Looking back on our semester, we have done a lot of things right, we could have done many things differently, and we’ve gained a whole sack full of knowledge! For more information, check out our Post-Mortem!
Project Post-Mortem
Featured
Reply
Author Archives: Dani
Bringing it Together
Paper playtesting with our advisors!
So I can’t tell you a lot about what we are working on for HP, but I can tell you that we are concepting a set of tools that could be integrated with their current 3D printer. Since we are going to school for Entertainment Technology, the four of us wanted to find a fun and creative way to show off these tools, and what better way than to create a game! So we have created a physical board game out of 3D printed pieces that utilize the different tools we are developing. Having said that, I can’t really show you too many pictures of the game itself, in case you figure out all of our secrets! It is also important to note that the game is not the primary deliverable for our project and should not be judged as such.
The game is called Mind Your Manors (oh what a pun!) and is played with 2 teams of 2. Each team has their own Victorian manor house with 8 different rooms that they must put together how ever they want. The objective is to collect a complementary set of weapons (aka. gun, gunpowder, and bullets) and kill the head of the other house.There are 16 objects hidden around both of your manors: 12 are various weapons, 3 are detrimental to your progress, and 1 is a wild card. Teams wander in and out of rooms in both houses looking for these hidden objects. Once a team has collected a complete set of weapons, they must make their way to the bedroom of the opposing team’s house to carry out their sinful deed.
Emiliano going in for the kill!
And that’s about all I can tell you, without getting into details. The point is, it is a fun, creative way to show off our project and we hope to play with some representatives from HP next week during softs. Maybe someday Mind Your Manors will make it to market….
Halves X 2
Over the past 2 weeks we’ve given not one but TWO ”halves” presentations. I say ”halves” because due to scheduling conflicts, these presentations fell after the halfway point in the semester.
Our first presentation was to the faculty at the Media Dome, and served as our official ETC ”halves presentation”. Although the audience was smaller than the average ETC presentation audience, we got a lot of interesting questions and points of advice. It was actually quite nice to have an extended Q/A session!
Our Media Dome presentation turned out to be a great excuse to practice and elicit feedback for our second big client presentation. At our first client presentation, we pitched several of our initial ideas and were able to get a better sense of where to take our project. This second one was meant to be a check-in to show HP how our ideas developed and our progress so far. In addition to showing off our work, explaining our project schedule and discussing our challenges, we also had to make it clear why and how our ideas could benefit them. So after adjusting our slides and polishing our lines just a little bit more, we headed off to HP early Monday morning (November 14th).
Overall our second presentation went very well! The people at HP were very happy with the progress that we’ve made so far and can’t wait to start playing with the prototypes that we are working on! (man, that’s a tease if I’ve ever heard one! We’ve done all this cool stuff but can’t tell you what it is!) So now we’re back to the grind– making the best use out of our remaining time!
Dragon Attack!!
…so unfortunately we haven´t been able to post as much as we would like. Hopefully we’ll be free of his fiery breath and grotesque stench soon enough!
Ok, truth– we are under a strict Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA), so we can’t talk about our progress past a certain point, or post our adviser newsletters. Unfortunately, we have run out of most of the general content, since we are working hard on our project deliverable, but we will try to post more pictures before the end of the semester (that don’t give away our secrets!).
Learning How to Model
Some of us on the ¿Plástico? ¡Fantástico! team have never really touched a 3D modeling program before (cough….Dani….cough) so we´ve been looking into different digital modeling techniques to get an idea of what is intuitive and what´s not. Some people, who are more familiar with digital modeling, have gotten used to the interface and how to manipulate an object on a computer screen, but the learning curve is pretty steep. Since one of our project goals is to create something that would attract new audiences to the world of 3D printing, we wanted to do some testing with a naive user. How does a person who is unfamiliar with digital modeling interact with the interface? What do they expect to happen?
The image above is the beginning of a spaceship that I (Dani) have been modeling in 3ds Max, using the ever so helpful Digital Tutors tutorials. One of the things I had more trouble with is a good sense of depth. Sometimes in the digital realm it is difficult to tell where an object is being placed in relation to another object. Another challenge was creating internal parts to a 3D model– how deep does this hole go? Is the lip of the engine angled or warped? There were several times when I wanted to mold the spaceship out of clay or playdough, to control some of the finer details.
One of the great things about the 3D printer is that it allows you to touch the object that was at one point only digital. You can feel indentations and how pieces attach to each other. As someone that is new to digital modeling, being able to see and touch an object is not only a great step in not only the learning, but also in the general creation process. With the help of 3D printers, I can print out my object during different phases of the design process to get a better idea of what it looks like and how it is put together.
Coming soon: 3D printed spaceship!
Newsletter Week 4
¡Este Semana!
This week was a big week for team ¿Plastico? ¡Fantastico! After two weeks of brainstorming and internal meetings, we met again with HP to present our ideas. The meeting went well and the HP team was very excited with the direction we are heading. We are now starting to delve deeper into some of our technical research involving 3D scanners and printing .STL files. HP is loaning us a 3D printer for the semester, so we will hopefully be able to start working with that by next week. In the meantime, they gave us
some of their extra printed models to play around with!
This week we also finalized our poster and half-sheet designs, as well as created more content for our website.
¡La Semana Proxima!
Next week we will be exploring the properties of the 3D printed objects as well as the reliability of different 3D scanning techniques.
¡Challenges!
We are still working together with HP to define a more specific deliverable for the end of the semester. Since we only have a few months for the entirety of the project, we will need to keep a good handle on our scope and what we can reasonably accomplish.
¡Barcelona Discovery of the Week!
Iberian Ham Croquettes and La Mercè Festival
Week 3 Newsletter
¡Este Semana!
¡Hola a todos!
As some of you may know, we got started a little late due to Hurricane Irene´s tirade throughout the north east. So we are about a week behind the normal ETC schedule, but our advisors Oscar and Emiliano have been nothing but supportive in trying to get us set up and back on track!
Last week we met with our client, the Hewlett-Packard Company and discussed the project that we would be working on this semester. Our general direction is to concept a way for architects or mechanical engineers to better show off their designs. We were all very excited to start the brainstorming process!
This week we finalized our logo, as well as completed the initial draft of our poster and half-sheet. We also got our website up and running and are currently in the process of filling it out a bit more.
We also continued the brainstorming process and met with our advisors as well as with our contact, Luis, at HP to start filtering and refining our ideas.
¡La Semana Proxima!
Next week we are meeting with HP at their Barcelona office to present our ideas and try to lock down a direction for our project. The rest of the week will be spent fleshing out ideas and coming up with a more concrete and refined semester schedule.
We will also be finalizing our poster and half-sheet design.
¡Challenges!
One of the big challenges we have faced this week was designing media, such as the poster and the half-sheet, without having a clear-cut project direction. Therefore a lot of our designs are a bit more abstract and focus on things such as the city of Barcelona.
We have also had to do a lot of running around to get situated, both at school and at home, so we have not had a lot of solid work time.