I think you know what would happen if you locked an engineer and designer in a room together at the same time with nothing more than a microphone and some bluesy background music. Yeah… they would lock eyes, squeeze their bowels and proceed to have an insightful conversation about design, engineering and other CAD related…
Metrix Create: Space – a collective of evil geniuses in Seattle Washington – recently posted their first results out of their current project, Big Robot. It’s an old CNC machine repurposed to carry a scaled up version of the plastic extruder from the RepRap open source 3D printer project. Aside from being built from mostly…
You go out with your friend for a night on the town. You bring a camera. The next morning you find photos of yourself laying across benches, manipulating your joints through the mirrored glass of bank buildings and twisting cardboard boxes around what you think might be your friend being attacked by feral cats. You’ve…
Look an eclipse! Wait don’t look! Wait look. It’s not an eclipse. It’s a personality core. space, space, SPACE! These Portal 2 Personality cores created by Chris Myles are all the goodness of Portal 2 wrapped up in fully functional replicas of the characters that hamper and help you throughout your adventure in the Aperture…
There’s nothing like hanging something completely random in a child’s room to make them flip out and question reality. I’ve always preferred turning their stuffed animals into mechanized creatures that fly soup into their mouths. They enjoy it AND it’s healthy. Some people just like to draw baby giraffes with big eyes on the wall…
Fab.com is a service that launched a few weeks ago and sets up deals—ala Groupon but with better terms for the vendors—for retail designer goods. This ranges from Andy Warhol silk screens to modern furniture. At present, it is invite only, but that is very easily taken care of. I’m more than happy to provide…
The future. Tis glorious. And while I dream of the day we’ll all have transparent skin and morphing appendages, it’s those amazing flying machines we’re likely to see such things on first. The Future by Airbus is a look at the possibilities and where they see the design of aircraft and aircraft interiors going. The…
Sometimes, after you’ve been shopping for sock straps all day, you just feel like tearing a patch of your hair out, running into the forest and gnawing down a couple trees. After your lips are drooping against your neck in bloody mess, you may be thinking of other ways to terrorize small woodland mammals. One…
It’s time to stop taking that van off-road. At least, that’s what my friends keep telling me. The kids like it, I say. But they yell, and tell me, it’s embarrassing. FINE. How about I drive up on their smug attitudes in a Local Motors rock-crushin’, path-rompin’ Rally Fighter? How’s that kiddos? It could happen,…
Turns out this black void we live in is fairly large, and fairly 3D dimensional. Over a period of 10 years, astronomers led by the late, great John Huchra mapped the depths of the universe out to 380 million light years. Yeah, to Cleveland and back. It’s the largest, most complete map to date sportin’…
Ancient resumes. I know you have them plastered to your headboard, stuck on your fridge and lining your favorite suit coat. But really, can you get enough of them? I think not. One in particular that may get you and your proclivity for CV oddities excited, is from someone you may know as the father…
How about this? Instead of thinking about launching a set of concrete balls through the air, knocking down your cubicle walls and shattering every window around you, put it into action Goldberg style. Scott Bruins, a member of the GrabCAD elite, has put the project into effect. The idea? Build the world’s largest community built…
You may have seen Ian’s Kickboxer which boasts a race-ready Turbocharged 2.5L Subaru WRX engine. I so thought that was the sweetest looking ride. But now, now he’s wrapped awesome around Subaru’s Boxer turbo Diesel engine for the Kickboxer Diesel. The result, as you’ll see, is nothing but spasm-inducing beauty.
