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2. DIGITAL BODIES

INSPIRING ARTISTS WORKING WITH HUMAN BODY

1. ME, Rosa Verloop, 2013 | 2. Hannah Villiger: Block XXX, 1993-1994 | 3. Einkreisung, Valie Export, 1976 | 4. Men & Women, Tamara Kvesitadze

  1. Rosa Verloop
    I am inspired by the deformed body sculptures of Rosa Verloop which are created from stuffed nylons. I like how the asthetics departs from the image of perfect bodies that constantly surrounds us.

  2. Hannah Villiger
    Hannah Villiger combines fragmented and abstracted body parts in her works, engaging with self-image, the body’s relation to identity, and skin as an interface between inner and outer worlds. I like how the body parts are no longer recognizable; through this, they appear deformed yet reassembled into something new and whole.

  3. Valie Export - Body Configuration (1972- 1976)
    She uses her body as an artistic medium to challenge social power structures, which I find inspiring. In Body Configurations (1972–1976), she explores the body as a political, ideological, and technological tool through performative photography.

  4. Tamara Kvesitadze - Kinetic Sculptures
    Tamara Kvesittadze’s works inspire me for the digital bodies week because they look built and pieced together in a way that reminds me of what we can do with a laser cutter.

CREATING A DIGITAL BODY

My project for week two is called "Dual Minds" and my aim was to create a half of a head with a smaller head inside it.

Workflow

This graphics from Isobel Jo Leonard gives a nice overview of all the steps from creating a digital body to producing a physical result.

Workflow Digital Bodies, Isobel Jo Leonard

Make Human

Make Human is a software for creating human avatars. You can customize the avatar as you need. It is easy to use and quite self-explanatory. I created a human here and exported it as an STL file. The STL file can be imported into Blender or Rhino.

Tip: Save the file as a MakeHuman file in case you need to get back to work on the avatar. The file "human.stl" is interchangeable and good for geometry only. Use OBJ format if you also want textures.

Interface of MakeHuman

Rhino 3D

Creating half a head

  • Import the STL file from Make Human into Rhino.

  • Cut off the head from my human body avatar.

    • Created a plane and positioned it where I wanted to make the cut.
    • Used Boolean Split to perform the cut.
    • Deleted the part I cut off, leaving only the head.

  • After cutting, I had to close the open side to create a closed mesh.

  • Then I copied the half of the head it scale it smaller.

Head & divided head in both sizes

Closing mesh of the head

Create the shaping inside the head

After scaling the head down to 0.7 of its original size, I positioned it inside the larger head.

  • I attempted a Boolean Difference to create a mold of the smaller head inside the larger head.
  • This did not work initially due to geometry issues—see image below.
  • Therefore, I recommend cleaning up the geometry thoroughly before proceeding further.
  • After cleaning up the geometry the Boolean Difference worked.

Failed boolean though geometry issues & succesful boolean

Troubleshooting Geometry

  • The human mesh had a complex geometry structure, which I had to simplify by deleting unnecessary parts.
  • I also had to close holes that appeared around the mouth and eye openings by patching surfaces and joining mesh objects. Usually this can be done by "Repair Mesh" but as the hole is bigger you have to do it by hand

How to close a mesh:

  1. Select a plane tool and create surface attachted to the object
  2. Select all new added surfaces -Join
  3. Go to Mesh - From nurbes object
  4. The hole is now filled up
  5. Delete the surfaces

Closing mesh on the head's open side

Creating the small head

  • I scaled another head smaller and positioned it inside the larger head. Using all four viewports for accurate postitioning

Failed boolean though geometry issues & succesful boolean

Fixing both heads

  • To fix everything together securely, I needed a support structure, so I created a hole for a stand inside the heads by choosing a cylinder, placing it through both heads, and using a Boolean Difference.

  • Export file 1 as stl. for slicer and saved it as 3dm. 2 as well.

Slicer for Fusion 360

Always measure the size of my material before slicing. For my project, I have cardboard with a thickness of 3 mm, a width of 760 mm, and a height of 1160 mm. I then enter these material dimensions into the slicer settings, setting a margin of 10 mm around the material.

Cardboard Settings

As construction technique I chose: Stacked Slices and slice the model according to these settings3.

