Assignment objectives:

* Model (raster, vector, 2D, 3D, render, animate, simulate, ...) a possible final project.

Neil's class Summary

Light my fire

My daily work in architecture visualization involves going through 2d vector design to 3d design and usually go back to 2d raster design for final presentation of the art pieces.

My favourite software for working out this process is: Autodesk Autocad -for 2d vector design and 3d modeling tasks-, 3d Studio Max with Vray plugin -for make up the scene, adding accesories, trees, textures, lights and cameras- and lastly Adobe Photoshop for postproduction tasks.
Most of the projects i take are cartesian geometry structures designs, i´m not used to work with organic forms.

For this assignment i'm interested in learn how to model a non-cartesian geometry object, for that purposes i decided to choose fire, specifically, a candle flame. I have been with this idea of making a lighting device inspired by fire flames -probably with sensitivity to air movement- so maybe this may be a good start as i have no clear idea of my final's project geometry yet.

I plan to work among different and unfamiliar 3d modeling softwares but first of all we need to find some good flames images. Here are some resources i usually use for that: Google Images , Flickr.com and Textures.com .

Blender: first approach

Thursday, Marcelo Berruti the Blender guru at Sinergia Tech get us introduced to this free and open source 3D creation suite. We started by learning the application layout: configuration, workspaces, toolbars, panels, mouse operations and keyboard shortcuts. The open interface is simply brilliant, it offers a infinity of possibilities by allowing to open the panels in a specifical and accurate-dimension adjustment, something highly recommended when working with panels at screen.

We follow the class by modeling some elemental geometry with the "Create" panel and learning the interaction modes, methods of display, transformation manipulators and orientation, selections mode, "Transform" and "Modifiers" panels.

Finally we learned how to work with object subdivisions: tris, quads and ngons in order to keep a clean and useful model. What an excellent class for an excellent application! Thanks, Marcelo!

Blendering fire

So, with the basics commands, functions and possibilities covered i began to model my candle flame.

It's always prefer to start working objects in low poly and then adding polys as more detailed the object becomes, start from simple objects, as spheres, cubes, cylinders or cones.

One Blender's special feature is that allows to put a background image in the scene so you can actually shape the object copying/tracing it from a 2d map. Here's the tutorial.

Some other good resources can be found in Blender Guru and Blender Nation
Adding some geometry transformation and testing differents modes of face extruding you can quickly get beauty, unpredictable and surprising solutions. Blender it's a really powerful tool for sketching 3d objects without depending in accurate dimensions control, the process is more perceptive than rational. I love it!


You can download the blender file following this link.

Freecad for all

After a brief introduction to open source logic and philosophy, Joaquin Díaz Iramounho, a bright young industrial designer working at Sinergia Tech , teaches us some lessons on parametric design in Freecad . First knowledge: Freecad is built mostly by the community so the application is in constant development, you can easy access to new resources and macros in Freecad or GitHub site.

After get in touch with the application visual layout, panel functions, modules and basic tools, we went directly to important matter: constraints. Freecad allows to produce easy-controlled 3d parametric models, constraining properties of the object's individual geometry to affect the whole model. It works with high precision dimensions making it perfect for design in the final stages of any object.

I couldn't get a final 3d model of the candle but i tested some basic shapes with revolve and loft command in order to think about a possible beginning. I plan to return to it later, with a clear formal idea about the final project or another good one. Excellent class, Thanks Joaquin!

You can download the freecad file following this link.

Antimony notes

"Antimony is a computer-aided design (CAD) tool from a parallel universe in which CAD software evolved from Lisp machines rather than drafting tables." I like it.

I first heard of it on Neil's last class past 6th february. This short video shows the general aspects and capabilities of using it. You can also find more resources in Matt Keeter's page . It runs under linux so my first task was to get a way to run linux in my pc. This article guide me in how to do that. (I'm a rookie outside Win OS).

After downloading Ubuntu and installing Virtual Box for running ubuntu's installation in a virtual machine i ran into this error: This Kernel requires an x86-64 CPU, but only detected an i686 CPU. Unable to boot - please use a kernel appropriate for your CPU. Thanks to this article i found the solution by enabling the "Hardware virtualization" option in computer BIOS. This is a common error for Asus motherboards.

Once installed Ubuntu, i git clone Antimony folder to a new folder in /home/programs/antimony 

git clone https://github.com/mkeeter/antimony.git


For installing Antimony it is recomended to follow the notes in Building.md . The process of modeling a simple sketch of the candle flame it took me less than 10 minutes. I drew a cone and tested some of the "Deform" scripts. The interface is clean and light but almost at the end of the task i found some problems with the shaded viewport. I adjusted the video/hardware settings for best running Ubuntu in VirtualBox but nothing changed. In my experience Antimony is a powerful tool for creating simple definitions of geometry but performance decreases when adding complexity to the model. In the future, i will try reinstalling it in order to get that visualization problem solved. Thanks Neil for such a nice app!

You can download the antimony file following this link.