The Power!!!! 5,800 hobby mirrors and an old 42″ satellite dish? What could be created with such goods? Well, it’s exactly what young Eric Jacqmain used to create a tool to focus the combined energy of 5,000 suns into a single 1 cm death spot! Oh no he din’t! Yes, YES he did!! Hide thine…
Today, Autodesk did two things. They released a new iPad app called Tinkerbox and increased the smile coefficient you have with your child as you heap the joys of physical simulation upon them level by platform-stacking level. That is if you have an iPad. If you have an Android tablet, send Autodesk a napkin soaked…
“I Wanna Be An Engineer So Freakin’ Bad.” Do you remember the day you said that out loud? Or, the day that somebody said it to you and you laughed at them… then felt the icy ballad of equations rattle your brain as they absorbed the oxygen around you with indescrible amounts of hand movements…
What defines insanity? Typically, I’d say the amount of plastic beads someone can stick in their mouth before drooling all over the expanding foam they’ve stuffed in their shirt. In this case, however, I’d say it’s the amount of plastic blocks one can form into a puzzle. Oskar van Deventer is the man making us…
Your Guitar Hero party is about to get 1000 times cooler and 1000 times more flammable. What’s the one thing that can distract people from awful video game playing skills while at the same time scaring away rats, badminton players and night harpies that could gnaw your face off? FIRE, but you probably knew that.…
This is hands down the finest example of skullcube I’ve seen. One of this color and variety is rare if not completely unheard of. The SkullCube shirt design by Tokyo-go-go at Teespiration.co.uk is magnificent. Not only is it skull and cubes. It also Lego. That’s a lethal concoction of awesome right there. It comes in…
We’re just not going to let that “Kill SolidWorks” thing die… ahem. One comment from former SolidWorks CEO, Jeff Ray is all it takes for a firestorm to start whipping our sanity. What most people do not realize is that the is about creating a better product and providing some more options, not about violently…
It happens so often. You go to squeeze some cheese on your cracker, then suddenly you snap from a daze to find the most stylized form of your initials oozing down the wall. Nevermind that everyone around you is staring, you have a talent. If you are the slightest bit interest in cheese spread sculpting,…
Take those gear pegs out of your nostrils and look at this. I think I just found a reason for you to visit the nearest LEGO store, purchase every gear available and spend the next month cogging up your workspace with bits and blocks. You could recreate 2,000 year old mechanism that predict the future.…
Of all the interesting things you could do with little toy cars, from gluing them on your face to throwing them at cats, this has got to be one of the best ideas yet. It’s a massive kinetic sculpture by Chris Burden designed to run 1,200 Hot Wheels and 13 Toy Trains on 18 lanes…
Well, once again the superiority of the Design/Engineer CAD Geek has been completely blown over. People should be hurt… badly, with mean looks and cold coffee, but instead we’ll sit back and say, “The massive coolness of the CAD Geek lies firmly outside the realm of any guanine/adenine-based geek mutation… so there.” …OR maybe we…
Completely random and also completely rockin’. This image is from a circa-2004 drawing I uncovered. That was so long ago… I believe they made meat out of dirt back then… so long ago. It, as well as its model table, is quite epic. Wouldn’t you agree?
There are a few things I don’t enjoy watching repeatedly – boiling cabbage, videos of cats, and anything with Ben Affleck. The one thing I can watch repeatedly are the 3D façade projections being done by NuFormer, a digital media company out of the Netherlands. They have pretty much perfected the art of mapping 2D…
Frankly, you may tear your leg muscles out in disbelief when you see what you’re about to see, but it’s for real. It may be even more shocking to believe it’s possible to do anything but wither away at a desk while performing design and engineering tasks, but yes, it is. To stay in shape,…
Honestly I can’t get enough of what people are able to do with some of the rendering programs of late. Especially with KeyShot 2.1 we covered last week. Al at Develop 3D took a rip through KeyShot 2.1 as well. His overview, rendering results and the video he slapped together (after the jump) are nothing…
Close your eyes for a moment. Now, fling your head forward into the nearest solid object you can’t see. What’s that you do see? Yes, pretty lights. Pretty lights jittering their way across the back of your eyelids and unconsciousness like a hallucinogenic back-slap. Dentsu and Berg know this feeling and how to produce it.…
September 4th is a special day. It’s the zero day anniversary of the day I figured out that it cost less to get a full salad and full soup, instead of two half salad, half soup “Deals”. Soup and Salad ON ME. It’s also the 25th anniversary of the Buckyball, a spherical Fullerene created using…
I hate Facebook games. Hate. them. Too the point I feel like butchering a hog over someone’s keyboard as they get a Crop Whisperer ribbon on Farmville. Those feelings may change…. I doubt it, but this… is cool. Last week 3DVia made the announcement that the 3D Social gaming blitzkrieg that is Billions is now…
