Desolation of Innocence
For this project, we were required to make a dynamic form using a few 3d print programs. The goal was to take a real-life object and use a program called recap to create a digital form of it. Then add it into Meshmixer and combine it with the rabbit provided by Meshmixer.
A big part of this project was self-directed learning. This is not something I am unfamiliar with to as a lot of the curriculum in my high school incorporated self-directed learning. I will say that this project did give me more of a challenge then I originally thought.
The challenges started with Recap. The item I picked to use for Recap was a little Groot figure. Usually, I would try to stay away from using something like this for copyright reasons, but I knew we were distorting it enough that it would no longer look like Groot.
The first challenge was that Recap forced us to sign up for a free trial, even though we had student accounts. Online Recap recognized our student account, but the program itself did not recognize this. The problem with the free trial is you needed a certain amount of credits to create a digital version of your object.
This meant we only had a limited number of times to get Recap to transfer this physical form into a digital form. Since Recap does this only using pictures of the physical item, it can be a bit tricky and you rarely get a good digital form your first try.
This being so, we all pushed on. I added about 80 photos of my item to Recap’s cloud. Recap took them successfully and began to process them. But when it was done I hit another wall. I received an error message without an error code.
I tried to find out why, by researching on the internet but without an error code I came up empty-handed. Next, I went to Erica who works at IT. We tried to process the photo’s on her account but got the same error.
For the sake of time, and seeing that I had exhausted all attempts to make Recap work, I turned to Thingiverse. I ran into problems though, as my computer would not let me take items from Thingiverse and put them into Meshmixer. It would also not open files that I created on another computer in Meshmixer.
Not being able to import an object into Meshmixer was frustrating. Especially since it was 10% of the grade. Again I pushed on though, looking at what I had to work with and beginning to brainstorm how to create a dynamic piece with what I had.
Since I couldn’t import an item I choose to really focus on the other half of the piece the rabbit. I began to think of what rabbits represent for people and for me. I ended up going with using the rabbit as a symbol of innocence.
I decided to design my form by playing around with Meshmixer. Seeing what worked and looked well in the program, versus what may have looked cool on paper but didn’t in 3D.
Once I figured out what worked and what didn’t, I began to work on the final form
After I finished my design I began to make sure it was print ready. I ran into more problems. My file would not save, and I could not get my item to stabilize. I brought it into the help desk and they managed to help me save it, but we could not figure out how to stabilize it. There was a form online but the options did not work. I ended up scheduling another appointment with Erica and we were able to get it to stabilize and send it in to print.
This is my final printed form. I choose black to reinforce the themes of disease and corruption. I think it came out well and is an accomplished dynamic form. If I went back and redid it I would try to make the object less grounded. I struggled with trying to create a printable form while not having it super grounded.