MODULE 4 Ka Yan Stephanie Ng Student No.: 582283 Group 3 ENVS10008_2012_SM2 Virtual Environments
IDEATION
1.1 inspiration
Butterfly
is one of the insects that we all like, unlike some other insects, it never looks disgusting. It is categorised into the “scaled wings“ group. However, it is a very unique insect that its life cycle consists of four stages. This can be distinguished as a natural process. We are so used to the beauty of butterfly but do we actually know how the whole life cycle works? Do you know how long does the whole life cycle take? What do these transformations signify?
The life cycle of a butterfly consists of four stages and they are: egg, larva, pupa and adult. During each stage they go through numerous changes called Metamorphosis. This can take one month to one year depending on the type of butterfly. Butterflies in their adult stage can live from a week to nearly a year depending on the species. Many species have long larval life stages while others can remain dormant in their pupal or egg stages and thereby survive winters.
Each step is so different from each other which the transformation of the whole life cycle is very miracle that should go for deeper investigation.
1.2 research Stage 1 - Egg During this stage an Adult Butterfly will lay their eggs on the plant that the larva will eat. All Butterfly eggs will look different depending on the type of Butterfly. A Monarch Butterfly will lay its eggs on the milkweed plant. If an egg is not laid on the correct plant the larva will not travel to a different plant and will not survive. Stage 2 - Larva/Caterpillar Stage During this stage the larva will hatch from the egg. The Caterpillar’s main purpose is to eat and grow to the correct size depending on what type of Butterfly it will become. A new born Monarch Caterpillar is a stage called Earth Instar larva. Late Instar Larva is called when a Monarch Caterpillar fully grown. The growth between early and late instar occurs when the caterpillar malts. This is when the caterpillar grows to large for its exoskeleton therefore needs to shed from its skin each time is grows larger. Stage 3 - Pupa When the Caterpillar has finished growing it will go through the third stage called Pupa. During this stage the Caterpillar will form a Chrysalis. Inside the Chrysalis the Caterpillar will change the re-form its body into an adult Butterfly. Stage 4 - Adult Butterfly During this stage the adult butterfly will emerge from the Chrysalis. This is also the stage where reproduction will occur. Eggs are laid again and a new cycle will begin.
1.3 sketch proposal - movement throughout the life cycle This sketch proposal is the movement throughout the whole life cycle.
The action of the movement consists of a lot of components such as the way it moves, the intention of why it moves, what are the shapes of movement look like, whether the movement is crawl, fly or walk etc. The most significant description for categorizing all these movement processes is contraction and release. The movements of both butterfly and caterpillar are very interesting and they look very similar. Except the fact that their direction of movement is a little bit different, their shapes of movement are kind of the same. Caterpillar shows contraction and release when it is crawling, it shrinks as it is showing contraction and an upside down ‘U‘ shape appears, the whole body loosen as it is showing release, this time a 90 degrees transformation of ‘I‘ shape appears. Butterfly also shows contraction and release as it flaps its wings. When both wings are on the same level going down means contraction is occurring, the body part will automatically go up. When the wings are going up, release occurs which the body will go down automatically.
Sketch
1.4 development
Although
it is not shown very clearly, when the butterfly is flapping its wings, it goes up and down inadvertently which means when the wings are going down the butterfly flies higher and conversely. And this also happens to the caterpillar stage where the caterpillar also moves just like up and down, it shrinks it’s body and then releases. This creates a zigzag shape. At the end of the zigzag line it goes upwards because butterflies unconsciously fly higher when they flap their wings. Caterpillar crawls by repeatedly contracting its body muscle and shrinks the body into a curl shape and then relaxing its body muscle and becomes a long shape.
1.5 concept to clay
Clay
is used to transfer the concept our to a model. However, for the first few times, I could not make as same as my mental image on my mind. That is why I have changed to using paper to fold a similar shape out. I know for the second module, digitalization requires cutting the contour lines out so clay must be the best material to shape the model out. End up I made a more similar shape model out to use as my final clay model. The context of the concept affects how the form of the model generates and looks. The form changes based on how the context progresses. The development of the form has to have reasons behind so that readers can understand what you want to express and show. In my case, my form of the clay model had to related back to the context and procedures had to be shown otherwise no one will understand the concept.
