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Science

3D Modelling From a Sketch 215

Posted by CmdrTaco from the helluva-lot-easier-than-autocad dept.
hargettp writes "Happened to be skimming through the December BoingBoing and I noticed this link to research into 3D modelling by interpreting sketches. Basically, with a pen and tablet and a good Java applet, a user can start digitally modelling 3D structures about as easy as if they were molding clay with their bare hands. It was the demonstration video that made my jaw drop. Impressive!"
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3D Modelling From a Sketch More

3D Modelling From a Sketch

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  • Great way to ruin a webserver (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @01:31PM (#7746296)
    Post an avi file on slashdot...Great going! I hope you warned them this was happening!

  • old news (Score:5, Informative)

    by fireteller2 ( 712795 ) * on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @01:32PM (#7746314) Homepage

    Very old news. "Teddy" was developed by Takeo Igarashi at the University of Tokyo, and presented at SIGGRAPH 1999. 8-13-99 Schedule [siggraph.org]

    • Re:old news (Score:5, Informative)

      by Michael Crutcher ( 631990 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @02:01PM (#7746571)
      I think this a successor to "Teddy" called "SmoothTeddy".

      As the linked page doth say:
      SmoothTeddy is a successor to Teddy and Chameleon

      You know, like maybe he's been working on it for a while and stuff.

    • I saw this at Siggraph (Score:5, Interesting)

      by spitzak ( 4019 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @02:22PM (#7746766) Homepage
      He was also an excellent speaker, very entertaining. He had used his program to draw characters from the movies shown in the Electronic Theatre during the show.

      The program I thought was brilliant. It is what user interface should be, not a thousand menus and "toolbars" but an empty window that you click on and it "does what you want". Too bad there is no sign of such interfaces showing up in real-world applications, either open or closed...

      • Re:I saw this at Siggraph (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Cthefuture ( 665326 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @04:32PM (#7747972)
        It is what user interface should be, not a thousand menus and "toolbars" but an empty window that you click on and it "does what you want". Too bad there is no sign of such interfaces showing up in real-world applications, either open or closed...

        Hmmm... There are several highly useful applications that sport exactly (well, close it it... they are more powerful than Teddy) that type of interface. They are the "secrets" of the 3D modelling world and once you use them you'll wish everything else worked like them.

        Mirai [izware.com] and Nendo [izware.com] are two commercial offerings and Wings 3D [wings3d.com] is a free modeling app that has a similar interface. Dispite all the Maya press, Mirai was used for some critical parts of LOTR.

        Izware (aka Winged Edge Technologies; aka Nichimen; aka Symbolics; aka ...) is the company that makes Mirai and Nendo. They have always been a strange company with very poor marketing and management skills so not many people know how great their stuff is. The company is always in a bizarre state of flux. For instance right now their main page says "We'll be right back" with no other links at all (it's been like this for ages; more than a year).

        Wings 3D fits between Nendo and Mirai. It's better than Nendo but doesn't offer all that Mirai does. However, it's free and open-source.

        The key to the useful UI is the context sensitive menus. All complex applications should work this way because it narrows down the possible actions to what you're working on. Instead of having hundreds or thousands of menus and buttons to push (*cough* 3DSMAX *cough*), you just have simple context menus based on what you have selected. It's a superb interface for managing complexity.

        Plus the help system is built right into the interface.
        • Oh yes, I am aware of the Nichimen products. I agree they have the style of interface I am talking about. Personally I have not used it, only seen it being used, but it just looks right to me, and the users have told me that it works and they love the larger visible area.

          Too bad they seem to be a niche market. Even Blender is better-known than their stuff.

        • Thanks for the Wings3D link (certainly priced right for the dabbler :) I watched a couple of the animated demos, and seems like it's one of those nice "do the obvious, and the expected happens" programs.

      • Re:I saw this at Siggraph (Score:5, Informative)

        by symbolic ( 11752 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @04:37PM (#7748008)

        There's one catch - "doing what you want" is not always the easiest, nor the fastest way to do something. For example, what if, instead of just drawing a line, I want to draw a straight line. Suddenly, I need some kind of function that will constrain the movement along one axis. The alternative is to spend oodles of time trying to tweak a line until it's straight enough. What if I want to start out with a geographic primitive? Am I supposed to build one from scratch? Once I have that, what if I need to scale a part of it? Should that be done manually? Let's say I'd like to duplicate it and the flip it across an axis (often used for creating identical left/right portions of object)? Do I spend gobs of time doing this manually?

