My initial idea came from a character we are using in the game for our thesis. This character is comprised of mostly wire frames, but when he collects light certain faces on the wire frame light up and become solid. I wanted to created a similar object from a 3D scan of myself.

The first step was creating a low ploy feel to my 3D scan. So I reduced the polygons in Maya, made them into triangles, and then fixed up problem areas in the topology manually. I then created a wire frame model of the mesh by importing it into Rhino and convert it using a Grasshopper sketch utilizing Weaverbird and Exoskeleton. Finally, I imported the wire frame model back to Maya and booleaned it with a new version of the aforementioned low poly model where I removed a large number of faces to give it a shattered look.

The main problem I had was fabrication. I was able to successfully print a version of the final model. However, the printed object was too small and with the low resolution of maker bot, the wire frames were barely noticeable. I then tried to scale the model up, but I was met with print export errors where maker bot program would fail to create slices for the model. I eventually had to give up on scaling it up and decided to print a version where I booleaned the wire frame model with the original low poly model without the removed faces.

Wire Frame Character

Concept Render

Printed Objects

Grasshopper