Design
2.1 Digitalization
I have attempted many times to make the clay model to the shape that I aimed for, however, it still does not look that good. This can be said as the best one among all of the testing.
Contour lines are drawn on the clay model with an interval of 1cm and 7 pieces are being cut out. After that, cut model is put on a graph paper to trace the lines so that the shape of the cross-section can be transfer to the digital form (Rhino). This part I think I did the worst as I did not try hard enough to mold the expected clay shape out and I should cut the cross-section with an at least 0.5cm interval because I made this model really small and 1cm is really not enough to shape all the details out. This model has so many sharp edges which is really hard to mold.
2.2 Precedent analysis
Times Eureka Pavilion
From the example project of Times Eureka Pavilion the lecturer has talked about in the lecture, it inspired me a lot in the way I think pattern is a series of work instead of just particular one. I should investigate more on how the pattern of the butterfly or the caterpillar work so as to create or construct a better model design. The Life Cycle is so complicated and that the pattern is a design tool to break it down into pieces and do the elaboration. Also, the way sunlight shines into the pavilion making the shadow having the butterfly wings shape inspired me that it works the same way as the lantern, having light going out from the inside of my model.
Butterfly World, UK (rigid The Spot glass dome enclosure, climate controlled) The frame of this Butterfly House is shaped by repeated hexagon shapes. As one of the examples of the architecture buildings around the world, it is true that most of the architecture buildings are framed by repeated pattern surface with different shapes such as triangles, circles or hexagons.
The spot at our school is one of the examples which demonstrates how the pattern of the building surface leads to the shadow distribution shown internally. The shadow of this building is also significantly well-known to be designed in an environmentally sustainable way of lighting system.
2.3 paneling 2D
Domain points: 10X10
Original Pattern Panel shape Edge Faces Border Faces Flat Faces Mesh Group
Box Straight Yes No No No No Yes
Triangular Pull No Yes Yes Yes (Best Fit Faces Method) Yes No*
Diamond Iso Yes No No No No Yes
Wave Projected (Z_dir) Yes No No No No Yes
* Without grouping, time for making the 2D surface takes a lot longer than the ones with yes for group.
3D
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Box All of the above: Edge: Yes Faces: Yes Solids: Yes Meshes: Yes Group: Yes
3.
Partition
4.
Wedge
pattern to create for my model based on how butterfly flies up and down, but it seems to straight forward so I decided not to use this. I have then tried different paneling which is given in the digital program (Rhino), both of 2D and 3D. But I think I should try some other paneling which is custom ones which means I have to design my own pattern for the surface of my model. These two kinds of paneling which involve many different kinds of pattern assist me in thinking what shape my holes in my model should be. After trying different custom paneling, I have finally designed a pattern which is related to my natural process.
5.
Pyramid 1
The ziczac shape is my original decided
Pyramid 2
2.4 Model modification As it is too simple to show only the contraction and release of the caterpillar and butterfly processes, I have additionally included 3 more parts to my model which are the basic stage of caterpillar (the crawling worm stage but not during the movement stage), pupa and the breaking of pupa stages.
‘CURVY‘
‘TRAPPED‘
‘BROKEN‘
Caterpillars are shaped as a curvy oval, it is hardly to change to structure of it to other shapes except something like an italic ‘I‘.
With the process of pupa, the model of this part should be looked like something with a half transparent area.
This part is the connection between the pupa stage and the adult butterfly stage. This breaking part can be substituted by something like the breaking glass process.
As the life cycle of this whole natural process is repeated over and over from egg to larva/caterpillar to pupa and lastly to adult butterfly, I have used the shape of a sphere to represent that. It is a rational process as before the adult butterfly dies, it lays eggs which goes back to the first stage of the life cycle.
2.5 Development
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The whole natural process was demonstrated here that each part had its own meaning and reasons behind. The fabrication of it can be shown
and explained better. 1. the sphere is divided into strips and each of the strips look like a single curvy caterpillar 2. it is not shown here that this part represents the pupa, in fabrication, this sphere will be constructed with white paper and no holes to show the effect of half transparent. 3. the effect of the breaking pupa is shown from the construction of the holes that the pattern of the holes is in triangular shape
2.6 Orthographic and Perspective views Because I found the curvy line of the model looked so nice, I have captured few ortho-
graphic and perspective views of that. I have also tried to use the command ‘Make 2D‘ in the digital program Rhino which turned out the pictures looked very clean and clear in the sense the basic line and how the model looked in detail are shown impressively.
