Category Archives: blender

My DIY BB-8: Problems, Solutions, Lessons Learned

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Imagine trying to make a ball-shaped robot that rolls in any direction but with a head that stays on. When I saw the BB-8 droid doing just that in the first Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer, it was an interesting engineering challenge that I couldn’t resist. All the details for how I made it would fill a book, so here are the highlights: the problems I ran into, how I solved them and what I learned.

The Design Criteria: Portable and Inexpensive

I had two design criteria in mind. The first was to keep it low-cost. Some spend $1000 …read more

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Fashion Mannequin Is Fiberglass Reinforced Paper Craft

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[Leah and Ailee] run their own handmade clothing business and needed a mannequin to drape their creations onto for display and photography. Since ready-made busts are quite pricey and also didn’t really suit their style, [Leah] set out to make her own mannequins by cleverly combining paper craft techniques and fiberglass.

[Leah] started by looking for suitable 3D models as a base for her design. The right one was found on opengameart.com, loaded into Blender, and underwent a few serious modifications including heavy use of the decimate tool before it became a stylish low-poly bust.

The reduced number of triangles …read more

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