Marcus Van Gorden - Week 6 DNA Model

     For the ring assignment I wanted to do something simple, yet elegant and meaningful. I turned to nature for my inspiration and I wanted to do a ring that represented more than just a ring, but also something else easily recognized. Being a geek myself I have loved the look of the false color DNA images since I saw it in Jurassic Park. Naturally I wanted to try and replicate that look in a ring that would be elegant enough to actually wear, yet geeky enough where it still had some meaning other than just a piece of jewelry. 

     I constructed the ring by first making a cylinder that was the same size as a 5.5 ring (my girlfriends ring size). I then extracted the UV information and made it into a surface. I drew a center line and made two helix curves with 5 turns around the curve. Then using my near, perpendicular, and vertex snaps I used the top, front and perspective view ports to make the DNA material in the center evenly spaced, and always perpendicular to the the outer helix. Next I Piped the Helix with a .5 MM radius all around so I could print it on Shapeways in silver. Then I flowed it along the surface, and blended the two exposed edges that didn't match up exactly to close it off 

     For my renders I first wanted to do a fun color render to represent the different chemicals in DNA ( adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine), in their false colors just like in Jurassic Park. I rendered them in colored plastics and paints after separating it into 6 layers based on each component and chemical. 

    My next render I wanted to do something a little more classy, So I rendered it out in gold for the double helix and the genetic material in silver.

      Since my girlfriend's favorite metal is rose gold regardless of how much I think It's tacky. I wanted to do a render in passes to give the illusion of rose gold since Keyshot didn't have it as a material to begin with. I rendered out a black layer for the shadows, a white one for the highlights, and a pink layer to give that rose gold appearance.  I think it turned out very well. I exported it as an STL file and ordered it on Shapeways in premium silver so it might actually even get worn (my girlfriend is pretty geeky)!