[38] L'lasons de Aether ver Beinags #20

Yet again, I have more media than I have words, so I'll just describe what I deem necessary.

However, there is a lot of media, so there will still be a considerable amount of words.

I noticed some problems with the original gem model, so I tweaked it a bit.

It doesn't look noticeably different, and yet it's over 100 triangles lighter, from a 600-something down to 499.

The gem needed a type of holder that could account for its odd shape, so I thought of having a structure with spider-like appendages that would pinch it into place.

I started with a 16-segment torus, and extruded out 8 of those a bit.

From here, there's a tiny gap between screenshots, but I ran into a problem.

for the actual legs of this structure, I wanted to only have to edit one section, and it would carry over to the others, for a total of 8 legs.

I forgot to apply a mirror modifier, so to copy over the leg pattern, I copied the entire thing, culled all except the sections I want to splice, and then stitch them back together:

Here's an example of copying and rotating.

This wasn't the first time this process happened, because there was originally only a single leg. Prior to this image, it was done twice, which is why there are 4 legs already attached. (2^#of_times = 4.)

(The gem is shown here for scale.)

Next, the unnecessary sections are culled.

Finally, both sections are put into it's proper place, before stitching any seams back together.

After all of that is done, I splayed out the 'knees' of the legs for some reason.

The things that will hold the actual gem in place should be opposable, but I haven't had the time to properly rig them yet.

This is what the whole thing looks like in its current state.

For the mirror, going off of the gimbal design, I started off with a flat cylinder that has two pivot joints.

I started out making the joints stem from the inside outward, but I realized that It would be inconsistent for the method I used to make the rest.

This is the form that I like a lot more.

Once the gimbals were finished, there needed to be something so that it doesn't immediately fall over.

I extruded part of the bottom section to use as its support, with a gap in between the two fused extrusion points.

After that, I started extruding it out in the other direction, widening it in the process.

This is what the mirror looks like in its current state:

And this is what the holder looks like in its current state:

That's it for this week.