This is the very first full series of coloured Entoforms! Sadly the Freestyle Blender module kept crashing… so I’m not using the sketchy technique I wanted… but it’s a good start. I want to work more on making the colours less ‘faded’, and getting better palettes from the web.
Tractus Coloratus
Monday, April 11th, 2011Square quads ftw!
Tuesday, April 5th, 2011It’s been a little while since I updated… for which there are two main reasons.
1. Nicholas Bishop! Yeah… him… hehe. He has been working on a new modifier in Blender called the “Skin modifier“! It looks like it could make my scripts way way simpler! So I played with his modifier quite a bit for a week or two. It’s awesome! But… though it would be simpler for me to base my code around his modifier, it would give me less control in the end. So I decided to stick to my own code, and ignore his developments for now.
2. I had the flu! Yeah… flu… bah… but I’m pretty much all better now.
Square is nice!
So yesterday I spent most of the day working on something I wanted to change… and it’s all about topology. My script already creates a quad only mesh, but a lot of those quads were rectangular. Which is no real problem… but all squares would be neater. So I figured out a way to do that… the end result is… squarer quads, but less exact measurements.
This means that if I’m growing a leg that’s 10 units long… I no longer say… “Well I’ll do it in 5 steps, so each step has to be 2 long”… no in stead I’ll say… “I’m growing a leg that’s 10 units long… one square extruded step is 1.5 long… so I’ll grow 6 steps, and end up with an almost 10 long leg”. Or that’s the general idea.
Freestyle
I also decided to give freestyle rendering a chance… It’s working nice, and only took me a day to get some nice results… though… I need to change my renders a bit… No problem.. I want to try generating Entoforms with colour anyway, so… that should improve my renders automagicly.
Here’s my latest test
Four new creatures!
Friday, March 11th, 2011I got home last night to find a message from UPS saying that they left a package for me at the print shop next door… the 3D stork delivered four new Entoform prints… I’m keeping them in plastic until I have the “insect boxes” for them… then I will go ahead and mount them… I’m extremely happy, they turned out beautiful!
Tails
Saturday, February 26th, 2011Just a small update… I am now forcing the script to not just make a head & body, but also to add a “tail section”… which insects all have.. or in their case you might call it the “hind quarters”? The next 3 prints have been ordered so I have a bit more time to adjust results before ordering more..
Currently I’m looking for exhibition options.
Finished the first
Thursday, February 24th, 2011So at long last, after being on this project for over a month now… here’s the very first proper result… or at least… Here’s what I had in mind all along!
That does not mean it’s over of course… there’s more to come! It’s only the beginning!
small smaller tiny
Thursday, February 24th, 2011So… yesterday after I got my first printed Entoform I tried to pierce it with an insect pin… to no avail. The material is far too hard. I tried heating the pin with a lighter, but it wouldn’t keep the heat. Then this morning I had the bright idea of attaching the needle to a soldering iron… but… well… there was no neat way to do that.
Thus I went to a DIY store and asked them about tiny drills… the smallest bit they had was 1mm whilst the pin I want to use is 0.5mm… As I tried to explain my predicament to the shop owner he just looked at me cross-eyed as if I was missing a marble or two (admittedly I might at that).
So… I took the subway to a tiny shop all the way on the other side of town, a shop that sells things for people who make model airplanes and such… (http://www.quartel.nl). Here… well they still looked at me cross-eyed, but had exactly what I needed! A teeny tiny drill (see the screwdriver style thing in the picture) that you use by hand, and a set of teeny tiny bits that would give your dentist a serious case of drill envy… everything from 0.3 to 1.6mm…. soooo small!!!!
I’ve now drilled my first Entoform and it works absolutely perfectly… I can stick the pin through and it grips beautifully… Next I’ll have to see if I have a teeny tiny pen for the teeny tiny labels…
They Arrived!
Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011I received my first 2 printed Entoforms today! They came out gorgeous! Though, actually, I originally ordered 4 and two were rejected as “unprintable”… which is good too, because I’m still testing.
The big question now is… How to make a tiny hole in them for the “insect pin”??? I don’t really own anything that can do it neatly.
Legging up
Monday, February 21st, 2011Progress is steady by now. I keep adding new features and creating creatures that look more and more like animals and less like blobs, or Sea Cucumbers… which is good…
Last Saturday the ever awesome Campbell Barton helped me set up Ubuntu, a debug blender build and sysprof on my system… the result of which is… a 10X faster running script! Actually the big improvement isn’t in my script but in the setup of the original blender scene that the script works on… awesome!!!
The latest improvement to the Entoform generator is the addition of “joints”. So now at the end of a “protuberance” another one can grow at a different angle.
Here are the latest 1440 creatures I’ve generated… next up… mouths or eyes!
Incoming!
Sunday, February 13th, 2011Last Friday I went ahead and ordered my first batch of Entoforms from Shapeways. Also I ordered the nessecary Entomological supplies from Vermandel. And… wow… Vermandel is quick. Yesterday I received the package from them already!
As you can see I ordered a bunch of things.
- A box to present insects in (with a special board as background for pinning the bugs to)
- A little wooden block to make sure everything is always pinned at the right height (and the labels are spaced equally along the needle)
- Two types of needles (long and medium). Apparently the long ones are actually too long for the box… but I could cut them down if need be.
- And lastly a whole stack of preprinted labels. These take the name of the entoform/place of discovery/genus/date and so forth. I’m missing the red labels for the Holotype, but I’ll find them.
The labels are a whole study by themselves. The people at Naturalis told me all about them. A few basic bits of information should always be on there.
- Whose the sample is (in this case my name)
- The country/place where the creature is found (in my case ‘created’)
- The date the creature was found, and here you note it like 13 II 2011. The month is noted in “roman numerals” That way the imperial and metric people don’t get confused.
- Then you may want to add a red label for the Holotype. The Holotype is the creature that “defines” the type. If you want to know if an animal is of a certain species… you compare it to the Holotype.
- In the past creatures found in the Netherlands were labeled with a green label.
- Vermandel also has labels just to show whether the creature is male or female. I don’t really need that I think, but it’s fun/cheap so I ordered them too.
The one thing I have to check still is the paper of the labels that I got. The scientists use paper based on Cotton in stead of wood because it lasts much longer. I’m not sure which I’ve got… I’ll have to ask.
I should be getting the first Entoforms in a week at most… I can’t wait!!!
Basta!
Thursday, February 10th, 2011Oh boy… no, nothing wrong… I just realised I’m spending far far too much time fixing code. So… I’ve spent a day or two writing code that can generate lots of Entoforms for me.
Also
Last week I was invited to Naturalis in Leiden. They have a huge scientific collection of Insects, which is perfect for rerence for me. It is very rare for artists to be invited there… I am ever so grateful.. I was an amazing experience.