I could seriously watch this video over and over again… In fact, I have. So much so, I caught fire myself and had to be doused with a potted plant from the kitchen. I love watching skateboard videos, but this one does something a little different. This one tells the reason behind the madness and…
I don’t even use Autodesk Maya, so I have no idea what I’m saying, when I say… This is JUST like Maya. EXACTLY like the morphing effects that make you go to the next Hollywood blockbuster, raise your fist and shout, “The director and visual effects department that made this film are making blood shoot…
We’ve seen cool 3D projection on objects before, but this is frighteningly cool. It’s another 3DTV installation from Samsung. It’s not projection so much, as it is a video which run across hundreds of screens mounted to the side of the Beurs van Berlage exhibition and concert hall in Amsterdam. But it’s mapped perfectly to…
Carve it. Shape it. Cut it. Smooth it. Knick it. Clip it. Daft Punk Helmet. Yeah, you know what’s good for you. 3 minutes of prop building madness from Volpin Props. The prop? The helmet of electronic, supersonic duo supremo, Daft Punk. The process took all of 17 months… yeeeeeah. So ya gotta think, especially…
My eyeball lids have peeled back over my head… by themselves. I think I feel pain, but I don’t know, because I’m in shock at the coolness I’m seeing. Even though there’s nothing this cool in 3D product development, we can imagine if there were… and the time wasted throwing our virtual designs into the…
If you’re cruising down the drag and needing some head-bobbin’ beats to make the cabbies and cuties drop their ice-cream cones, check out Luxology founder Brad Peebler. ♪♫ Dope beat ♪♫ aaaaand Happy, Happy birthday to my main man Jetty, he’s bustin’ out assets fast as Mario Andretti…. you’ll have to listen to this week’s…
Not that they would copy your idea, but yeah, Nike totally ganked the idea you had of replacing yourself with a 21 meter sculpture of yellow balls. Nike strung the massive structure from the ceiling of the Carlton Centre atrium in Johannesburg, South Africa for the last few weeks of the FIFA Worldcup. Designed by…
Don’t look. Do NOT LOOK! Oh, well, now you’ve gone and done it. You were curious. You hear ‘3D City’ and you just can’t help yourself. Now you’re questioning your very existence. It’s ok though, because it’s just an app and only looks like it will suck you right in. The people responsible? Newscape Technology.…
Whether you’re a render scene slayer or just want to pose like you’re the HDR playa, Luxology has you covered… literally, with soft, preshrunk cottony goodness. Each year the crew behind the modo all-in-one modeling, rendering and animation program put out a ‘limited-edition’ tee to help you show just how much modo mojo you’ve got.…
Coffee. 3D. Headphones. The purest ingredients in the day-to-day dance-off between your brain and that 3D geometry jittering to the succulent sound-waves in your ears. Oh yeeaah. You are in the groove. So are a slew of other people you may know of. Thanks to the relationship between Facebook and Pandora a few weeks ago,…
You remember when you were a kid… or maybe yesterday, when you would plow your head into a clump of clay, wall, or mama’s mashed potatoes just to see the imprint? I do. Good times. I’ve grown up since then, so when there isn’t a pile of pliable material around, I sit in a chair…
Holster your gab canon for a moment and raise your goggles. You’ll want to clear some room off the old battle barge for a custom cohort of the artistic variety. It’s 4 inches of resin robot goodness and the first Rampart rendition from the London-based lab of Cris Rose. We’ve featured the custom creations of…
If you could, you know you would turn your car, your cubicle and every room in your house into a discotheque that would make Tony Manero and your friends do a flying disco split simultaneously. If you need a good example of what it could be like, take a look at the ‘sensory box’ developed…
You’re gonna kick yourself after you see this and think about the grove of bamboo and blood-thirsty, wild panda you just cleared out of your backyard. You so could have fashioned it into an iPhone case. Not to worry, Ken Tomita and his wily gang of sustainable-minded makers have you covered. It’s Grove, an Oregon-based…
Because the popular 3D CAD apps have no visible appendages to beat each other down into an oily goo or give their own opinion on medicine, politics or art, we’ve decided to see what the web has to say about how they all stack up in this regard. To do it, we’re using a nifty…
3DVia also has billions of reasons to make you excited about Mogaloos, how many you capture and how you feel about the color pink as the backdrop of the universe. This week at the Game Developers Conference (GDC 2010) in San Francisco, 3DVia is showing off 6 new games developed with 3DVia products. Among those…
It almost hurts me to say this, but the cool factor is just too much to bare… Microsoft Excel rocks at sketching cell-shaded line art. If you know me, you know I abhor spreadsheets list creation management hell. However, I’ll get past the fancy formatting and formula options used to drain the liquid centers from…
Oh great. You fell asleep last night watching “The fine art of family root farming” and completely forgot to plug in your exploding gadget and frog apparatus. How embarrassing. Someone who didn’t forget and, as you’ll see, wouldn’t matter if he did, is Adam Voorhes. I think you’ll agree he’s mastered exactly what it takes…