Portal Gun, in Depth

True to form, I took my sweet time updating this. So before I get into the nitty gritty details of putting together my portal gun, let me just say that PAX Prime 2013 is awesome. Seriously. The Pat Rothfuss panel? You had to be there... literally, because we all promised to not record it in exchange for getting to ask "3rd or 4th date" questions. It was great. Wildstar was looking classy (going to focus on their panel and off-site party tomorrow). SolForge remains one of my favorite Kickstarter projects ever, if only for the level of professionalism and the forthcoming attitude that they consistently display. If you aren't playing it, you probably should be. Lots of other cool stuff, of course, as always... but who cares what I have to say about PAX? Portal gun, here we come...


Okay, so last time I gave a brief outline of how we got the shells of the portal gun created. Once again, I cannot recommend florist foam highly enough; it is (relatively) cheap, easy to cut, easy to sand, and hardens like nobody's business after a couple coats of regular Elmer's glue. So, once you've got your shapes done, apply a couple coats of glossy paint (I use spray paint because pointing and spraying is about the limit of my artistic skill) and maybe a coat or two of a clear gloss finish to protect it...

...you're ready for the fun parts. Yes, I totally just used the same picture from last time. Forgive me.


Let's start with the main shell...

See that nifty red light at the top? Here's how I made it...

1. Take a red, see through plastic folder.
2. Cut a circle out of it.
3. Shine a LED through it (also purchasable from any craft store).
4. Notice that the LED is too bright, stack more circles until it looks red.

Alternately... just buy a red LED. Anyway, you drill a hole through the top of the shell, attach your folder piece to the top using a clear glue (or an epoxy... I find Gorilla brand works very well), put the LED at the bottom of the hole...

And POW! you're golden. Maybe print up the Aperture logo and cut out the letters to make a cheap stencil, then tape it to the side and use some paint (or, if you're me and suck at art, Sharpie) it on to the side...

Yeah, that doesn't look half bad.

Okay, cool,, on to the barrel and that glow-y tube thing. 

Now, I'm not afraid to admit that I was pretty intimidated by that thing. It's like a tube, inside a tube, and it's supposed to glow or something! Luckily for me, translucent folders (like the red one I used above) tend to come in big old packs... So, I grabbed a blue one and I rolled it up, tacked it down with clear tape and shoved both ends into cardboard toilet paper rolls. Then I shoved that inside the styrofoam barrel, grabbed a frosted folder and glued that down to make the outer tube:

 

 Which brings me to the next part: projecting a portal out of your portal gun. Okay, you're going to need a few things for this... first, as you can see above, I printed up a transparency of the image I wanted and secured it inside the barrel at the end of the blue folder. Second, I got a good flashlight. I mean, a really good flashlight... expect to pay a little bit on this:

That little thing. See it? It's rated at 850 lumens and has a very high lux (lumens per square meter). Lux is important. You need to have the light throw a large, solid circle if you want the image to projection to work (at least, without filtering the light through a piece of tissue paper). So you hook up that flashlight to the back of the barrel (the art that will be hidden inside the shell) and take a magnifying glass lense...

...and adjust it so that the image comes through clearly. Then you remember how light works and realize that you need to flip the image upside down. But you don't tell anyone that you made that mistake, because you need to keep up the illusion that you know and physics are tight. Secure it all, notice that the really really bright light also lights up the chamber very nicely *ahem* exactly like you planned it. Slap a little more epoxy on everything, fit it all together, and tada!

You've got yourself a portal gun. Honestly, I was hoping to use a pico projector and get a live portal feed going... but as it turns out, the technology to pull something like that off was a little bit out of my price range for prop creation. 

Okay, tomorrow, we'll take a look at the GLaDOS helm. Maybe. If I'm not lame. 

I'm usually pretty lame, when it comes to this blog posting stuff...