Progress Blog #3 - Bespoke Object

 This week, I finished the plan for the laser cutter. This includes colour coding the poly curves, labelling each slice, and completing the inserts for the pieces of the prism that slot into each other.






I have also received the acrylic that I plan to laser cut. Pending any feedback from one-on-one meetings this week, I am prepared to laser cut either later in the week or over the reading week break.







Another project component is projecting light onto the prism so that the mirrors bounce the light around the room. This week, I have been working on creating this footage. To do this, I have made a straightforward Maya scene in which a camera looks down on a polygon with a mirror material applied to the inside and an area of light. When rendered, this creates a kaleidoscope effect.




I then created a polygon plane and applied a material to it so that an image would bounce around the mirrors. To make the rendered image, I took a picture of the scale model of the prism I had built into Photoshop and reduced the shape into simple lines and colour.




I then copied these triagnles around to create a pattern, exported ther image and applied it to the material on the polygon plane.

Then rendered.


 


I animated the camera to rotate 360 and rendered the sequence. I am editing the renders to create colourful projections that work with the bespoke object.


By duplicating the footage and changing scale, positioning, speed, and blending modes, I can experiment with different effects to get various lighting effects.

I aim to make any necessary corrections to the laser-cut prep and cut the prism in the next week so that I can over-read the object itself.


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