This is a pendant I designed based on the symbol used in the opening titles and advertising of the TV show "Vikings". At just over an inch in length there is a lot of detail packed in. The photo's show my post-processing of the silver to oxidise it and create contrast to show the detail better. The back of the pendant has three bails enabling a chain to run down the back of the pendant unseen from the front. Link to pendant in my shop http://shpws.me/obhm
Wow, I'm a little shocked this has gone six days without a comment. On the other hand, I don't troll this forum a ton, so I can't blame others. Anyway, this looks great! What a lot of detail you have put in here. Can you describe your design process and/or show a wireframe? Did you use a lot of overlapping objects? Or did you use a modeling tool that can handle a lot of verts, then decimate it later?
Grrr, I hate these forums - I just typed out about 20 lines in response and was told to log in - AGAIN - then lost everything. That happens so much to me. Anyway, here we go again but somewhat shorter, sorry.... I used Rhino for most of the modeling, drawing Curves first and then extruding those. This gave me a model that was rejected due to the dreaded "thin wall" issue. Now had to import into ZBrush as an obj, turn that into a polymesh, and remesh at fairly high resolution. I have found that what this does is "rounds off" the geometry that for the most part fools Shapeways computers/printers into making the mesh now printable. I did, however, work on some areas making them slightly larger and carving out some parts. After decimating the mesh down to an acceptable size, all done. I will try and upload a wireframe when I'm home later.
Turtles, here is the wireframe of the model and also a comparison view to show you the Rhino model on the left and the ZBrush modified version on the right.
Lensman, Thanks for the explanation and screenshots. That helps me understand what you did. The letters are interesting - Rhino must have a way to put in letters without increasing the geometry on surrounding areas. I have a method for being relatively selective when I want engraved letters, but not as efficient as what I see here. I was particularly curious how you did the intricate portions of the design. I have some difficulty managing small pieces like that in Blender, particularly when it involves holes. I think now that Blender has better face mechanisms, some of these things will be easier. I see that some of the details in the intricate section at the bottom portion of the "V" have been garbled. How far apart are those thin sections? Must be right at the threshold for bridging.
Well, the intricate shapes were all booleans from curves that were then extruded. Not quite sure what you mean by 'without increasing the geometry'... Raised letters adds geometry but boolean Difference of course removes it... and now that I think of it I actually hand drew the lettering on the reverse in ZBrush, carving it into the geometry. Yes, re-meshing in ZBrush can create millions of polygons if you need to keep the shapes distinct. As you can see from the measurements below the tolerances are really small.
Ah, right. Booleans. What I meant is this: In Blender, the boolean modifiers don't really work that well - the geometry produced tends to be messy and full of non-manifold sections. I usually make text engravings using a texture and a displacement modifier, but that requires me to have many polygons on the surface to which the texture is applied. It is usually a bit tricky to be selective concerning where the additional polygons are placed, so I often just increase the resolution of the whole surface. Are those measurements in millimeters?
Yeah, I know Blender is a superb programme but I could never get the hang of it primarily because I was trying to replace what I was already using, and in the end I thought why am I bothering? Maybe put out a request for help about that since I know there are a great many Blender users here. Yes, those measurements are in mm's.