Blender: 170 Final

For my 170 final, I modeled a spiral staircase and spiral building in Blender. I started out creating the shape for the staircase. Once I had created a step, I exported the shape into TopMod and played around with different modeling techniques, until I found one that I liked. Once I had created a step, I imported the image back into Blender, and began to build the staircase. I created an "empty" on the step, and from the "empty" I was able to make the empty a parent of the step. This means that the empty and the step were connected to each other, and would move in regards to the other. From here, I kept rotating the step until the stair case was built. I then created a Bezier Curve, which created the spiral building. By altering the vertices on the curve, I was able to create several different styles. After I built the building, I exported both the staircase and building into VIZ to render.

NURBS

Tonight, I learned how to use the NURBS option, in the 3D program VIZ. VIZ is a 3D modeling, rendering, and presentation software. The term NURBS stands for Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines. By using this option, I was able to create a 3D object using curves. After I first created a curve, I offset the curve, used the lathe option, and added a shell. This gave my object depth and made it completely round. After I completed this, I used two renderings. I applied an ambient occulsion render, which gave my object shadows, and I also applied a wire frame render. I put these two renders on top of each other, and there fore created the above object.

The Concept of Design

William McDonough is a world-renowned architect, designer, and winner of three U.S. presidential awards: the Presidential Award for Sustainable Development (1996), the National Design Award (2004); and the Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award (2003). Mr. McDonough was the speaker at the 2000 Bioneers Conference. In this video, Bill McDonough talks about the concept of design.

Bill McDonough opened the conference up with two questions:

" How do we love all children of all species for all time?"
and
"When do we become native to this place?"

Mr. McDonough explained these questions by saying that the world is full of tragedies- such as global warming and plutonium. As designers, we have to take responsibility for such tragedies, and come up with strategies of change. McDonough used Thomas Jefferson as an example of a designer. Jefferson was a designer and an architect, as well as the President of the United States- although Jefferson will always be remembered as an architect and designer more than as the President of the United States. One of Jefferson's greatest accomplishments was designing the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson designed three major things in his lifetime- the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the federal government. Jefferson stressed three key ideas in the Declaration of Independence: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Although Jefferson designed the federal government and America on these three principals, Jefferson did not anticipate that humans would later ruin his original design. Had Jefferson known what the world would be like several hundred years later, he might have designed a Bill of Responsibilities instead of the Bill of Rights.

Jane Jacobs has also come up with two syndromes for survival.

• The Guardian
  
• Commerce

The guardian is in charge- the knights of the round table. It is slow, serious, legal, and shuns commerce. Whereas commerce is business. Commerce is quick and honest. When you put the two of these syndromes together, you create a monstrous hybrid.

Emerson asked,

" If humans are natural, therefore are all things done by humans part of nature?"

Emerson then concluded that nature is all things that are immutable, such as the ocean.

Bill McDonough then began to talk about how all sustainability will eventually be local. Designers need to become leaders, and leaders need to become designers. We as humans, need to think about design as intention. Some design criteria that McDonough has come up with is:

• Cost
• Performance
• Aesthetics
• Ecological Intelligence
• Justice
• Fun

After looking over this list, Mr. McDonough came to the conclusion that design is connected to the founding of America because Ecological Intelligence is life, Justice is liberty, and Fun is the pursuit of happiness. Bill McDonough concluded that as humans, we need to be more conscience of our designs and the environment. We need to free ourselves from all of the "bad design."

Revit

Even though I did not finish the entire Revit tutorial, I really feel like I learned a lot through this program. Revit is a 3D architecture program that allows the user to create buildings in 3D. Throughout this tutorial, I learned the basic steps of how to create a building from scratch. I learned how to create the foundation of a building, put in floors, a roof, and much more. I really like using Revit, and I think it is an important program to know how to use.

Pimp My Prof...

Blender Tutorial: Making a Heart

For my tutorial, I chose to use the program Blender. Blender is a 3D program used for several different things, such as animations, rendering, modeling, and much more. I chose to follow a tutorial on how to make a heart. While it was a beginner tutorial, I am still pretty sketchy on how to use blender- so it took me a long time to follow. First, I started with a NURBS sphere. I deselected all the vertices on the sphere, until I was left with only three vertices. I then moved the three remaining vertices downward, creating a bump in the sphere. After this step, I just had to keep scaling my object until I was satisfied with the shape. I had to make sure to keep turning my object, to make sure that the parts I could not see, were still fitting along with my shape.

I am really starting to like blender, and I hope that I can keep improving. I just have to find the time to practice with it!

Final Project

I am really excited about being able to choose our final project. I love having creative freedom. For my final, I would like to make a short animation film in blender. Hopefully this will not be too complicated- because it seems really interesting. If the film does not work out, I would like to do create something 3D also using blender.