Thursday, July 08. 2010
Via r-echos
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The Lo Res Project by United Nude, is an innovative design method using computer software to automatically create design options to choose from. By lowering the resolution of 3D models of products, the object becomes more and more fragmented, changing its character in the process. They’ve used this technique on a Lamborghini Countach and the result is quite nice. The United Nude Lo Res Shoe is the first product available at the United Nude stores.
Personal comment:
Still good in low res! Xavier Veilhan did the same last year with a royal low res coach at Versailles.
While faceted design has rapidly become the new "hype style" in design and architecture.
Wednesday, July 07. 2010
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by Jacob Gaboury
[3d image in 80 cm x 120 cm format.]
[Previzualisation. Sculpture created using a prototyping technique. Size: 15 cm in diameter.]
In logic and computer programming, a Boolean operator is a type of variable between two states. In computer-generated imagery, Boolean operations enable us to subtract, add or create an intersection between two objects.
In this series I subtract a sphere from a landscape. The latter becomes hollow. It is sterile, it lacks something, the breath of life. It is a morbid image: a Boolean nature.
A sculpture completes the image by representing the missing part.
The sum of the image and the sculpture forms the landscape in its entirety.
Monday, March 29. 2010
Via BLDGBLOG
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by noreply@blogger.com (Geoff Manaugh)
[Image: Thesis project by Vincenzo Reale, from a course taught by Alessio Erioli at the University of Bologna; photo by Alessio Erioli].
Here are two 3D-printed thesis projects from a course taught by Alessio Erioli at the University of Bologna; above you see work by Vincenzo Reale, below work by Riccardo La Magna. I have to admit to being utterly blown away by the formal possibilities of 3D printers, and these projects only make that obsession more extreme.
[Image: Thesis project by Riccardo La Magna, from a course taught by Alessio Erioli at the University of Bologna; photo by Alessio Erioli].
For one or two more images of these and other thesis projects, check out the Flickr stream of Alessio Erioli, where I originally saw these photos; for more on the future of (an admittedly different kind of) 3D printing, check out the recent, awesome article by Tim Abrahams in Blueprint Magazine: "In a small shed on an industrial park near Pisa is a machine that can print buildings," we read.
The machine itself looks like a prototype for the automotive industry. Four columns independently support a frame with a single armature on it. Driven by CAD software installed on a dust-covered computer terminal, the armature moves just millimetres above a pile of sand, expressing a magnesium-based solution from hundreds of nozzles on its lower side. It makes four passes... The system deposits the sand and then inorganic binding ink. The exercise is repeated. The millennia-long process of laying down sedimentary rock is accelerated into a day. A building emerges. This machine could be used to construct anything.
Mimicking geology, we might forego architecture altogether and print new tectonic plates. Print earthquakes and mountain chains, archipelagoes at sea.
Tuesday, February 23. 2010
by noreply@blogger.com (Geoff Manaugh)
A mind-bogglingly awesome new project from MIT called Flyfire hopes to use large, precision-controlled clouds of micro-helicopters, each carrying a color-coordinated LED light, to create massive, three-dimensional information displays in space.
[Image: Via Flyfire].
Each helicopter is "a smart pixel," we read. "Through precisely controlled movements, the helicopters perform elaborate and synchronized motions and form an elastic display surface for any desired scenario." Emergency streetlights, future TV, avant-garde rural entertainment, and even acts of war.
Watch the video:
Instead of a drive-in cinema, in other words, you could simply be looking out from the windscreen of your car at a massive cloud of color-coordinated, precision-timed, drone micro-helicopters, each the size and function of a pixel. Imagine planetarium shows with this thing!
The Flyfire canvas can transform itself from one shape to another or morph a two-dimensional photographic image into an articulated shape. The pixels are physically engaged in transitioning images from one state to another, which allows the Flyfire canvas to demonstrate a spatially animated viewing experience.
Imagine web-browsing through literal clouds of small flying pixels, parting and weaving in the air in front of you like fireflies (or imagine training fireflies to act as a web browser). You're in a university auditorium one day when, instead of delivering her projected slideshow, your professor simply remote-controls a whirring vortex of ten thousand flying micro-dots. Digital 3D cinema is nothing compared to this murmuration of light.
Channeling Tim Maly, we might even someday see a drone-swarm of LED-augmented, artificially intelligent nano-helicopters flying off into the desert skies of the American southwest, on cinematic migration routes blurring overhead. On a lonely car drive through northern Arizona when a film-cloud flies by...
