Since I wrote last, I went to another 3D printing class/MCA work. I don’t think I quite understood the steps to 3D print, but I’m hoping Alex can help me when it comes to printing my parts for the project. I learn better by going through the process myself rather than watching Jennifer do it under Alex’s direction.

I’m still at a sort of a standstill for what I have to make for my MCA. The hand connector part is done, but I’m still working on designing the splint and how it attaches to the hand connector. I’m using Solidworks. My lack of skill in Solidworks is holding me back from designing something detailed, which is difficult when I’m under pressure to 3D print as soon as I can. I want to have something good that I can print, but I’m having a hard time visualizing the model on the computer and not in my hands. I’m tempted to grab some scrap materials and test how those fit around her finger first, before diving into Solidworks to figure out some hypothetical splint that might fit Abby’s finger. That approach is more like what I’ve learned

This morning, I switched gears again to work on the teleport project. Lucia comes on Thursdays, so our group works in the morning to have something prepared for her to review in the afternoon. I chose an ‘idle’ avatar from the Adobe Mixamo, a website which I think the VR stress group used too. With Vrinda’s brilliant use of shaders, we made the avatar appear in Unity with a holographic shader applied. It’s cool to see that we are starting to use what we learned in our classes for our project.

I also worked on the Methods section of the paper. I’m starting to realize that I could describe the avatar interface well in our meetings, but writing it out in an academic research paper is actually quite difficult. I think that demonstrates the industrial design side of me, where I can use visual communication well, but I’m finding that I am rusty on writing academic papers. I do want to contribute to this paper though, so I want to learn as much as I can.