Glass Icons
A practical learning exercise with CAD, 3D modeling, UVMapping, Lighting Effects & Rendering using various software. Popular icons from social media, Adobe and other software were re-created as 3D models. These were rendered in different materials from metals, wood and glass. Some were animated with interesting results. Some of the best ideas come out of play and experimenting. Everyone uses icons. Most artist play around and put their own spin on them sooner or later. These were some I did around 2010 one day when I was learning CAD.
Project Details —
I can honestly say without hesitation, compared to the work I’m doing today, these were pretty bad. But you have to learn in order to get better. I’m willing to share some old homework with the class because as bad as I think these were, they’re still a good effort and taugh me much. These were my learning assignments in CAD and 3D when I was just beginning to understand a new world.
The icons were turned from graphics into CAD models. From there they were imported as .OBJ files into a 3D program. These models were UV Mapped to allow textures and lighting effects to be applied afterwards. Once a model is created the fun can begin and all sorts fo things can happen by chance or design.
Client
Personal Project
Services
Graphic Design
CAD
3D Rendering
UV Mapping
Animation
Icon Images —
The models were tested out for animation possibilities and lighting effects. Icons created from the Adobe suite were; Acrobat, After Effects, Extension Manager, Flash, (I did say this was a few years ago), Illustrator, In Design and Photoshop. Social and other icons created for this project were: Blink, Blogger, Blogmarks, Design Bump, Devianart, Digg, Diigo, FaceBook, Flickr, Geeknet, Joomla, Linked In, Magento, My Space, Newsvine, PayPal, Picasa, RSS Feed, Stumble Upon, Subscribe, Technocracy, Twitter, Typepad, WordPress, Yahoo Buzz, X-Cart and Zen Cart. Just below are a few of the examples.
Additional Notes On Project —
This project was practical in better understanding the tools and resources needed between programs. Also it established a better pipeline for the work to see how ‘resource heavey’ 3D software was and how to manage time for projects while projects were rendering.