Well… well… here I am with the first idea for this blog…
I have a lot of projects… paused projects to be more precise which I might show here but why I cannot start in hard mode? But I need to contextualize first!!!
It starts with this stinky fox browsing the internet and suddenly fall into a post of a furry making a 3D printed fursuit head… ok, not the full operational and ready head but the skeleton of the head. Ok, I confess I’ve never though about print a fursuit head!!! So, the joy of the AuDH (Autism + ADHD combo) is whenever you hit something which might resembling or intersects your special interest, you might get into an hyperfocus!!! So, here it goes the fox wiggling his tail to find some info about printed heads and I found this guy on Thingiverse. They are a fursuit maker and also a puppet maker, so they are a professional in mechanical construction for puppets and also make awesome fursuits with movable jaws and eyes (and even ears). When I saw their profile the hyperfocus hit pretty hard into this crazy fox head!!! First thing I did… get their fox model and put it in Orca Slicer (my software for slicing 3D models into printer commands, layer by layer). When I place the upper side of head on the virtual bed on software, an error… model is too huge for your printer dumbass!!! I know, I know, I have a good IT job but my money is not infinite and also I have lots of bills to pay, so, my printer is a simple Creality Ender 3 V3, not the plus version, the small one. But, I’m a 3D modeler remember? And I have two awesome softwares for 3D model which also is free, Blender and Autodesk Fusion 360, which is a subscription sofware but the free plan has all the tools from the paid one with a limitation of simultaneous editable files. Ha, I’m a multithreaded fox (my AuDHD superpower) but I can only work on one model at time, so it fits perfectly.
So, I instinctively created a new project on Fusion, import the head pieces and slice it into small parts. The upper part I’ve slice in four parts, half vertically and slice the final part of head horizontally.
From the lower jaw, I have sliced in four parts also, the main part from jaw and each joint separately.
So, lets print it out… grab the first spool of PLA filament I’ve found and place it on printer. I’ve choose PLA because it’s pretty much straight forward to print. Place the model in Orca, choose PLA preset and you are good to go!!! After a weekend of some misprinting, errors and nozzle clogging (and eventually changing nozzle, hotend and extruder) I’ve ended up with this…
Print all the parts (8 in total) took me 24h (plus a little bit to fix and reprint sometimes) in PLA with default configuration. I had some problems with the parts because the size in printer and the need of huge support trees, but it made through!!! Glued all parts with Loctite 401 and it did a really good job, better than the common super glue (even the Loctite branded one). I know I will need to make a better fixing but well, it did a great job for now!!!
But, as you might notice, this head is kinda big and are not made with my real head size. When I get it in my head, there are still plant of space inside it and to control the jaw part with my shin, my head need to stay pretty lower so I cannot see through the eyes of it. But, this is not a real problem because when I started this hellish hyperfocus I had one (maybe two) wish in my mind to get real with this, digital eyes!!! Yep, I really wanted to glue two lcd screens into the eyes and show some eyes animations. But doing that, of course I will not see anything through them. So… how can I circumvent this? This fox has a nasty plan in his mind you know!
The plan: while I can’t see through the eyes of the head and see through the mouth is impractical in this case, my first though is put a camera outside, pretty hidden and see through a screen inside the head. A wide screen inside and I’m looking into it as a TV? Impractical also because I will lose my sense of orientation and also could be pretty dangerous just watch the outside world. Yeah, our brains are pretty strict when the subject is moving in environment. If we don’t have all the info from our “sensors” our brain will send the wrong output to our feedback and motor actuators, I mean, our feedback system (cerebellum + ear labyrinth + reflexes arcs, puke and cough signals, etc…) and our muscles. And if this output is wrong, bad things will happen to you dear furry fellow!!!
But we have an appliance which we can see through a screen, keep our sense of depth and not get our amigdala crazy (well, at least most of times) and this is called augmented reality device! You know what I’m talking about you VRChat addicted!!! Yep, your VR glasses probably has an outside cam (a pair of them) to see the world through it! And we can make a VR glass in a DIY style, it is called Google Cardboard VR!
The ideia is simple, make a custom VR glasses with a good Android phone, two small cameras outside the head (and all the fur when it is ready) streaming directly to a App/Game in a VR mode. I will use two cameras because a thing called stereoscopy, and it is the base of the virtual reality things. The stereoscopy is our ability to take two slightly different images from our eyes and join then together in our brain to make a single image filled with information like the sense of depth and distance of objects. This is why we can grab and handle objects a little far from our eyes and that’s why some people can’t grab or handle objects precisely like this clumsy and silly fox here!!! Anyway, if the brain doesn’t get this info through a too near imagem from the eyes, we will get our feedback system situation again!
But I’ve talked to much for this post and if you get here, I know you might be quite interested on where this little huge project will take me, so stay tuned for more as I hope this will not take me to insanity…..
