Final Images: Project 3

These are my final images, Rener and Photo:

 For my render I wanted to show all of my models as if they were objects, sitting waiting in a surgury to be implanted into the body. Like a pacemaker, or a false hip. To do this I put them on a refective metal surface to mimic a stainless steel tabletop, this was also good for showing off the contrasting black and white of the models. The lighting was done to mimic the lights that would be shining down on the operating table, throwing light across the models. I also had a second light to illuminate the shapes of the models and show off the detailing/textures.

For my photo I wanted a similar effect, but I thought that just taking the photo on some stainless steel would be a bit of a cop out. So I decided to take it a step further and find some medical equipment to put in the background, and as it turns out Grdon Harris stocks surgical blades. So $20 and a bottle of food colouring later, I had a bloodied scalple for my background. The surface they are on is actually a peice of cardboard covered in reflective paint (not painted by me). As far as image manipulation goes all i really did was remove the horizon and bump up the levels.

Rendering Experements

These are just some of the renders of my final three models that I didnt use, on account of poor composition or lighting that I didnt like.

 

These two were just a look at what  it would look like if all of my models were connected to create one big "limb". It kinda looks like something from Transformers or Terminator.

This was a precurser to my final render, however I didnt like the lighting or the reflectiveness of the material used on the bottom plane.

Playing With Colours

I decided to do some renders where I changed the colour of the light, heres what I got:

Obviously the half colour ones are alot less offensive, this wis because it doesnt mess with the base colours of the model too much but still manges to change the feel of it.

Model 3 Experimentation

This is the development of my third model which I have been doing over the last few hours:

Model 2 Lighting experiments

These are some of my experiments for lighting and texture modeling for model 2:

Model 1 Lighting and Texture experiments

These are some of my experiments for the first model I finished. They arent anything near a final render, just looking at illuminating key points to show off the features of the model.

There we go. Looking good

These renders are of a form I made with my awesome future muscle and the hexagon slates and I gotta say, pretty happy with it.

Go on, take a peek for yourself.

A growing infatuation with the Hexagon

Ever since James (my tutor) showed me the Futuristic Capillary I've been thinking more and more about the hexagon and how much it fits in the narrative of my form. Plus it just looks freaking awesome.

It fits the whole futuristic biological-technological (say that really fast 5 times, I dare you) theme and is another layer of cool looking stuff I can add to my models. Its not too much to add to my precedents right? I mean, I'm allowed 10 of the things and this makes what... seven? So yea. I'm all good :)

Ive made a quick hexagonal slate in Solidworks that I can import into my models and I couldn't be happier, I think this is going to fit really well with everything else.

Also, here's something entertaining I found while doing a Google image search for hexagon (click on the image to expand it)

Finally!!! God I thought it would never work

So what I first did was make a sketch pattern of rectangles to slip on the cylinder:

I did the math so that it would fit perfectly on a cylinder 20 mm long with a diameter of 3 mm (and no i'm not going to do it again to show you, too lazy).
I then wrapped it around my cylinder (obviously) and extruded the sketch inwards (intruded?) to create little indents to break up the geometry a little bit.

After that was all done I filleted all of the horizontal lines in the cylinder. Now i cant stress this enough, I filleted EVERY SINGLE HORIZONTAL EDGE. There's over 350 of them and it took about 30 minutes of pressing the fillet button, selecting a bunch of edges, telling Solidworks to fillet them, waiting for it to load the new form. Then repeating.

But it was so worth it. Look at this.

Now tell me that doesn't look like something you'd expect to see on a futuristic prosthetic-cyber-arm, or a similar thingy (don't actually tell me that by the way, it will make me very upset. I spent an irresponsibly large amount of time on this one piece of my form).

You know what the best part about this object is though? It behaves itself in 3DS Max :)

Stay tuned...

*sigh (STL)

Its not my lucky day.

The STL files have unfortunately turned out the same as the last batch (not the cool one James showed me, the lame ones I made). I think its because the horizontal faces haven't been broken up at all, because they still wont bend/twist the way I want. AND this time I got screen shots to show my point:

Because all of the points are at the ends of the shape (the only corners) when it is bent it just pulls the rest of the body with it. Sad face :(

BUT now i've learnt something about STL files, so that's cool huh?

Building Muscle (not the way you would think unfortunately)

What im doing today is wrapping a very simple linear horizontal pattern around a cylinder. This will hopefully mimic muscle fibers.

I'll then fillet the edges, make them look more natural and rounded...

Woops...

Much better

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.

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.