Ocarina of Time Zora's Sapphire Ring

Greetings, internet traveler!  Nearly a year after I started and then shelved the concept, I have now finished creating my own engagement ring inspired by the Zora's Sapphire from the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.  This project took a lot of power, strength, and courage!  I've never made any sort of jewelry before, let alone something requiring gem settings.  To be honest, I feel like I really lucked out on this one.

This ring was designed in the 3D modeling program Maya, printed in wax then cast into gold by Shapeways, and then fitted with gems by a local jeweler.

Ugh, pretend my hands don't look so bad

Step One: Modeling

As usual, this project started with a model.  Since I've never modeled a ring before, most of this process was trial, error, and correction.  Over and over.  Seriously, I'm pretty sure I started over at least twice, not including the times I scrapped the band.

My first two "final" models

Last model before printing the end result

A ring capable of holding gems is a complicated thing, so there were many factors I had to consider when making the model.  For readability's sake, I'll make a list.

• Design: perhaps the hardest part of all was simply choosing how to make the darn thing look.  I wanted to stay as true to the game's design as possible, but translating a low-poly 3D mesh that floats in the air into a physical thing meant making some changes.  The most obvious is probably the gems-- pentagons aren't really a normal gem cut, so I chose to arrange the prongs themselves in a pentagon and just use standard diamond-cut gems.  I wasn't sure it would work, but I'm happy with the end result.
• Band size: not every ring is going to fit every finger, so getting the size right (or at least reasonably close) is important.  My US ring size is about a 5.5.  Conversion charts tell me that a 5.5 band has a 16.1 mm inner diameter.  Luckily Maya has separate options for setting overall radius and section radius, so getting the rough sizing going was pretty easy.  Do keep in mind that Maya isn't exact, though-- you might need to measure in a separate program like NetFabb and tweak it a bit.  I went with a 1.3 mm thickness and then flattened out the inner edges, which fit my finger pretty snugly.
• Prong thickness: this is one I really struggled to find information on.  As I have no formal training as a jeweler, I kinda had to make an educated guess and used Shapeways' metals printing guide to choose a thickness for the prongs.  Minimum recommended thickness of unsupported wires is 1.0 mm?  Works for me!  I left some extra length on them, as well, so that the professional jeweler would have plenty to work with.
• Overall gem seating thickness: again, I defaulted to the Shapeways guide because I didn't know what else to do.  Just about every part of this ring is at least 1.0 mm thick, minus the tips of the wings coming from the base triangle.
• The gems themselves: as you can see from the render, I went ahead and modeled in a 5 mm diamond-cut gem to use as a reference while arranging the prongs.  This part of the design made me the most nervous.  Traditional gem setting has the jeweler cutting a "seat" into the prongs to properly fit the gem, while I modeled the prongs to already fit around the gem.  Unfortunately, I modeled the gems themselves wrong, so this seat looks a little wonky in person.  The jeweler was able to work around it, though.  I'll revise this for model 2.0.

There was one thing I didn't think about, however-- how the ring would actually sit once it was put on a finger.  The final design has it standing up higher than I had imagined, meaning it's prone to catching on and knocking against just about everything it comes into contact with.  This is mostly an issue caused by my final band design, which I tried to make a little more fancy when I shouldn't have.  I will want to correct this for version 2.0, of course, but it'll do for now.

Step Two: Printing

Thanks to Shapeways, printing was the easiest part.

Test prints

I went through three different test prints.  The first one in plastic, seen on the left, was a little too fragile and didn't quite make it through the printing process.  For the second one, center, I scaled up the base triangle a bit to give it more bulk.  I also went with a thicker band, which ended up not quite fitting with the style I was trying to create.  The last one was my metal test.  I had this printed in bronze in the hopes that a jeweler could use it to test the gem settings.  Unfortunately, this led me to finding out that most jewelers won't touch bronze because it's so brittle.  We had to try several stores before someone would agree to even take a look.  Once we finally got an OK from someone who knew what they were doing, I took a deep breath and ordered the gold ring.

Step Three: Finishing

I was on pins and needles for a couple weeks waiting for the gold ring to come.  All I could think about was the potential for things to go wrong.  I was not going to be happy if I had spent a bunch of cash on a hunk of broken ring.  Eventually it did arrive and appeared to have all the prongs, so we took it back to the jeweler to have the gems set and the polygons polished out.  The jeweler we went with offered birth stone jewelry, so they picked us out some Swiss blue topazes to use instead of the super cheap cubic zircon I had bought as test gems.  A week or two later, the ring was done.

Do do do dooo!

<3

During this time, my boyfriend and I decided it was time to settle down.  We didn't exactly know how long this process was going to take, so we kinda jumped the gun and had the proposal before we got the gems set.  Oops!


I'll eventually get around to making corrections to this model and then releasing it for sale on Shapeways.  For now, I kinda want to just enjoy knowing that the ring on my finger is completely one-of-a-kind and represents me and my fiance better than a store-bought ring ever could.  End of sappy post.