Friday, December 17, 2010

Mathematical Sculptures

Here's more sculptures.









I've lit each sculpture with three lights, a white one above, a green light from the left, and a blue one from the right. This creates some interesting blue and green anti-shadows.









I used to make these sorts of designs on an old HP graphic computer (with thermal paper) back in 1983.










Of course, the "computer" was more like a programmable calculator. And it didn't have a 3-D graphing function (that I was aware of).










After I had made a few of these things, I realized that some of my color-blind friends are not going to see them so well. Sorry.










Originally, I had red and blue lights, but they made the shadows "pop" in a way that was confusing.










All of these were built by a Python script. The script builds a list of points in three dimensions (vertices), then passes them to Blender. Then the Python script tells Blender which vertices are connected into faces. This should be a solid virtual object.










I sent one to Spaceways to see if it would print, but it wouldn't. I believe I didn't tell Blender to make the models small enough for Spaceways' "printer," and so it got auto-rejected.










I might go back to simply building compound models from simple geometric shapes, rather than using a single complex object.

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