For this lab, I was feeling a lack of inspiration about what I wanted to make. I knew that I wanted to make something unique, and that I wanted to experiment with combining two materials to create an even more interesting finished product. For inspiration, I looked at paper-craft creations on the internet. I saw a lot of similar objects, from animals to human skulls. What I was gravitated towards the most though was this picture of a paper lantern. I thought that the way that it was lit up almost reminded me of a Himalayan salt lamp, and the triangular faces were darker than the edges in between, which made the lamp more interesting visually.
I decided to use this lantern as the foundation of my unrolling project. At first, I tried to digitally model the lantern, but I was faced with errors when trying to Boolean Union the triangular faces together. After a series of frustratingly failed attempts, I decided to change my approach to the lantern. Instead of trying to 3D model it and unroll it with Rhino, I decided to instead copy the pattern from the original lantern and combine them together to print the lamp in larger sections so I would have to glue less tabs together. 
In order to make a unique lantern design, I had the idea to laser-cut wooden triangles that would go behind the paper triangles within the lantern. That way, I could create any design that I wanted on the wooden triangle, and the light would only shine through the gaps, creating an intended "rave light" effect. My inspiration for the design on the triangles was from this one video game called "League of Legends" and a skin line that they had which has this cool "PROJECT" logo. In order to make the lantern more visually interesting, for the upside down triangles, I changed the PROJECT logo to have simulated scratches and tears in it so the finished lantern would be a mix of designs.
Once I had modeled the template for my lantern, I used a Grasshopper definition to turn the edges that I wanted to fold into dashed lines that would be engraved onto the paper. I didn't know it then, but in practicality, it was very difficult to actually engrave the paper without cutting completely through. Most of the dashed lines ended up being fully cut through but they allowed me to fold the paper perfectly along those lines without a reliance on a straight edge and while maintaining the structural integrity of the paper so it won't tear along the folds. 
Something else I failed to consider was that since the wood I used was 1/8" thick, the tabs used to fold in the sides of the triangles wouldn't fold in all the way because they kept bumping into the paper. I ended up having to cut small slices out of the tabs so that they could fold inwards without the wood interfering.
I had to order some remote-controlled LED lights in order to light my lantern and display the inner pattern from the inside. They're battery powered with a 36-hour life, so it was critical that I had the remote so I could easily turn the lights on and off and change their colors to fade.
In order to place the lights that I had chosen into the lantern and keep them suspended so they light up the lantern evenly from all sides, I decided to design and laser cut a little wooden box to attach the lights to. 
After I had finished the "light box," I spent the most time on this project simply folding up the 8 different paper patterns that I had, making sure that the wooden triangles inside were aligned properly. I found that using a glue stick to attach the wood inside worked the best because hot glue would cause the wood to sit unevenly against the paper. However, hot glue was perfect for the tabs because it meant they were very well secured and I did not care about the paper being warped because no one would ever see the tabs.
When I had finished the first folded pattern, I had my friend help me do a lighting test with the LEDs and I was overjoyed when they properly lit up the pattern inside without any bright spots from the LED being too close to the paper.
Assembling the final pattern was the most challenging part of the whole project. Creating the bottom half was relatively easy, but then I had to mount the lights inside the center of the lantern and simultaneously attach the top half. I knew I wanted this lantern to hang, so I created a simple hanging mechanism using 10 gauge wire. I drilled a hole through both sides of my laser-cut box and used pliers to bend the wire to support the box, with another bend further up along the wire to support the top of the lantern and keep the light centered. I had no prior experience with this kind of physical fabrication, so learning how to bend the wire properly and create the hook at the top so the lantern could hang was a challenging, yet rewarding experience.
In order to attach the upper part of the lantern I had to jury-rig a hanger from one of the pipes in the BTU to suspend my lantern and then I could finally complete it. I am so incredibly happy with how it turned out, exactly like how I imagined. The color fade on the lights gives it a night-time light effect, but what is most astonishing to me is that the whole structure is made out of just paper. This project was a challenge for me because I had to learn how to assemble all the components that I had modeled, using wires and LED lights to ensure that the finished product captured my aspirations of what I wanted it to be. I think I will name this project "Hidden Faces," and I hope that other people will be as awe-struck with the lantern as I am.
Unfortunately, despite the fact that I chose to print the paper lantern, I was not able to successfully 3D model it and was therefore unable to meet the requirements for the assignment. Because of this, I also modeled the genie lamp from Aladdin. The genie lamp was mostly created using "CageEdit," which allowed me to create a smooth curvature along the lamp's body. 
I used the "Mesh" command to create three different meshes of the lamp, with differing amounts of polygons creating each mesh. The 150 polygon mesh lacked a lot of the detail that I had modeled into the lamp, while the 500 polygon mesh, when unrolled with "UnrollSrf,"  created a mess of a pattern that was far too complicated to practically recreate. Because of this, I chose the Goldilocks solution and went with a 300 polygon mesh to create my unrolled paper template pattern. 
Once I had unrolled the mesh, I then used the "DupBorder" and "DupEdge" commands to turn the unrolled surfaces into curves. The inner curves I then used the previous Grasshopper definition I had used on the paper lantern to create dashed lines that would be engraved to allow for easier folding of the paper.
Unlike the paper lantern though, I couldn't just easily create tabs because every edge on the pattern had a unique length. To resolve this issue, I used another Grasshopper definition to create trapezoids that had varying side lengths depending on what edge they were attached to. I was easily able to create tabs for the over 400 different edges on this paper template in a matter of minutes, which meant that if I had chosen to print and construct this model, it would have been much easier to assemble
For the third model I created, I chose to make a blimp so that I could test out creating a single-curved pattern using the "ExtractIsoCurve" and "Loft" commands. I modeled my blimp using basic geometric shapes to create the outline, before tracing that and smoothing the outer line using a curved line, before then rotating that line 360 degrees to create a solid model. I then created a singular slice that cut through the length of the blimp and expanded from its center before using the "Rotate" tool to evenly copy and space that slice eight times around the circumference of the blimp. From there I could use the "ExtractIsoCurve" command to get the bare skeleton of the blimp and "Loft" to solidify it. The final mesh created very much resembled that of actual blimps, and the process that I used mirrored their real life construction.
Part C - Click Here
For the final part of the lab, I had to model three functional objects. I thought of a button almost immediately, but I then became stuck on what else I should model. After an eventful Friday night, I decided to model a shot glass (for soda) and a shotgun tool (meant for a soda can of course). I used the "Picture" command to trace the outlines of the objects, and from there it was easy to convert them into a 3D model that I could print. I am particularly happy with the shot glass; even though it's a simple shape, I got the sizing almost the same as my actual shot glass because I sized the reference picture to the same dimensions as the real life model. 
I found that when I 3D printed these objects, the filament that I used made it particularly hard for me to remove the rafts underneath, especially on the button because it's so small.
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