[Story Time...]
When I asked my wife to marry me, being the awkward man that I am, of course I didn't do with it with a ring! Instead I decided to do something a little more personal. Since we were going the traditional route and my wife-to-be was going to take my name I thought sure why not give it to her then! What resulted over a frantic few weeks of logistical juggling before I popped the question in front of our families on Christmas morning, were these 5 little sculptures. Each piece is a personalized symbolic promise at the root of every letter of my surname "Kelly".
When I asked my wife to marry me, being the awkward man that I am, of course I didn't do with it with a ring! Instead I decided to do something a little more personal. Since we were going the traditional route and my wife-to-be was going to take my name I thought sure why not give it to her then! What resulted over a frantic few weeks of logistical juggling before I popped the question in front of our families on Christmas morning, were these 5 little sculptures. Each piece is a personalized symbolic promise at the root of every letter of my surname "Kelly".
Ultimately, once I had them sculpted I wanted to have them 3D Printed in metal. The sculpts themselves are fairly low resolution as there was a file size limit on what I could print but the print itself gives some nice texture to the metal. I had them 3D printed in bronze and mounted inside an treasure chest heirloom I received as a child. After some fiddling about it all came together in time for the big day and despite some understandable confusion in the moment, she did in fact say yes and the rest is history. Thank feck as we say in Ireland!
[Project Details]
This strange little animation atop this project (which I assure you, is not some bizarre exercise in narcissism) came about when I decided to grab those Z-Brush sculptures and film them in some way. Blender has been on my radar as late since it's been getting some major love from the 3D community and it's dedicated developers so I decided I'd see what the real-time render engine, Eevee could do. I was a bit blown away with what I was able to do with it. Sure it may not quite live up to the realism of your traditional raytracers yet and there are some artifacts but it's not too shabby considering! I hope you enjoy.
Below you can see some stills of the finished 3D printed project.
Visuals and sound are my own. Main video is muted by default, please un-mute for some trippy ambience if you like.
