Every submarine needs a dock and the Mechanical fish sub is no different. In fact this dock will be as imaginative as the fish itself.
The mechanical fish and dock use just about every trick in the book. As always, the vectors were first. Everything except the letters were created in EnRoute. I could have done the lettering in EnRoute as well but I’ve gotten used to doing it in Illustrator.
ALthough the file wasn’t overly complex it did make me scratch my head a little as I worked it all out. The sign required that I routed it in six layers.There will be a fair amount of hand sculpting to finish things off. The layer for the lettering was first as everything else would relate to it. The lettering would be carved into the face while the rivets would be raised. The two pillars will feature hand made stone work. The first task was to build the vectors for each layer.
Then I started creating the submarine dock. I modified the relief by adding a half inch thick flat section.
Then I raised the center section and kept the lettering sunken.
I also dropped the two portions under the lettering the same amount.
The rivets were domed up with a base of 0.1″ This makes a pretty tall rivet at this scale but they will look great when I paint up this piece. This made the first layer ready for tool pathing and routing.
The next file to get created was the bak piece which featured a deep textured dish in the middle. To create the dome I used the oval vector and the doming tool with a negative value. Then I added the SLOTCHES bitmap from the TEXTURE MAGIC Collection I used a value of 0.2″ wish generated a good sized texture. I enlarged the bitmap so it was deep but subtle.
I had previously created an oval with a cutout by using the jigsaw tool. I created a zero height relief using this vector. Then I used it as the base relief and MERGED HIGHEST with the dished relief I had just created. This gave me the shape I needed for the piece.
I also created two middle layers to accommodate the hidden LED lighting mod
ules. Two more
upper layers were also added to the stone posts and one final layer to the bottom as well, totalling six layers. An oversize base is also in the works to finish things off.
