I have a half-finished 3D model I've carried around for years. It was supposed to be the Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting. I wrote about it in Dan Jenkins Award Prototype. The sketch was approved, the model got started, and then the project stalled the way projects do.

The award kept going without me. It has been given out at the University of Texas every year since 2016. As far as I can tell, nobody ever made the physical medal. Mine never left the file.

So I gave the sketch to OpenAI Astra to see how well it handles 3D modeling. Less than an hour later I had this.

Step one: the portrait

This is where it started. The approved sketch, front and back, flat color.

Astra took that sketch and turned the portrait into a clean grayscale reference. Same glasses, same jacket, same half smile. Everything after this builds on it.

Step two: the depth map

A relief is just a height map with better manners. Astra generated a depth map from the portrait. Light areas come forward, dark areas sink. This is the piece that makes a face readable in metal.

Step three: the failure

The first pass at the medal was rough. The hair disappeared. The face melted into a blob. The Dell logo floated in space. Every 3D pipeline has this moment, and I've had it with much more expensive tools.

It took a few more passes. The face came back.

Step four: the medal

Front and back. The front carries the portrait and the endowment mark. The reverse has a typewriter, the Texas Program in Sports and Media, and a name plate for the winner. I used Rick Reilly, 2017 Career Achievement, as the sample engraving.

Here is the medal from the program's announcement earlier this year. Look at the lettering and the edge. That is not a photo of metal. It looks like ChatGPT made it, which means the award still does not have a medal to hand someone.

Take the file

The model is print ready. It is also yours to edit. If the program wants a real medal for this year's winners, or anyone wants to swap the name plate and run it on a resin printer, here it is.

Download the Dan Jenkins Medal .glb (about 42 MB). You can also view it on Sketchfab.

When I started this it was a filament print, a mold, and a backyard forge. Now it is a sketch, a conversation, and an hour. The forge is still optional.