3D Modeling Project - Francisco Illanes

Figure 1

About the Model

This model was creating using Blender v2.65. I wanted to make something that wouldn't just sit around in my room after it was printed. Eventually I decided to make something that could be printed as a keychain. After further consideration, I decided on a simple Super Nintendo controller, because it was a relatively simple object that would still be distinguishable in low resolution.

Creating the Model

Figure 2

The body of the model consists of two cylinder objects on either end, with a cube object overlapping the area between them. The directional pad on the left is two overlapping perpendicular cube objects. The button area on the right is another cylinder object that I made as flat as possible by translating the top face downwards. The rightside buttons themselves are also simple cylinders. The center buttons were made by creating a cylinder and translating the right half further from the left, stretching the object outwards via scaling, and then scaling the whole thing down. The semi-ring for the keychain portion of the model was made using a torus object. Realizing that a simple torus would result in an unsupported overhang, I deleted the vertices on the bottom half, and then created faces between the inner-ring and outer-ring vertices to create a new, flat bottom for the half-torus. A simple textured plane object was put beneath the controller in order for "cooler" shadowing.

Creating the Pictures

Figure 3

Figure 3 was made using a single point lamp on the south-western side of the controller while the camera was in its default position. For Figures 1 and 2, the lamp was moved to the northwestern side of the controller and a second, closer lamp was added on the southeastern side. The camera was moved by getting to the appropriate distance and angle from the object in the editor and using Ctrl+Alt+0 on the numberpad.

Challenges

This was my first time using modeling software of any kind, so I think the biggest challenge was diving in and getting started. I found some fairly helpful tutorials on the official blender webpage that were not nearly as long as I had expected. Eventually I ran into some issues that weren't adequately covered by these videos, but by then I was familiar enough with the tool and the terminology to find what I needed on YouTube. Creating the actual object was fairly simple, except for the semi-torus. Although it wasn't extremely challenging conceptually, creating it was time consuming compared to the rest of the simple objects used to make the model. In hindsight, I'm sure I could have made it more efficiently by using some shortcuts for selecting vertices.

Conclusion

Overall, I enjoyed working on this project. I will be holding onto Blender in the hope that in my free time I can make more complex models.