f-log

Raspberry Pi 3 HiRes
(pi time)

[X]Board top image sans major components
[X]Board bottom image sans major components
[X]Board in Blender
-[X]Measure board
My measurements 84.8x55.9x1 mm curved corners 2.5mm
Official schematics 85x56 curved corners 3mm
-[X]Model
-[X]Texture
-[X]Components on the bottom
--[X]Chip
--[X]SD slot
--[X]Model Solder types
---[X]Add Solder types
--[X]Plastic through clip x2

While reviewing the solder I noticed the ethernet port has two black plastic through clips. They are rounded crosses, added them before adding the chip.

As I already had the image for the chip it was very simple to use the GIMPs clone brush to texture the sides.

The SD card slot is a simple extruded plane with Bevel and Solidify modifiers and lots of Boolean holes. This left a lot of bad geometry but a ReMesh modify whacked up to Oct tree depth 8 fixed that.
I did try a transparency mask, but the results had no edges and the close up of that looked weird.

FYI the ReMesh has created a beautiful SD card slot, but it is very complicated and I can not see and easy way to simplify the geometry, even though most of it is flat.

Raspberry Pi 3 HiRes
(if not now then when)

[X]Board top image sans major components
[X]Board bottom image sans major components
-[X]Model
-[X]Texture
-[ ]Components on the bottom
--[ ]Chip
--[ ]SD slot
--[X]Model Solder types
---[X]Add Solder types

129 solder objects. Four main types and most individually placed and sized. I had to set the material to red to be able to see how they were places against the texture.

Quick Blender side

Every time I try and do Bump maps in Cycles it fails or sort of works but not quite.

This was a quick experiment that does work.



The stepped pyramid with the numbers on is the original UV used as texture then the larger one underneath is the input to the displacement.

You can clearly see how different luminosity affect the height.

Apparently I should be using normal maps, but that is for another day.

I got one of those tech support phone call scams. Was feeling left out as just about everyone I know has had one.

The guy said he was from BT and that my internets were slow, so I led him on a merry goose chase and along with his colleagues managed to rack up 30mins.

Started off with taking ages for my PC to turn on, I then dutifully agreed that Event viewer showed lots of system errors. Then every time he tried to open a browser to teamviewer I would report "500 Server error". He tried another site which I claimed timed out before he changed tack and got me to download Chrome, which mysteriously would not install. At this point I give him the actual error message LUbunut was giving trying to install PC Anywhere. That was when I got bumped for the third time to a technical supervisor and I told them I could not spend any more time with them.

Of course I made sure to big up his original comment and the reason for the call that my Internets were slow. Oh dear, every action took ages and as they all got angrier and louder I had to say I do not understand the line is breaking up with the shouting (which it was).

They promised to call back again today, but unfortunately I was out.

Makes we wonder what their hit rate is vs the hang ups and the time wasters.

Raspberry Pi 3 HiRes
(cos why not)

[X]Board top image sans major components
[X]Board bottom image sans major components
[X]Board in Blender
-[X]Measure board
My measurements 84.8x55.9x1 mm curved corners 2.5mm
Official schematics 85x56 curved corners 3mm
-[X]Model
-[X]Texture
-[ ]Components on the bottom
--[ ]Chip
--[ ]SD slot
--[ ]Solder types

It is nice and Holy now!

I simply added some Bezier circles into the rounded corner 2D plain, extruded it and then touched up the texture map. This is why it is a good idea to keep all the source objects around.


There was also the obligatory texture wrangling.

Raspberry Pi 3 HiRes
(cos no one else is that pedantic)

[X]Board top image sans major components
[X]Board bottom image sans major components
[ ]Board in Blender
-[X]Measure board
My measurements 84.8x55.9x1 mm curved corners 2.5mm
Official schematics 85x56 curved corners 3mm
-[-]Model (partially)
-[X]Texture

So I had done most of the work getting the bottom of board ready, just had not finalised it. Once that was done I used my digital calipers to measure the board. Then I checked online and found the schematics.

My measurements were only 10ths of a millimetre off!

So I had a plan. Create a cube in Blender and scale it to the circuit board size.


OK I knew there were rounded corners so I will just apply a subsurf modifier.


hmmm that seems to have distorted it somewhat.

Time for something new. This time I started with a plane and subdivided the sides to add vertexes to define the corners (using the official measurements) and set the segments to be NURBS to get the curves. The curves looked good but close up they extended and warped much more than just the corners. The fix was just to create more vertexes to define the other end of the curve(away from the corner) and set their location to be the same.


And that was it .. a part from the 2 hours of texture wrangling. This included trying to chase down a bizarre single pixel seam that for no good reason existed on the top edge away from all the other texture face islands. Also I had to learn about GIMP s transparency Threshold Alpha... tool to avoid the edges of the textures being see-through in the model.

Next will be to create the holes in the board. Got a couple of ideas ...

Raspberry Pi 3 HiRes
(cos no one else will)

Drat! convinced myself I had completed both the HiRes top and bottom of the Pi. At least I was able to find official schematics for the size of the board and they match pretty well with my measurements.

[X]Board top image sans major components
[ ]Board bottom image sans major components
[ ]Board in Blender
-[X]Measure board
My measurements 84.8x55.9x1 mm curved corners 2.5mm
Official schematics 85x56 curved corners 3mm
-[ ]Model
-[ ]Texture