Luke 1:37 InspiredFaithful Worship - 2 Styles

Drawn in Feather 3D

The first style came first. I modeled the figure in Nomad Sculpt, then colored and illustrated it in Feather 3D. Everything after this chapter is The Sculpted Edition, built to become a painted print.

Tests along the way

Sculpt, paint, decimate, check

The Sculpted Edition starts here. The figure and the stone set were sculpted in Nomad on iPad. Color was blocked in right on the sculpt, then the model was reduced and baked so the colors and surface detail live in textures instead of millions of polygons. Swipe through the sculpt first, then the first checks in Blender, before any light or painting.

Finding the light

Before any painting, the clean render had to look good on its own. Three lighting passes, a look at the verse on the Bible, a view from above, then a head-to-head between two render engines.

Cycles against EEVEE

Forty-three tries at a painted look

The goal was a hybrid of painting and 3D: halftone dots, soft outlines and visible brush strokes, in the spirit of recent animated films and comics. Each version changed one thing. Scrub through them. The pink dots on the bar mark the turning points.

Silk, shadows and a quiet purple

Two details carried the most work. The dress gets a silk texture that runs with the folds of the fabric, and the woman's shadow on the stones gets halftone dots you can see through.

Seven views, two looks

The same camera views rendered clean and rendered painterly, at high quality. Slide across to compare, then flip through every angle.

Every angle

Frames are 9:16 for Reels and Shorts. A center crop to 4:5 gives the feed version.

The turntable, and the Bible close-up

A turntable test first, to see how the painted lines behave when the camera moves. The lines shift slightly from frame to frame, which gives it a hand-drawn feel. The final move is 20 seconds: a slow orbit, a gentle push in to the open Bible, a hold, then back out to finish the turn.

Making it heavy

A printed figure is light, and I did not use glue joints due to glue potentially wearing over time or not holding, so the weight had to be built in another way. This is how I worked through it: the ideas, the measuring, and the tests that led to a steel disc hidden in the plinth.

Ideas I explored and set aside (not printed)

These were planned around different fillers: cement, sand, metal and magnets. I landed on a single steel disc before building any of them.

• Twist lockA 50 mm round bayonet box. Three lugs drop into slots, then a quarter turn clicks it shut. Designed to print without supports.
• Screw capA thread-on cap holding a flat steel plate in the base.
• Cement cupA cup filled with cement that screws into a socket ring in the base.
• Cement tray plinthA tray and lid joined with M4 screws into heat-set inserts, with the cement sealed inside.

What I landed on

A solid steel disc sits in a closed pocket inside the plinth. The printer pauses mid-print, I place the disc and a thin PLA cover disc, and the print continues over the top, sealing it in. No glue, and nothing to come loose.

Measuring the disc

Calipers and a kitchen scale turned a guess into numbers. The disc is stepped, so I measured each step. The weight matched the math for solid steel, which told me I could trust the measurements.

• 76.62 mmwide step
• 72.12 mmnarrow step
• 11.8 mmheight
• 0.85 lbweight

From those numbers, the pocket is 77.2 mm wide, with a 76.8 x 2.5 mm PLA cover disc. It is 14.6 mm deep (11.8 mm for the disc plus 2.8 mm of clearance), with a 3 mm floor below and a 2.5 mm roof above.

The block test

Before risking a figure, I printed a 90 x 90 x 20.1 mm test block with the same pocket. I paused the print, placed the disc and its cover, and resumed. The disc sat flat and the printer built cleanly over it.

The miniature

A 4 in version with a fused rock plinth scales the idea down. Its pocket is 31.2 mm wide and holds a PLA stand-in disc with a thin cover. A support blocker keeps supports out of the pocket, and the print pauses just before the roof begins.

The 10 in version uses one steel disc and pauses for me to place the disc and cover. The cover helps ensure the print does not fail due to gaps between the metal disc and the top of the layer, as well as the PLA not sticking to the metal.

The miniature, layer by layer

The same model goes to a Bambu Lab printer. This is the miniature test build in time-lapse: the plinth first, then the steps and bucket, then the figure rising on its support.

Notes for the next piece

• Map out the paint process.The 3D painting process can happen in both Nomad and Blender. Mapping that process out, and deciding what details I want to hand-paint in Nomad vs. build in Blender with maps, is key.
• One change per test.Forty-three versions sounds like a lot, but each one answered a single question. That made it easy to go back to the one that worked.
• Textures that follow the object.Silk that runs with the folds of the dress looks painted. Noise laid flat across the screen looks like a filter.
• Let shadows carry the color.Shifting the shadows toward purple warmed the whole figure without touching the yellow of the dress.
• Pick the final size early.Brush strokes, dots and outlines are measured in pixels. Changing the frame size later means retuning them, so decide on the delivery size first, or find a method that is more forgiving of a size change.
• Shoot tall, crop wide.Rendering at 9:16 means the 4:5 feed crop and the Reel are the same image with more room around it.
• Measure, then test small.A caliper, a scale and a 90 mm test block answered more than any guess. Prove the method small before risking the full print.
• Plan the weight early.A pocket, a floor and a roof in the plinth are easy to design in from the start and hard to add later.

Where this began

If you skipped it at the top, here it is.

The full story

I was inspired to create the original version of this piece by a trip to the CAAM museum with my mom Angela, stepmom Sherri, and two children. Seeing work by Willie Birch and Langston Hughes inspired my Oldies Gospel Art Series, a series of 3D art inspired by scripture and oldies gospel music. Every piece has a scripture that inspired me throughout, and this one was Luke 1:37: “For no word from God will ever fail.” (BSB)

Read the Substack articleSee the Instagram post

Rewind to about three weeks ago, when a lovely dinner with my children and their Amma led us to an art gallery. Their Amma gracefully shared my art background with the gallery owner. I showed him some of my work and told him I had been working on ways to turn my 3D art into painted prints. He pointed out the original version, and we talked about me recreating it for his gallery. It was that moment that inspired this learning journey.

It has been a carefully thought-out process, full of research, sketches, 3D model redesigns, 3D paintings, prototypes, testing, rendering, and 3D prototype printing. I also appreciate my older brother Jonathan for helping me with my 3D printing questions (His 3D work is amazing! See Slide 2!), and my twin sister Jessica for giving feedback on some of the original redesign models, which led me to my final figure.

The Sculpted Edition was made in Nomad Sculpt for the 3D model, 3D painting and material baking, and in Blender for additional texture mapping, outline effects, the camera system and updated scene lights.

The 3D Drawn Original was made in Nomad Sculpt for the 3D model and in Feather 3D for 3D coloring and illustration.

The pages below show how the digital version took shape: the tests, the choices behind it, and what each one taught.