Thursday, February 13, 2014

Quinn Baldacci: Week 5 Sunglasses






The concept for the design I was given was a pair of glasses with a solar cell on the front and the possibility to charge small electronics from that solar cell.  The design itself was fairly simple.  The only tricky part was figuring out how to add the usb port without it being to obtrusive.  In the end I decided it would have to go at the end of one of the arms as anywhere else would be too bulky and would seriously throw off the balance of the frame.

To create these glasses I used sweep, extrude, and booleandifference a lot.  After I scanned the original sketches I traced them over in photoshop and tweaked the curves a bit to better fit the design.  The lenses are inset into the frame so they won't come loose.  The solar cell matches the frame shape and size and sits at the front.  There are two small hinges on the arms.  The usb port is at the end of one of the arms.  I imported my flash drive from last week and using booleandifference, created a usb port in the arm.  In the last rendering I added a simple mock up charging cord to show how it works a little better.

I wasn't given an indication of material or color other than the solar cell on the front.  To get the look of a solar cell I used one of the granite textures and played with the color and scale of it.  Then I decided to play with the frame itself.  The frame is just a shiny black plastic.  The arms I designed after a pair of my own glasses.  They have a tortoise-shell design but are transparent.  To do this in keyshot, I again took one of the granite textures and played with it's attributes.  I just kept trying things until I found something that worked.  That ended up being a dielectric type texture with the original granite pattern and then the color density turned way down.  The hinges are chrome and the usb port is white plastic and gold contacts.

1 comment:

  1. identify the designer in your post. include the original drawings

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