Donavan Thornton

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A cover image of a book: a green tree grows from soil situated inside a lightbulb, appearing to take the place of a filament; the image represents the biomimetic lamp designs inside the book called Glowcraft, an academic project completed by Donavan Thornton.

Glowcraft

Biomimetic Design

This is a final project for a course I took this semester.


From the Project Methodology:

The final designs and 3D models created for this project were not sketched or planned beforehand as might be typical. Instead, upon reflection of themes and determination of design prerogatives, 3D modeling was undertaken in an experimental way.

No generative AI tools were used to design or create the works presented in this project, but certain tools were employed to assist in the generation of natural, organic shapes. In particular, Blender’s Geometry Nodes system was used, interfaced via an addon called Organix. The output of this addon is especially apparent in design number one, Colony.

In some cases that required relative precision and specific dimensions, modeling tasks were completed using SolidWORKS, as in the transition shape used for the lamp body in Canopy; however, much of the project’s geometry was constructed through Boolean experiments in Blender with no real focus on precision. The aim instead was to achieve outcomes that reflected the design goals in original and at least ostensibly aesthetically pleasing forms.

Material selection and construction was approached similarly; guided by the project’s focus on sustainability and organic design, research was conducted to select a set of materials and manufacturing processes for each design.

Final photorealistic images were produced with Blender’s Cycles, an unbiased path-tracing render engine, with the addition of utilizing the ACES color space system.

The orthographic drawings were composited in Photoshop using output from Blender’s Workbench renderer and Freestyle line generation features.

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