[Grant Nicholson]

This 4" thick sculpted piece was built as a combination of 2d drawings and 3d art. The Bird was created exclusively using a 2d .ai vector worked into an Enroute extrusion. Unlike much of the bas-relief art produced on 3 axis, this piece uses full dimension, without foreshortening.

[bill south]

That looks nice Grant!
Good Job!
Bill

[gwizz]

this is beautiful.i'm new to 3d where can i get some introduction lesson in 3d

[Grant Nicholson]

Thanks Gwizz - I really enjoyed creating this, and there are many more to come. 3d is a really broad topic, and there are many ways to come at it. Many 3d artists use a variety of different programs, moving an object from one to the other, taking advantage of each program's particular options. For example, this project began in Poser, where I was able to quickly produce a customized head and torso. Poser models aren't very lifelike, so I then took that file into the open-source program "Blender", where I was able to remove some parts that I didn't want (eyelashes). From there I took it into zbrush, where I was able to enhance the expression and make it more lifelike by manipulating it organically. After this I imported the head and torso into Enroute, my cnc program. Screenshots were taken and printed out, and I then drew the hair with a pencil. These drawings were scanned back in and I drew vectors of the hair. These were then taken into Enroute, where I applied them with the "pyramid" style extrusion to a large sloping plane that followed the figure. The bird was hand drawn, re-drawn as a vector in illustrator, then piece-by-piece turned into extrusions that were applied to a larger extrusion to get the overall shape, then cut out. All of it was then welded into one large Enroute object and tooled.

I realize this sounds complicated, but I'm offering you a view into the process, as it's not thousands of hours playing with extremely expensive software. It's more important to work out with the programs at your disposal, and when you become familiar enough, construct your own process. This will reflect your personal style and imagination.

3 axis CNC as an art form differs significantly from typical modeling demands for games and movies, allowing the artist to work real-life miracles without needing to create a complete digital reality. Photo-realistic rendering, rigging, animation etc. are all aspects of 3d art that can be totally ignored; they aren't necessary when you will be producing real physical objects!

I find that the hand work at the end of the job brings the pieces to life.

Where to start? Try making a photo extrusion and machine it - many affordable software packages can do this. For example, a photo of a leaf in photoshop can be turned to grayscale, the tone adjusted (white is high, black is low, and all other shades of grey become corresponding depth) then import it into a program with the photo extrusion feature and voila! you have a 3d leaf.

[SignWave]

Very nice work Grant,
I also use enroute.
What exactly is "foreshortening"

Thanks in advance.

Rich.