Stacked Slices

Finally, I export the sliced sheets as a PDF 4 to my computer to be lasercut

Sliced sheet for lasercutting

Building up the head in Slicer


Preview of the 3D Model in Slicer

Dual-Minds by johanna.schrue on Sketchfab

Laser Cutter

Instructions

  1. Turn on the laser cutter using the red switch. - When "please wait" appears push reset Button immidiately
  2. Turn on the auxiliary power.
  3. For navigating the head of the laser use the yellow arrows (pressing long = moving faster)
  4. Open the lid completely to for adjusting material inside the lasercutter
  5. Turn on the ventilation before starting to cut.

Switch lasercutter & navigation arrows

Adjusting the Laser Cutter

  • I position the laser head in the middle of the material to check the height.

  • Place a measurement piece underneath to calibrate the height.

  • Move the laser head to the starting point for cutting (usually the lower-left corner), about 1 cm inside the material edge.

Height calibration

PC & LightBurn Software

  • Insert the USB stick into the PC and copy project in Fabricademy folder

  • Open LightBurn software and drag and drop the file inside.

After importing the file:

  • Edit and delete duplicate elements.
  • Close any open shapes if needed.
  • Delete the frame around the imported file.
  • Select all to check that no cutting pieces lie outside the material frame.

Cutting sheet in LightBurn

Frame Test

Before cutting perform a frame test - rectangle frame - to check material border - circle - checkt all cutting pieces' borders

Cutting Process

  • Check the material library to get an idea of appropriate settings for speed and power according to your material

  • First do a cutting test: Create a rectangle and a circle on the cutting sheet, select and - turn on "Cut selected Graphics" to only cut these pieces

  • Run a test cut first to check speed and power by placing a test rectangle on the sheet.

  • Engrave first, then cut—this way, if something falls off, the piece is already named.

Speed and Power Guidelines

  • More speed means less cutting power.
  • Settings for 3mm cardboard:
    • Cut: Power 40, Speed max. 30, min. 20
    • Engrave: Power 300, Speed max.15, min.12

Settings cut & engrave

After Cutting take all materials out of the lasercutter, turn off the ventilation and only turn off only the red power button of the laser cutter.

Assembling the head

  • The head consists of 104 pieces of cardboard, which I had to glue together like a huge puzzle. Fortunately, the number of each piece was engraved, so I just had to follow the numbers to assemble it. This still took some time.

  • I adjusted the small head with a nylon thread so that it is hanging inside the bigger head.

Building up the physical head

Final result

Dual minds, fully assembled

Dual minds, front & side view

3D-SCANNING

Set Up

As part of the setup for 3D scanning, we built a green screen wall and a turntable. We positioned the camera on the table.

Setup 3D-Scanning

Scanning process

As Scannig software we used Creality Scan which is easy to handel.

Preparation

  • We connected the scanner to the computer

  • Remove any jewelry or glasses and tie up hair for better scan accuracy.

  • It is best to conduct scans outside on a cloudy day for the best lighting conditions.

Scanning

  • We positioned the camera on the table. The person being scanned sat on a turntable and slowly rotated themselves to capture all angles.

  • The object to be scanned must be shown in green on the interface of Creality Scan, which means it has been fully captured and covered by the scan.

Scanning

Processing the Scan in Creality Scan

Once scanning is complete, process the point cloud and mesh reconstruction within Creality Scan.

  1. First, we manually deleted unnecessary points, then clicked on Point Cloud Optimization to clean and improve the data. This process may take several minutes, so ensure the computer stays on.

  2. Next, under Mesh, we reduced the mesh size to make the dataset smaller and easier to handle.

  3. Color Mapping is used to apply realistic colors to the scan, but we skipped this step in this example.

  4. We Export final 3D model in obj. or stl. prepared to use in Rhino or Blender.

Creality Scan interface - processing the 3D-Scan

Processing the Scan in Rhimo

  • To get a smooth bottom surface of your scan use a Boolean Split


3D-Scan as 3D-Model

  • The scan worked out very well, apart from the nose, which looks a little weird. This might be due to the shadows caused by the lighting.

3D-scan-face by johanna.schrue on Sketchfab

FILES

  1. File: stl.file dual-minds-head ↩

  2. File: 3dm.file for rhino dual-minds-head ↩

  3. File: pdf. slice-sheet for laser cutter ↩

  4. File: 3dmk. file for slicer dual-minds-head ↩