2.7 Final design My model was shown differently after the program had changed from drawing (primary form) to paper to clay and lastly to the media support - Rhino. It is essential to refine and show the progress as the model had been changed to many different form and designs after all the programs.
Fabrication
3.1 unrolling part 4
During unrolling, time taken is relatively shorter be-
part 3
part 2
part 1
cause it is the fourth time doing it after all the prototypes and this time it was not too bad as not many panels overlapped each other, so that the strips do not need to be broken down into pieces. However, time taken after grasshopper was a lot longer than that of the time of first few prototypes. It was because after the second last prototype, it was found out that the papers cannot be folded well with dash lines. As a result, lines of the perimeter of the strips had to all change to score lines instead. Furthermore, lines of the tabs were not allocated to the right spot which I had to delete the lines and make the right ones to the right spot again.
The lantern was divided into 4 parts according to the patterns, colours of paper card used, different stages of the natural process etc. Part 1: using black and white paper cards to show the shape of the caterpillar more obvious) Part 2: only white paper cards and no holes are used to show an effect of partly hidden and partly visible Part 3: triangular holes are created manually to represent something like breaking glass Part 4: black and white paper cards are used to show the contrast of the concept of contraction and release or up and down movement
3.2 prototype
This first prototype got the most mistakes as it was the first try. The structure of the model could not be made because of the following errors: The side of each panel is not the same length so that the strips cannot be stick together; the tabs are too thick too obvious; paper clips are too easy to be removed accidentally; time consuming as the problem of not continuing the making of the model was found after cutting, folding and sticking all the individual strips; the strips and holes and everything seemed too big as the scale seemed not very accurate and had to be justified and lastly, the surface of the model had switched back to front and front to back.
3.2 prototype
The surfaces in green represented that they have not yet been flipped. That was one of my mistakes when I did my first prototype.
Originally this was planned to be my final model both in module 3 and also as a whole, however, because of some problems including the wrong scaling mistakenly, it had to be redone. Another list of errors found after the second prototype: As both FabLab’s and my problem, the 300gsm black laser cutting cards printing was mistakenly used instead of 200gsm; the tabs were made too thin; after folding the dash lines and sticking two strips together, all the glues were very obviously seen and the cards could not be fully stick together; the last two vertical strips were way too hard to stick which end up facing out; the PVA stained left over after using too much and most importantly, the model turned out a lot bigger than I expected.
3.3 Fabrication As time taken for one prototype was too long, I did not manage to do a final model before the submission of module 3. My final model would still look nearly the same as the last prototype except the size of the biggest part of the model and also the construction and design of the tabs and strips.
All the photos listed above are all the construction of the fabrication of the main part of the model and the ones listed on the next page are all the construction of the fabrication of the spheres attached.
3.3 Fabrication
3.4 Lighting effect Lights have been tested after the fabrication of the model. The reason why I have tested over and over again is because it is very important to show how the lights work as it is meant to be a lantern. I also want the lighting effect can relate a little bit back to my natural process. I will never let my lantern not to grow or only show only dim light, that is why I have tried over and over again to make sure the lights were 100% working. I have put more than enough lights in my lantern so that shadow can be shown more significantly.
