrow, and due to a lack of time because of numerous other project due dates (three to be exact) Ive not done much actual CODE. I'm still trying to figure out objects which SUCK! and so in order to have something to actually PRESENT at the PRESENTATION ive had too whip up something extremely last minute, it shows my bouncing kinda but uses booleans and a circle instead of my cool non-existant objects.

Riveting stuff i know -_- .
(also notice the clever coding pun in the title? like no capitals except for new words? huh? huh? ah forget it)

Precedents

Ive Sorted out what my final precedent images are going to be.

I chose this an image of this sculpture of a cheetah because of how it conveyed a sense of movement, how the beams and pistons mimic muscles.

 This is a 3D printed prosthetic leg made by bespoke innovations who specialize in personal prosthetic limbs. They help people who have lost their limbs return some of their individuality rather than give them a stock, mass produced prosthetic.

This is probably my favorite of the my precedents, its a piece of artwork from a video game called Deus Ex: Human Revolution, which focused on themes of transhumanism and altering the human body. This is called a "cyber arm prosthesis" and actually revolves around very similar themes as the limbs from Bespoke Innovations. When designing the game artists were

I found this image of the internal muscles in the human arm just to couple with the above image, to show the similarities in how the two are shaped, and also how the muscles inspired the mechanical pieces. It’s also just there to help me with the flow of the form im creating, some of the muscles in the elbow look like ridges and some of the tendons like pins.

This arm is one of the first ever robotic limbs with functioning “muscles”, created by a German company called Festo. Its range of movements are incredibly wide and the movements themselves are eerily human.

This is a sculpture by an artist named Christopher Conte and I desided to use it because of how well it alludes to the form of a spine and neck with metal cogs, levers and pegs.

 

Initial precedents

For my initial form m want to take the idea of the muman form (body, muscles, anything like that) and fuse it with technology that, while following the same patterns and flows the same ways is still very mechanical. The inspiration

These precedents all help illustrate what I mean:

However these are not my final precedents, I will do more research tonight.

Corners

I think I might have fallen down a rabbit hole. Just a little bit.
Im currently sitting here a tmy desk, blogging, with 7 tabs open from the UX Movement website. Each one has an article that is find interesting/important/relevant to the current project. This is going to take a while.

The most recent one I read is all to do with corners, Its not just guessing or anything silly like that, this is thoroughly researched and actually extremely logical. It talks about why rounder corners on UI objects are allot easier to process than sharper 90 degree angles.

The article looks at everything from sharper angles making things look brighter and therefore harder to process, to the fact that curves follow the natural movement of the eye easyer. Either way I need to do some serious updating of my designs.

The original article can be found here: http://uxmovement.com/thinking/why-rounded-corners-are-easier-on-the-eyes/