Face

I was inspired by the metal sculptures by Gil Bruvel: http://www.bruvel.com/Sculpture_Flow_Dichoto.php

Here is my first attempt and the basic form, showing the front and back views:



The wires/cylinders are 3mm in diameter (not solid yet while I'm shaping the design). I have a base at the bottom to let the model stand on a flat surface. Not sure I will be able to make a printable version with twists like in Bruvel's sculptures. I'm hoping to do this in sandstone and play with various colors for the wires.

Nice! It'll be a hell of a job to clean all those tubes for our team

I'm making the tubes solid by closing the ends. Its just easy keep it this way in Blender until I have the design figured out.

I'm thinking of various color schemes, but still not sure. Working on the next version of the design which is closer to the original Bruvel sculpture.

The second version of the design with vertical and horizontal wires defining the face shape. Except for the base stand, the entire design consists of 3mm diameter wires. The wires are packed close to each other so they should provide a solid structure.



The initial automated tests after uploading the model to Shapeways passed, so it looks promising to get this actually printed. Not sure about the color scheme yet.

How are you creating the shape of the tubes? Is it a manual process, or do you automate it somehow?

I'm doing it manually but based on a mesh of a face model. I've written about it on my blog: http://leonnicholls.com/wired-face-design/
Blender has a way to turn curves into cylinders.

THANK YOU! I took the liberty of posting about your work on BlenderNation.

Cheers,

Bart

Hi Bartv,

I have a question a little off topic, but perhaps of interest to many Blender users not quite as skilled as Entertaillon with colour for printing:
If you have a complex mesh that you want to attach a UV map to how do you create the map and then colour it?

Thanks

You mean UV unwrapping? Try this one; it's a bit old but still good:

http://cgcookie.com/blender/2011/01/21/intro_uvmapping/

Yes, showing my ignorance.

Thx, that looks just the job - I'll study it and see what I can do.

Thanks again

Thanks. I started learning Blender at the beginning of April this year. I had my first sandstone design printed at the end of April. I still have a lot to learn about Blender and 3D printing.