8:1 Scale 3D Printed Eyes
Each eye was carefully polished after printing.
The eyes were printed on the Stratasys J750. They took hours to print which was very risky, if anything happened during the print it could wobble and introduce inaccuracies.
Once fitted into the fibreglass heads, head of prosthetics Jason Docherty added goo around the tearduct and lower eyelid to create some extra realism.
The figures created for the Dubai 2020 Expo took thousands of hours to make. Pictured here is Luke Hawker ensuring everything is placed and secured precisely as intended.
The three figures filled an entire warehouse and were an amazing feat of engineering and construction.
The giant 8:1 eyeballs in action at the Wētā Workshop Unleashed experience.
8:1 Scale 3D Printed Eyes
I was presented with the challenge of making 8:1 eyes when we created nine-metre-tall human sculptures for Alif: The Mobility Pavilion at the Dubai 2020 Expo. The multi-story size of the giants meant that our workflows for creating human figures had to be completely rewritten from scratch.
The giants eyeballs was no exception. I utilised volumetric models and sampling to cope with the huge amounts of data required for each eyeball. Because the prints were so large and costly we had to be 100% certain the eyes would turn out before we pressed print!
We scanned the human heads and designed the sightlines digitally, cropping the eyes so we could be efficient with material use. Slices of the eyes were also printed to test that the new workflows would be sufficient. Thankfully they all turned out beautifully.
Later on we also created 8:1 eyes for the Wētā Workshop Unleashed exhibition in Auckland, which meant I had the privilege of experiencing one of these installations "in the flesh".