Hi all, I’m just after a little feedback on an image. I won’t say too much so that I don’t colour your first impression, but I will say the top layer is for a fluid, and the bottom layer is a ‘circuit’ for light: light follows the ridge waveguides.
The style needs to be simple and clear, as it may be viewed as a black and white photocopy.
Does it make sense to you? Is any part confusing?
Cheers.
So it’s an example how can colors instead of electic pulse could be used for data transfer?
It’s about a device that takes two liquids (yellow and blue), combines them (purple), then uses different optical techniques to measure properties of the purple liquid.
Any comments on the image?
In general, the look if the illustration is very clean and colorful, the components are easily recognized and followed (even if their specific purpose is a bit obscure), and the symbols used appropriate, with these comments:
It isn’t crystal clear that the light is being passed through the liquid channels – the ghosted image of the liquid channels isn’t “nailed” to the same plane as the light pipe channels.
The “devices” in the light channels paths look rather ambiguous – are these a representation of physical reality or just something abstract? Looks to me like your doing an absorption spectrograph, an emission spectrum, and band-pass of certain wavelengths; the devices look a little too complex to be just “black box” items, as if their geometry is illustrating a physical actuality. Might be more than is needed.
With a proper caption I think it would succeed OK.
Thanks for the feedback mate. The liquid channels don’t lie on top of the waveguides, rather over different parts of the devices. I understand what you are saying as it is a little difficult to see how everything is aligned. Unfortunately I can’t think of a better way to show it, but I did add an inset which may overcome the problem.
The devices are close approximations of real world devices, and people working in the field will recognise them and there function immediately. Also there will be significant amounts of accompanying text, and I will also add labels to the figure once it’s mostly done. For the target audience this won’t be a problem.
Anyway thanks for the feedback mate, it’s much appreciated!
Yeah, within those parameters I think it works very well.
I used to do this kind of stuff with airbrush back in the bad ol’ pre-digital days – so much better using an app like Blender!
Well I’m a little young to have caught the pre-digital days, but I did use to do all my modeling, texturing, lighting etc in POVRay (ie in a text file, no GUI at all). Probably the worst thing was hand scripting complex animations and camera movements (I get shudders just thinking about it). Anyway what I’m getting at is: I agree, it is so much better with a proper 3D app like Blender!
Yeah, POVRay, brings back nightma… er, memories 
Did some exploded circuit board illos and a DNA molecule using it, way back when, good tool for its time, but writing SDFs was really no fun at all.