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1. Try out whether the longer side is positive or negative. (It was tested that the wires on the positive side and negative sides cannot touch each other otherwise the light will not grow) 2. After connecting the wires and light bulb with the battery box, the light was successfully shined. 3. I started creating a lighting pathway using parallel circuit but not series so that when one light bulb does not work, lights of the others will not be affected. 4. Only one light bulb is put inside the smallest sphere to see whether it is shiny enough 5. How and where the light is put 6. The effect of light shining through the dash holes 7. The effect of lighting is tested for the other sphere 8, 9: Light is attached to the surface of the model and a dispersion of shadow is shown 10, 11: a wire of lights are hanged in the centre of the model and a more concentrated shadow is shown 12: How lights and shadow show at last
3.5 final model
Reflection
The first module has been a tough and challenging yet inter-
esting task because from 0 knowledge of using this digital form of comprising all sorts of images and ideas into a portfolio, time consumed was way more than other subjects. Even though it is a subject with massive workload, I was so impressed what I have achieved and done and created at the end of each module. They were all worth it. Ideation is how the ideas and concepts are formed; while after these 3 weeks of work, I have gained plenty of knowledge of what natural process is, and how it can transform to a model. The first 3 weeks sounded the longest as everything is still on progress and not used to how things work. Every single week has its own mission to complete, I could not imagine if I missed out one week of work during the semester. I sure would have no time to catch up with the work. Although I have struggled a little bit at the start of Module One, it turned out okay and it fascinated me a lot which I started finding this subject fun and interesting. The thing I found the most difficult for me for this module was that I always could not be bothered doing all the sketches or drawings on my visual diary and then scanning them one by one back to here which I always just did all the researches and use images on the internet or words to explain what I meant or express instead of using my own diagrams or sketches. I really have to learn to do more sketches as this subject is called VIRTUAL but not VERBAL. Time management was also a great improvement for myself not only after the first module but other modules or even in the future for this field. Every Tuesday is my sleepless night as Wednesday is the tutorial. Every week I started doing it on Saturday or Sunday which I found I did not have enough time to finish it on Tuesday night. Time management had been so important for subjects like these. In order not to have my black eye circles staying with me for the rest of the semester or in the future, I should plan my time efficiently and start doing it earlier so as to have a good but not hurry outcome and heavy life.
The second module is getting harder and more challenging than the first module. Most of the difficulties actually come from using the digital form (Rhino) to create and design the model out. The Rhino program has driven me crazy over the whole 3 weeks. This module was mainly aimed to discuss the transformation of forms and patterns and show the relationship between them and the final decision of the design outlook. After the first module, I could analyse, imagine, explore, simulate and finally represent the model in an abstraction way. During the progress, the lectures and readings have inspired me quite a lot in the sense how I should connect the concept of my natural process and the layout/outlook my model should look in a complex form and also more like a lantern look. Time management, even though has been improved after 3 weeks of work, still time was limited because I could not be able to try out a complicated prototype. I did not include sufficient and enough written description besides all the tryout testing and models. Making the prototypes gave me an idea what roughly the structure of my model would be looked like even though at that time my surface of my model has already transformed to another pattern. By using lighting effect and shadowing, it assist me in exploring more ideas on the lantern and working out whether it is workable to do it in that way or not. All in all, this second module is a fun one which I have learnt so much more new knowledge and I feel like I am on the progress of becoming a professional person in using Rhino and InDesign.
The third module is my favourite module which also lasts the longest among all the modules. Over the 4 weeks including the spring break, I have been focusing on the fabrication every single day which although I have experienced lots of failure and unsuccessful moments, it was definitely the most fun time I have ever had. That was really an essentially rewarding moment as I could see my final model after all the 6 weeks of staying up late, never leaving the computer lab for the whole day and running out of ideas. I still remembered the most depressing time was the time when I was making my first prototype with a 1:1 scale. After I printed out the paper cards out, I did not fold and stick pieces into strips one by one but instead, fold and stick them all together. When I tried to stick one strip to another one I found out that they did not match together. I was so shock that I did not flip the surfaces and I triangulated faces after unrolling them but not before. That took me the whole first week of my spring break. I really did think of giving up on making another prototype, that totally brought me into hell!!! Although the design of the model turned out alright with the linkage of the concept and the effect of using black and white, I still needed to redesign and reconstruct the whole model in the middle of module 3 in order to have a better understanding of the concept and the reason behind. The analysis and reasons giving parts in this module seemed like have taken me an essential place, it was a platform for me to explain the best I could to show how this model is transformed before leading to the next step. I do not know it is because I have been looking and staying with this model every day and night for those 4 full weeks, I started finding the layout was too complicated and it felt like it was a bit too messy to have that extra part. Unfortunately, I could never redo the whole thing start from the start, I would if I could have 4 more weeks. I would love to redesign everything from the concept of the natural process. I know it is because it was the first time I did a model design in this way, it is acceptable if there are a lot to improve. Anyway, this module still went quite well even though I expected to achieve more than that.
I found myself gaining more and more of the knowledge and my current work done is going to lead to my direction in the future and I was excitingly looking forward to it.
