MicroScribe® Connections for Maya – Cell Phone Redesign

by Richard Schritter

This project was inspired by my cell phone, which didn’t quite have all the features I wanted. I started the digitizing process and began my mission to try and make the phone better in every way possible. My goals were to give the phone a bigger screen, rubber grips for better durability, and make the phone smaller and thinner. After evaluating the contours of the phone and its geometry, I found it better to digitize the phone into polygonal strips instead of using curves, which would’ve worked as well, just taken a little bit more time.

I used the MicroScribe Connections for Maya and the MicroScribe G2LX to build this new prototype phone. The phone was built in three primary pieces: The face, the keys, and the back. The digitizing process took roughly an hour and the result was precise and accurate thanks to the MicroScribe.

After the initial digitizing, subtle refinements to the phones surface were made to clean up the geometry and new features were added on soon after. In the clean up process, I had to straighten stray vertices and connect the polygonal faces together to make one object. It took me about three hours to clean up the polygonal mesh and add all the new features to the phone.

The rubber grips were made around the sides and top of the phone and the screen was stretched out to give the phone a larger screen. Using the MicroScribe system allowed me to create this prototype phone within mere hours and cut off modeling time which gave me more time for texturing and lighting.