For our Digital Arts and Humanities class’ first lab, I modeled my water bottle.
It was a fun assignment! The main body of the water bottle wasn’t too hard to make. I used a series of sized cylinders to get the propers shape and all of the grooves and curves of the bottle. Most of my time was spent on this sort of detail. Near the end, I tried to model the handle on the top, too, which is a strap attached to either side of the lid. I played around with a couple tools that seemed like they could work, but I could never get it to look quite right or connect where I wanted, and ended up leaving the project at the bottle’s body.
I an absolutely see this kind of modeling being used in future humanistic work. It could be a way to model existing objects and make them accessible outside of their home, widen engagement with fragile goods that can’t be handled safely, and recreate objects described in text that are no longer extant.
For new users, I would emphasize that you can use a side of a currently existing object as a new surface to extrude from by simply clicking on it when you are using the extrude tool! This allowed me to get the exact right size for a new cylinder when adding the next section of the water bottle. It was very helpful in getting the small lips on the bottle to work.
I hadn’t thought of using 3D models as a way to interact with fragile/dangerous objects. That’s a super cool idea. I’m not familiar with the technology, but I wonder how detailed 3D scans can get and if the resolution is high enough to allow for detailed study. Also, nice model!