Evaluation of the final model
The final model was a bit disappointing for me personally as I expected to achieve more than this. Anyway, in evaluating myself how I did for my model, I found it interesting and enjoyable and at the same time I have improved my thinking and representing skills. The whole model making process gave me an opportunity to build up my progress developmental knowledge. It is not easy to only do the sketches or use words to explain but the combination of both. I have added a part of the model after the first prototype that I knew it was not a good idea to do so because it was very difficult to go back to the concept and build on the structure again. Furthermore, my first reason for adding those 3 spheres was not working as I could not give a detail reason for it at first, ending up thinking of another reason after making the structure of the model. In the future, I am sure this will never happen as I struggled a lot when I was doing the reasoning part. Overall, This subject once again (although it has been said for many times in each module) has exposed me to new opportunities in the range of design.
Learning outcome
Through the whole progress, lectures by different guest speakers, readings in each module and tutorial times have insisted me in understanding and improving the standard of my learning outcome. In each module, suitable guests were invited to give speeches, it was really helpful in the sense I did think more deeper and progressively after the lectures. Especially in week 4, Paul Loh demonstrated and explained a lot of information about how pattern works and should be distributed. After that lecture, I noticed that I should investigate more on how the pattern of
the butterfly or the caterpillar work so as to create or construct a better model design with a great and reasonable pattern. The Life Cycle is so complicated and that the pattern is a design tool to break it down into pieces and do the elaboration. From week 9, it was
taught that the new technologies permit us to expand our horizons and modify designs easier than the past. In this subject, we could find out how important technology is and how programming can assist us in solving complicated task such as grasshopper was replaced the tabs created manually and FabLab cutting machines were used in assisting of the cutting procedures. All the lectures and readings were so useful that I could not list them one by one here, I can only clarify that the learning outcome of this subject has planned very well for students to gain knowledge of designing things.
The skills of fabrication
The fabrication part was my favourite part because it was so fun cutting, sticking and there will be a sense of accomplishment after finishing the model successfully. It was very frustrated during the progress of building both prototypes and final model after failing the first prototype. I was shock when I first failed after building the first strip of the prototype. It was like dropping to the hell when I could not match the two strips together. For the second fabrication moment, every step of the construction was very careful because I did not want to reprint the whole thing again, it was absolutely wasting money and time and effort. Luckily the brief outlook of the model was generated except the fact that the problem with the thickness of the paper that was mentioned previously which lead to redo the whole model once again. Even though I have experienced all the failing and depression, it was shown significantly that my skills of fabrication has improved progressively. “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.� It improved my skills and standard of fabrication and editing.
The material used and how the concept was represented were closely related and dependent by each other as the type of material can help in explaining my concept and what I want to show. For example, I use both back and white paper cards to explain the idea of contrast, if I use only use either of them I cannot classify the main point and it is not representative at the end. It is very important to be clear that what I wanted to tell the audience before choosing my material because the forms and patterns or simply how the model looked were observed or captured first.
References: • Life Cycle of the Butterflies <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qwdS3KGqb0&feature=related> • Butterfly Metamorphosis <http://www.thebutterflysite.com/life-cycle.shtml> • Butterfly Site <http://www.kidsbutterfly.org/> • Video of butterfly life cycle <http://vimeo.com/4155705> • Caterpillar crawl movement <http://dadesai.wordpress.com/> • Times Eureka Pavilion <http://www.archdaily.com/142509/times-eureka-pavilion-nex-architecture/> http://www.archdaily.com/142509/times-eurekapavilion-nex-architecture/ • Precedents of Butterfly house <http://refugiosanfrancisco.pbworks.com/w/page/11236182/HR_Habitat%20Precedents> < http://www.mayaprzybylski.com/systemstalkerlab/?paged=2 > < http://nkathuto-gallant.blogspot.com.au/ > • TED talk by Lisa Harouni about a primer on 3D printing <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhYvDS7q_V8>
• Readings Macfarland, B (2005): Making Ideas. In Architecture in the Digital Age, B. Kolarevic (ed.), Spon Press, London, pp. 182-198 • Review of “Power of Making“ < http://humanfingers.wordpress.com/2011/11/27/review-power-of-making-va-curated-by-daniel-charny/ >