student

The process of building a 3D model: It is not perfect, but it is mine.

~ Leia ~ Leave a comment

At the start of this journey, we were warned that tears might be involved in the process of creating our 3D models.

Since then, I have spent a whole week taking pictures, selecting them, changing their format, creating more than a hundred masks, re-taking pictures, creating even more masks. Then, when that part was done, I tried again and again to merge different parts of my model together. Slowly losing my sanity, I watched as my figurine developed an ingrown ear or became a sphere made of two heads.  

I can now say that tears seem perfectly fitting to the creation of this project.

I have not felt like this during the whole process. Taking pictures, setting the light box and the camera was fun. Even if I had to start over because I had missed some angles, my mistake there was clear and although time consuming, it was easy to fix. The masks were extremely time consuming but also repetitive and not too challenging. I used those hours to listen to music or call my family and friends as I was working.

Merging my two dense clouds was the most nerve-wracking part of the process. Mainly because when something went wrong, it was hard to understand why. This made it difficult to improve. Fortunately, by then, I was familiar with Metashape and knew my way around the different tools. Hence, I was more comfortable trying out different things with my model. I ended up cutting out any part of my second dense cloud that I did not need to fill in the missing parts of the first one. This allowed my final model to have no weird overlap in certain sections and no second pair of ears.

Here is an overview of my thoughts during the process of merging my clouds together in the form of the renaming of my different attempts. This illustrates the type of learning curve you should expect when building a 3D model for the first time.

When my final attempt at merging worked I felt really excited and when the texture of the model was done, I jumped out of my seat. I was proud, of course, but honestly, I was also glad that this was over.

So here is my model, it is not perfect but it is mine.

Anime figurine 3D model by Leia Bonjean. Available here.

A phenomenological anecdote : A not so silent (zoom) class

~ Leia ~ Leave a comment

I breathe loudly because I am sick and my nose is stuck. There is noise outside my window. I hear flapping wings and a loud cooing. The pigeons are fighting again and flying from the roof above my window to my neighbours’ roof. I hear my roommate pass by and her steps in the stairs as she walks down to the kitchen. I’m in class on Zoom. The mic of the teacher is scratchy and emits a high-pitched sound every time she speaks and it hurts my head. My nose is so stuck, I sniff loudly every 10 seconds and the sounds of my sniffs cover the teacher’s voice. I am breathing with my mouth opened like a fish. I hear cars bumping on the pavement in my street. I hear buses and traffic through my window from the larger street on the other side of my house. My roommate is cooking now while having a conversation in Italian on her phone. I hear her voice in words that I don’t understand and the sizzling sound of the onions in the pan. I hear the washing machine in the background. It is finishing a wash and is spinning fast, so I can hear it even though it’s on the ground floor and I am on the second floor. My chair creeks and I feel bothered by the sound of my mouth breathing. The teacher mentions the silence on her side since everyone is muted. Silence. I wonder what that feels like.

My favorite digital tools for studying: the lofi girl and study bunny

~ Leia ~ Leave a comment

This is the lofi girl. It’s a playlist that you can listen to live, anytime you want. She is animated so she studies with you, flips the pages of her book, looks outside the window, takes notes, and her cat is always there!

If you study at night, the view from her window is dark and her lamp is on, which reinforces this impression that she is studying all day and night with you. And most importantly, the music is pretty nice. I always put this playlist first thing when I start to study. It helps me focus and puts me in “study mode”. There is a whole community around the lofi girl and she is also available on Spotify and other streaming platforms, so feel free to check it out!

Every time I study on my own, I turn my study bunny on. He studies with you and for every study session you get coins that you can spend on stuff to pimp your bunny’s room.

You loose coins during breaks, but you also get little inspirational quotes from your bunny. He gets a cute little smile when you studied and starts sulking a bit when you haven’t studied for a while. The app allows you to track the number of hours you study every day. You can use a stopwatch or a countdown and also: you can name your bunny! Mine is called Tobio and I am pretty attached to him.. Plus, can you please note the pun in the name? Study buddy? Bunny? Right?