An insane emperor entertains himself watching precision-controlled image-clouds, some of which are distant satellites falling synchronized through space.
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Via BLDGBLOG
Personal comment:
D'une façon différente (écran, images volumiques et donc display), cela me fait penser au projet de Nicolas Reeves ("Mescarillons", self assembling architecture) et à ce que nous imaginions au début du projet de recherche Variable_Environment autour de la création d'architectures variables exploitant des "swarm intelligent flying robots"... Impossible à l'époque.
Tuesday, February 02. 2010
by Bruce Sterling
*Oh to have lived to see the day. Futurity-now, baby.
“What happens when art and science meet? That’s the point of departure of the Parallellepipeda project at the new M museum in Leuven, Belgium. The exhibition also contains a 3D scanning booth from Eyetronics, some pieces of the the .MGX collection and creations from i.materialise. Visitors can see first hand the incredible possibilities of 3D printing technologies. January 28 until February 11, Tuesday to Sunday, 11am to 6pm. For further details, visit www.mleuven.be.”
via @foc_amsterdam
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Via Beyond the Beyond
Personal comment:
Pas encore vraiment ça au niveau de l'exposition et des produits/oeuvres exposés, mais une piste intéressante à suivre qui pourrait mélanger un musée étendu (à la façon de MIX-m, des oeuvres digitales ou physiques et des oeuvres imprimables. Un jeu sur les échelles et la présence, etc.
Monday, January 25. 2010
by Samuel Axon
From 2005 up through 2008, virtual worlds seemed like the hottest ticket in tech, but we’ve heard less about them in recent months. We imagined the people of Earth leading double lives in alternate realities. It was the stuff of science fiction, like flying cars and robot butlers, and unlike those things, it actually looked like it could become reality.
Except it hasn’t. What happened? Are people still using virtual worlds? Let’s look at the latest developments in two of the most hyped virtual world platforms for insights into where (if anywhere) the alternate reality trend is headed.
Second Life: It’s Doing Better Than You’d Think
Second Life was regarded as the standard-bearer for a long time, but the flurry of press over in-world concerts and political campaigns has died down in 2009. However, it appears that the virtual world itself hasn’t done the same — or at least its economy hasn’t.
Second Life creators and curators Linden Lab reported just a few days ago that 2009 was actually kind of huge. Second Life’s economy grew 65% over 2008 to $567 million, or around 25% of the virtual goods economy in the United States. This was during a time when the real world’s economy actually shrunk.
Second Life’s economy revolves around virtual land and items, the former created by Linden Lab and the latter created by users. Based on anecdotal observation, it seems to us that a sizable portion of the property and items powering the economy are being used for adult activities in the world’s new, adult-only continent Zindra, though Linden Lab hasn’t released the data.
The author of a recent article on Second Life at PC Pro observed that the areas of the world outside the adult community seemed empty, but readers responded saying that the real problem is a lack of tools for locating like-minded people. That noted, it looks like Second Life has settled into a niche. That’s not a bad thing if it’s making money, but it’s not the virtual world explosion that the press, users, and Linden Lab itself hoped for a few years ago.
Metaplace’s Failure To Launch
Metaplace aspired to be the first great web-wide platform for virtual worlds. Shortly after launching, it became the foundation for 70,000 worlds.
Metaplace was envisioned to be a place where anyone could go to create their own virtual world and community, just like they can create their own profiles on Facebook. Just like Facebook profiles, the worlds could be linked or associated in a number of ways. It was also an open platform, ideal for developers who wanted to integrate virtual worlds with whatever other projects they were working on.
Since it was a combination of the best ideas in both the web and virtual worlds spaces, it seemed like the most cohesive plan for virtual world domination on the scene. It was a tough sell to users, unfortunately. They didn’t always understand the concepts that developers and designers found so exciting about the project.
The grand idea might have been too ambitious. In December, Metaplace announced that it would close on January 1, 2010. “Unfortunately, over the last few months it has become apparent that Metaplace as a consumer UGC service is not gaining enough traction to be a viable product, requiring a strategic shift,” the company said.
Nobody’s explained what the new plan is yet, but the company has said on Twitter that it’s looking for Facebook game designers and programmers.
The State of Virtual Worlds
Dedicated virtual worlds platforms haven’t become mainstream despite all the press attention and investor enthusiasm. Maybe most users find them too abstract, or maybe the sort of extreme anonymity they provide only appeals to a few subsets of people.
