Raiden Shogun-JiuChanZhiYuan-Genshin

For the final project, I did a light ball. My plan is that the light will always shoot to the top, and there will be a complext outer sphere that could freely rotate. With the rotation of the sphere, the light will show different patterns on the ceiliing. The appearance of the light ball was inspired by game Genshin, which will be explained in the next step.

Step 1: Inspiration & Sketch

Last month, my favorite game Genshin has a huge update to the story and the map. Indeed, a new character, the Raiden Shogun (pic1), the controller of Daoqi, attracted me so much that I spent more than 4000 Yuan (500+USD) to get her. And the item in pic 2 is the thing that all players have to buy to gain new characters. Since I spent so much money buying this to get Raiden Shogun, I decide to make a "JiuChanZhiYuan - Raiden Shogun Customized Version". The outside was composed of 6 decorative stripts and 2 hexagrams. In my project, while following the original shape, I will design new patterns and decorations. The inside should be some crystal-like thing, but I replace it into the structure that I showed in pic 3. Pic 3 is an ancient Chinese artifact called "Silver Incense Burner". It was designed to hold incense, and the magic of its structure is that no matter how the outer sphere rotates, the inner structure that holds incense will always face up and will not fall. In my project, the incense was replaced by light.

Pic4 is my sketch about the structure and decorations. I divide my making procees into two parts: the outer decorations will use lazer cut and plywood, and the inner structure, including the complex sphere, will use 3D printing. With in the biggest sphere, there should be 3 rings and a dome(which holds incense) in the center. Rings has to connect with each other in different directions and should be able to freely rotate.

Step 2: The Complex Sphere

The first thing I have to deal with is the complex, biggest sphere. I make a semi-sphere in Rhino first(I will copy and paste the other have to form a complete sphere), and then make use of the voronoi function in grasshopper. Originally I baked the multipipe(shown in pic2), but the result is that since the parts are so small, the amount is so big, and they overlapping each other so much, the parts cannot be boolean into a single body. So instead of baking the multipipe straight forward, I bake Brep|Brep which only gives me lines(pic3). But there is still a lot of duplicating lines, so I use the SelDup command and move all duplicating lines out and delete them(pic4). Now I can use the multipiple tool in SubD.

Step 3: Fill the Hole

Pic 1 is the complete product of the previous step, but now I have to fill two holes that allow screws to connect the sphere with the rings and other inner structures. I delete some of the faces around the hole, and I use fill the hole function. I did this for four times, two times for each hole on both sides. In pic2 and pic3, there is a 2mm purple cylinder, which is the thing that I used to represent my 2mm-diameter screws.

Step 4: Building the Inner Structure

The inner part is much more easier than the complex sphere. There are 3 rings and a dome. The dome should hold the light, which is 12cm in diameter(this is the smallest I can get from taobao), so the dome has a diameter of 13cm and the thickness is 5mm. The interval between rings and the dome is always 1cm, and their thickness is always 5mm. I scaled the complex sphere that I just made, making it 2cm bigger in diameter than the biggest ring.

One thing that need to be point out is that ecept for the complex sphere and the dome that holds light(these two only needs two holes), the three rings all need 4 holes to connect with each other in later process. I made the holes with a 2mm diameter cylinder and use boolean to cut the cylinder from the rings.

here is the entire scene in Rhino: entire scene

And this is the complex sphere (.stl): biggest sphere

other files(rings and the dome) could be seen in the attachment

Step 5: Printing Process - Complex Sphere

The printing process is super challenging. The printer fails to complete the task for twice(pic1), and one of the failure was because the item moves during the process. After two times of failure, the complex sphere was finally printed out(pic2). I inserted the screws in the two holes.(pic 3 & 4)

Step 6: Printing Process - Inner Structure

Comparing to the complex sphere, the inner structures are easy prints. The printers successfully prints out all of the items in once.

Step 7: Putting Parts Together

Here comes another challege. The way I connect parts together is that the screw will go through two holes, and I will hot glue one of the end. In this case, the two rings could freely rotate(pic1). But the problem is that the hot glue might not be very stable and it falls off very often. This is definitely a disadvantage that I could make improvement on (maybe I should change to a stronger glue?). But for now, hot glue works okay. By using the same technique, I combine the rings and dome together. If you look carefully to pic 2, you can see that the big ring connect mid ring horozontally(if you see the up-left corner as left and down-right corner as right), and the mid ring connect small ring vertically. Then the small ring connect the dome horizontally again(pic3). This is the secret of the structure of holding incense.

Then I put my light in. This is a remote light, but I was treated by Taobao. This light is not a perfect sphere, it has a flatten base, so I have to carefully put it in the dome and I have to make sure it face straight up. Here I stick a tape to make its top, and I put the light in the dome.

The big ring connect to the complex sphere in the same way mentioned above. Finally, I use ziplock to connect the two parts of sphere together. It doesnt look so bad, but it is imperfect and only for one-time-use(if I have to change the battery of the light, I have to cut off the ziplock and do it again). So the connection between spheres could be improved.

Step 8: Lazer Cutting - Decorations

Finishing up the inner structure, here comes the decoration part. I design all the patterns in Illustator, making use of the pattern of Raiden Shogun's hair decorations and clothes. There is also thunder signs in both parts because she could control thunder. Pic 1 is actually the final version of my design, and my very first design was pic 3. After printing out pieces in pic3, I found that they are still easy to break even though they are wet. The thinner part connected to the flower is easy to bent, while the rectangle in the middle is very hard to bent and easy to break. Base on this experience, I adjust and refine my design, making everything into thin lines. I put all of the pieces in water, because when plywood gets wet, they are easier to bent. I slowly bent the stripts an use hand dryer to helpt them fixed in shape.

Step 9: Photos-white Background

Finally I hot glue all the decorations on the sphere. Some corners of the hexagram are so stiff and could not be glued on the sphere, but overall it looks nice. These are while backgroudn pictures.

Step 10: Photos-black Background

Here are the black background pictures. In the last few pictures, I turned on the light. The light could do 16 colors, but I prefer purple because this is the color of Raiden Shogun.