2. DIGITAL BODIES¶
Inspiration¶
The Digital Body has a quality that the physical body cannot have, it can be dismantled and unproportional, disfunctional and fragmented.
As a performance and performance costume designer I have a huge interest in the body as an art object as well as an inspiration and even as a tool for the sending of a message. Some of the references that I gather during a lifetime of interest in this theme and that I thought would relate to the assingment are:
FRIDA KAHLO
I want to call special attention to a video by Bart Hess, called "From 18-80 in Two Minutes"
Define Beauty: From 18-80 in Two Minutes - NOWNESS from NOWNESS on Vimeo.
I want to call special attention to a performance she created called "Balloons"
She mixes silicone, satin and silk and creates "sculptural clothes for women of all shapes and sizes" according to AnOther Magazine
She also designed the costume for Grace B. Nichol's piece SLIP MOULD SLIPPERY
Some more interesting artwork about the body was displayed and performed in London's V&A Museum in one of its Friday Lates and can be consulted via this facebook event.
I could go on for ages about the body and hat body artists inspire me so I decided to write a column about the theme which will be available in my blog page on my personal website.
Computer Programs used in this assignment:¶
MakeHuman¶
The first program we learned this week was MakeHuman, in which the user can make their own human 3D Model. I tried to make the most similar version of a model to myself.
In order to add Curly Hair to my model I had to download it as a PlugIn from Make Human Community:
Make Human Hair Extension Step-by-Step from Gabriela Lotaif on Vimeo.
I did, however end up deciding to use my own body scan in order to create my two digital bodies' projects.
Rhinoceros¶
After spending some time with MakeHuman I was able to have a good enough model to work with in Rhino in order to learn its basic tools. The ones I found most important were:
- Making Polylines, or curves
- Extruding Polysurfaces
- Transforming Mesh into Polysurface and vice-versa
- Making Boolean operations.
- Intersect (you keep only the intersection of two Polysurfaces or two Meshes)
- Union (you unite two Polysurfaces or two Meshes, creating one big item)
- Split (you split two Polysurfaces or two Meshes into three:the bit that was only the first surface, the intersection and the bit that was only the second surface)
- Difference (you keep only what doesn't touch the first surface of the second or vice-versa)
Skanect¶
Skanect is a 3D scanning program that uses kinect (the tringulated camera designed for XBox). This program is a hack on the kinect camera that allows it's product to be a 3D Model based oin the scan of an object by the camera.
In case of us Barcelona students we scanned ourselves using the robot arm to hold the kinect camera, so that we could obtain the possible quality of the scans.
The program scans even texture of what the camera sees, as in my case my hair and all main colours on my body.
MeshMixer¶
MeshMixer allowed me to smoothen my body scan in order to exclude all the wrinkles that were on my scan made of the clothing I was wearing. It can also be used to easily add to whatever 3D Model is being worked with.
The tools I found most useful for smoothing were the BubbleSmooth brush, the ShrinkSmooth brush and the BubbleSmooth secondary brush.
Slicer 3D¶
Slicer 3D is the program that allows its user to transform their 3D model into an assortment of Slices. This is useful, for instance in the case that the user wants to lazer cut 2D material and assemble them into a real 3D Structure, which is the case of this assignement.
My Digital Bodies projects¶
I have developed two digital body projects, one for a real scale body and another for a smaller version of it, both based on my body scan, after having smoothened it with Mesh Mixer.
REAL SCALE DIGITAL BODY - Realised
- I imported my body scan onto Rhino, cut it keep opnly my torso, exported it as .stl, smoothed it in MeshMixer and re-imported it onto Rhino
- I transformed it from Polysurface to Mesh
- I exported it as .obj
- I imported it onto Slicer 3D and made sure the measurements were correct, as well as inserted the material measurements
- I played with my mode options for a bit and decided for the curve
- I desined what curve I wanted for the horizontal slices and moved the vertical ones to a diagonal position, adjusting both the curve and the diagonal back and forth.
- I made sure to show the form of the body however the slices are assembled!
- I exported my slices' plans as .obj from Slices 3D
- I imported my slices' plans on Rhino
- I made all plans 2D in Rhino and separated the frames of the slices in one layer and the numbers in another
- I made sure that the slices were positioned in a way that I would use the least possible amount of material (be sustainable)
- I saved it all to an USB Stick as .obj
- I opened my plans' file on the Lab's computer with the Program EnRoute, which is connected to the big 3D Printer.
- I selected all the frames of the slices, clicked transform and merge so that they would be lines, not many dots.
- I selected engrave to the layer of the number and cut to the layer of the frames.
- I tested the potence and slot offset of my pieces with two test ones cut by the lazer machine
- I lazer cut all my slices
- Some of the slices weren't cut to the depth of the wood plaque, so I had to manually cut them with a cutter
- Because I manually cut some of the slices I had to sand their edges
- I spray painted my slices in order to hide the marks I had left on the wood from touching the lazer burnt edges
- I Finally put all slices together with the help of @betiana.pavon, the step by step in SLices 3D, a hammer and lots of WMN PWR
Lazer Cut Digital Body for Fabricademy from Gabriela Lotaif on Vimeo.
As seen on the time lapse above I had quite a hard time assembling my Digital Body, this is because I decided to leave a slot offset of 0 in Slicer 3D thining of the fact that my slices intersected diagonally, but I now believe it would have been best to leave a -1 or 2mm slot offset instead...
There was not enough time to realise my second digital body project, but I decided to document it here notheless...
SMALLER SCALE DIGITAL BODY - Projected
- I imported my MeshMixer smoothened torso onto Rhino
- I decided to use the stacked slices technique, but creating a particular design, with the body cut "in half" vertically by a curve and having all slices in one side of the curve and only a few on the other side
- I selected all and used the contour tool to replicate it as many curves with 4mm distance from one another (the wood plaque we use has a 4mm thickness)
- I created the curve tha I wanted to cut the body "in half" vertically, extruded it and positioned it on top of the many curves obtained via the contour tool
- I followed to extrude all the stacked curves into 4mm thick pieces in bunches of more or less 5/6 so Rhino wouldn't colapse
- I then did a boolean split between the halves that I wanted to cut off of the slices that I had created in relation to the vertical curve I had made in step 4
VERY IMPORTANT, I DID NOT YET CHANGE THE SIZE TO SMALLER SCALE
Project Files¶
- Real Scale Digital Body - Realised
TORSO TO MAKE SLICES FROM:
SLICED VERSION OF TORSO
LAZER CUT READY SLICES
- Smaller Scale Digital Body - Project