The greatest virtual world success story to date for grown-up users (it’s a whole different story for kids) is arguably the online roleplaying game World of Warcraft. Maybe the lesson to be learned here is that socialization alone isn’t enough to keep people interested in a virtual reality. If socializing is the sole objective, people usually prefer to be themselves on Facebook or Twitter.
Also consider Foursquare and Gowalla, which make virtual worlds out of the real one. Like virtual worlds, socialization on its own appears not to be enough to sustain location based services. Foursquare and Gowalla found success where previous entrants in the space had struggled by incorporating gaming elements to keep things interesting.
And while location based services and massively multiplayer video games are not the virtual reality science fiction that geeks hoped for, if you think about it, social networking and location gaming are concepts so out there that even most sci-fi authors didn’t see them coming.
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Via Mashable
Personal comment:
And in the meantime, it's funny to consider the world wide success of J. Cameron's movie "Avatar", who brings and make popular to "mass market" the concept of the "avatar" that is really and at first a "virtual worlds' invention" (well, maybe not at first...).
Tuesday, January 19. 2010
Google Street View is a great resource from Google, but sometimes the pictures can be months or years out of date. This means that billboards in Street View are often outdated and different – until now. Google has filed a patent in the United States that would let them place their own ads – observably something similar to AdSense – over the old, real life billboards.
Google’s patent filing mentions modernizing certain ads – like if a movie theatre owner wants to purchase ad space so the movie posters outside his theatre are modernized to reflect current movies (Avatar) instead of ones from 9 months ago (Monsters vs. Aliens).
But these are the only uses that Google sees for these virtual adspaces. Part of the patient mentions an auction system, where advertisers could bid over the rights to place their ads over the top of old billboards. This could lead to legal issues – like a restaurant buying a prime billboard over a rival.
Of course, there is the legal issue of the billboard owners getting upset about Google making money on their billboards – but they don’t have a case. In 2002, the USA Today paid Sony Pictures Entertainment for placement in the Spider-Man movie. In the movie, when Spidey was swinging through Times Square, the film’s editors digitally removed a Samsung ad and turned it into a USA Today ad.
Samsung, the ad company, and the building’s owner sued Sony Pictures Entertainment, but a court ruled that it was legal. Billboards are big money, and Google will likely be sued by some enterprising billboard company – but they’ve got legal percent on their side.
Of course, this may never come out at all. A Google spokesman told the UK’s Telegraph: “We file patent applications on a variety of ideas that our employees come up with. Some of those ideas later mature into real products or services, some don’t. Prospective product announcements should not necessarily be inferred from our patent applications.”
Tuesday, January 05. 2010
The movie titled "Known Universe" takes viewers from the Himalayas through our atmosphere and the inky black of space to the afterglow of the Big Bang. Every star, planet, and quasar seen in the film is possible because of the world's most complete four-dimensional map of the universe, the Digital Universe Atlas that is maintained and updated by astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History.
Every satellite, moon, planet, star and galaxy is represented to scale and its correct, measured location according to the best scientific research to-date.
Watch the video HERE.
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Via Information aesthetics
Tuesday, December 22. 2009
The best news I have heard this week was that the specs for 3D Blu-ray were finalized and that the PS3 would support 3D. That means with a simple firmware update PS3 owners will be able to enjoy 3D movies assuming they have a compatible TV. Sounds like it’s time for me to upgrade!
Sony also announced this week that it has teamed up with RealD to bring 3D technology to the home. You might recognize the RealD name as the company who is behind the 3D technology for many of the high-end 3D films in theaters like Avatar and others. Odds are if you watched a 3D movie in the theater lately, RealD was the tech behind the cool movie.
Sony will be licensing RealD tech for use in consumer products in 2010, including the stereoscopic 3D tech behind RealD in theaters. The tech will go into 3D Bravia LCD TVs and 3D eyewear needed to view the content.
Via Slash Gear
Personal comment:
la 3D pour les films pousse, mais cela n'enlève rien au coté gadget de la chose. L'énergie investie dans cette technologie est également biaisée/boostée par le fait que c'est également un moyen de lutte contre les copies illégales de film... propose-t-on de la 3D parce que cela apporte qqchose, ou bien propose-t-on la 3D pour éviter ou rendre bien plus difficile la copie du contenu...
Le fait que tout cela soit toujours "restitué" par l'intermédiaire d'un écran (plat) me fait penser que nous sommes encore bien loin d'une véritable restitution volumétrique de l'enregistrement d'une scène passée.
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