Self Portrait



Voxel Printed Film
With Victoria University School of Design acquiring access to complete a single 3D print on the J750, the brief for this project was left open to use the printer if the students wanted to; in any way, they see fit. Therefore I created my brief summed up in the objective: To showcase the Voxel printing capability of the Stratasys J750 through creative design output.

Inspiration
Es Delvin (production stage designer) was an inspiration due to her aesthetic use of light projection on objects, particularly the work on the “American Psycho” production and her quote “show me a film that I can hold, then I will be impressed”


Themes
The idea of 3D printing film was a natural idea, which was simple but unexplored and would showcase not just the ability of the J750, but the phenomenon of bridging the digital and physical realms. This theme explores how craft and process in the digital space can translate to a physical designed object; a theme which has gained traction through the technological progression of 3D printing. However, when this design was done there was no seamless transition between image and object, this design addresses the challenge of that theme.

Process
The footage very simple with a plain white background, reducing the amount of background imagery and therefore data. A simple background enhances the movement of the subject. The white background acts as a greenscreen, knowing later that I would apply the transparent feature and remove the colour before printing. What you film is what appears on the 3D printer you can think of the filming of the video as your CAD or rendering program, as it allocates what voxels go where.


Traditionally slicing film was done by physically cutting frames out and mending the film back to make one continuous wheel of film. To digitally do this, I exported every 30th or so frame out of my 32 seconds of footage. The video is now a collection of PNG images (frames) rather than a video file. The voxel printing process is to render out the pixels with each of the pixels allocated specific properties. As the pixels have already been given their positional data via the film, and colour data via the editing. The files were exported in order, via a batch process from Photoshop. As the file is combined, the printer will print them by stacking the images, starting from the last and finishing on the first.


Final Design
Traditionally slicing film was done by physically cutting frames out and mending the film back to make one continuous wheel of film. To digitally do this, I exported every 30th or so frame out of my 32 seconds of footage. The video is now a collection of PNG images (frames) rather than a video file. The voxel printing process is to render out the pixels with each of the pixels allocated specific properties. As the pixels have already been given their positional data via the film, and colour data via the editing. The files were exported in order, via a batch process from Photoshop. As the file is combined, the printer will print them by stacking the images, starting from the last and finishing on the first.

The voxel print is several hundred layers of the exported frame taken from a 32-second video. The video is footage of me getting my portrait photo taken, this was a bit of a poetic statement as it reflects the camera and photography themes of the printing process.
The video starts with me in a chair, and pans right while slowly zooming in on myself; this showcases the range of movement captured in the print.