1:1 Model

 I made a 1:1 scale model out of sculpey clay to help me gauge the size and scale of my design. I found this to be very helpful as my model was much too big on my face and requires scaling down. Its also impossible to take a good photo in the presence of my cat.

Glarce Entry Revisited

I really wasnt proud of my Glarce Academy entry so here I have refined my design a bit more to better suit my design intent. Unfortunately I have not had time so far this week to make a model but I am close to that stage.

My thought for this design is that the top trim piece is similar to the one from the Smooth Operators from the last assignment except that instead of having a separate bridge, it is all made of one piece. The lens frames slot into the trim piece and support the lenses. These would be screwed into the trim in a similar way also. I wondered if the lens frames could be open at the top so that the lenses can be easily be removed and changed when the frame is unscrewed. 

The arms, trim and lens frames will all be made of plastic. I would like to incorporate the nose grip into the lens frames.

I added an embossed line detail that follows the arms and trim, giving a bit more visual interest to the shape.

Photorealistic renderings and Animation

Final Modelling

Getting down to the final components and assembly I encountered a few things that set me back. The nose bridge caused me trouble because I made it a bit too curved initially and therefore it intersected the trim after I made allowance for it. I had to go back into the sketches and change its shape to make it fit. I had a similar problem when it came to mirroring the assembly, the nose bridge was too curved and caused the whole frame to be too concave.

The assembly came together quite nicely. I found it hard to get the curved surfaces to mate together so many of them are simply fixed in place.

Continued Modelling and Trouble Town

I managed to model the trim piece well enough after a bit of mucking around. I was struggling to loft it as a surface and then make it a solid so in the end I just lofted it as a solid. That's probably not correct but at this stage I just needed to keep moving. The result is the same for all intents and purposes. I haven't yet put the flat spot on the back for the arm, I will need to do this before the arms can go on.

I couldn't find any instructions for how to make the nose bridge, although Dan did say they would be available. I made it simply by creating the front surface and using the thicken tool. The detail I made by using the curve tool to project a sketch onto the surface and then using a swept cut from the right plane to make the circular indent.

I have spent the last day stuck as my model decided to get confused by external references. I think I have finally figured out how to break the missing references and can finally continue modelling where I left off. 

Modelling the Sunglasses Arm and Lens Rim

I had some time to make up this week so I've been working really hard to catch up to the in class demonstrations. The most difficult part so far was the glasses arm as its shape is so organic but the tutorials were easy enough to follow.

I had tried previously to use the cavity feature with no luck so i was glad to learn how to use it. I had trouble when i tried to select it from the features menu as the function was grayed out. After trying to figure out how to get it back I realised my problem was that my arm was still a surface as I did not make it into a solid when I made the part. Once I figured that out it worked perfectly.

When I first made the hinge part I did not take it out of the arm and therefore did not know about the lugs on the bottom. When I saw them in the video I went back into my original park and added them in.

 I would never have figured out how to make the lens rim like this but it was so easy once I knew how. The boundary surface tool was new to me, as was the untrim surface tool. 

Glarce Academy Submission

Due to poor time management I did not give myself enough time to refine my submission for the Glarce Academy competition. I really would have liked to produce higher quality images to submit. I chose to enter under the vintage category. I also have not developed my drawing skills which is proving to be a setback.

Practicing surfaces

I haven't got as much of the mock up sunglasses done as I probably should have as I spent most of my study break attempting to model my iron prototype for studio 3. I used a very similar process to the mouse tutorials to build the iron body and so far I am really happy with the result, although it has meant that I have compromised time that I should have spent on the sunglasses project. I am hoping that this practice with surface modelling will help me catch up the lost time.

I did however attempt to make a sunglasses arm (before watching the in class tutorial) and was fairly happy with the result for a first attempt. I achieved it by making a projected curve and thickening the surface created.