        Tools have their place- and often, if used correctly, they are there to help us produce superior results, and save significant amounts of time in the process. Just like an empty window, they aren't a substitute for talent and artistic skill, but they can sure provide ways to automate the purely tedious aspects of 3D modeling.

  • Slashdotted already (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @01:33PM (#7746323)
    And then people complain that we don't read the articles!

  • It has to be pr0n! (Score:5, Funny)

    by worst_name_ever ( 633374 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @01:34PM (#7746329)
    It was the demonstration video that made my jaw drop.

    Hmm, now why am I suspicious of a link to a video called "smoothteddy.avi"? Oh yeah, because this is Slashdot.

  • maybe a use for tablet pcs (Score:4, Interesting)

    by anthony_philipp ( 710666 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @01:34PM (#7746331)
    maybe this will give some purpose to tablet pcs. sounds pretty sweet, but it was already /.ed so i couldnt read it. kinda dissapointing. either that or the link was bad.

    • Re:maybe a use for tablet pcs (Score:5, Insightful)

      by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @02:25PM (#7746811) Homepage Journal
      "maybe this will give some purpose to tablet pcs."

      Us digital artists would already like to have Tablet PCs. We like drawing. I may end up with when when the right combination of price and power comes along. Tablets are good but having the feedback right under the stylus would be quite useful.

    • Alias Sketch (Score:4, Insightful)

      by simpl3x ( 238301 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @03:05PM (#7747205)
      there is already a purpose! and in conjunction with Alias design tools there is some integration, and more I would expect in the future. As a Mac person primarily, i am often put off by Steve's blanket denunciation of platforms (Newton) and technology (interconnectedness--Appletalk vs TCP-IP). I use my tablet to design packaging conncepts, which i export to TIFFS, and incorporate them into documents for clients. I would love a high power Mac tablet pc like device, but i doubt that will happen soon. even on the Windows side, the tablet pc's are generally underpowered for tasks like 3d.

  • I almost thought of that (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ciaran_o_riordan ( 662132 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @01:34PM (#7746333) Homepage
    Hmmm, a markup language based on pen strokes rather than text tags. Pretty obvious really. (After someone else tells you about it :-)

  • Google Cache for Karma (Score:5, Informative)

    by hugesmile ( 587771 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @01:34PM (#7746342)
    Google Cache [216.239.41.104] to the rescue. What do I win?

  • Open source 3D modelling (Score:5, Informative)

    by Lord Satri ( 609291 ) <alexandrelerouxNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @01:34PM (#7746344) Homepage Journal

    Open source 3D for GIS : vterrain.org [vterrain.org]

    See also openscenegraph.org [openscenegraph.org]

    Both can use Remote Sensing [matox.com]data.

    • Re:Open source 3D modelling (Score:4, Informative)

      by theMerovingian ( 722983 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @01:50PM (#7746495) Journal

      Wow, another GISer on Slashdot (not too many).

      Terragen [planetside.co.uk] makes attractive 3D layouts. It is both free and easy to use.

      It is essentially useless for geospatial analysis (I haven't messed around with it in a couple of years, so who knows), but it is remarkably easy to make some cool terrain, add vegetation, and brew up some clouds on the horizon.

      • I fell in love with GIS over labor day when my family and I went fly fishing up at mount shasta. I found CASIL and got Global Mapper to run under wine (I had no idea of these other projects until now) on my laptop. The amount of information I was able to extract was incredible. My laptop with Global Mapper and a DVD worth of GIS data put any car navigation system I've ever seen to shame. All I was missing was a GPS receiver, but even without one I was able to pinpoint our location on logging roads. I'm
      • I can vouch for this, as well. Terragen owns. Very easy to use, even for those that aren't familiar with modeling software. I've made some pretty nice landscapes with it; it comes highly recommended. I as well haven't used it in more than a year, so things may have changed, but from what I can recall, Terragen is worth your attention if you have any interest in landscape modeling on the Win32 platform.
      • it seems if there are any, they are hiding :). my biggest problem with most GIS system is the general lack of good open data in a format that doesn't take a month to understand. tiger and DCW (digital chart of the world) are the primary data sets, but both take a lot of processing, and people who (like myself) actually bother to figure out the formats end up being quite stingy with the results. nobody understands us!

        • dollargonzo wrote:

          ...are the primary data sets, but both take a lot of processing, and people who (like myself) actually bother to figure out the formats end up being quite stingy with the results.

          Please, pretty please, then, open-source your reformatted results!

          I've looked into GIS several times over the years, hoping to use data for highly nontraditional purposes, but the formats are indeed a major pain, so I've always gone away discouraged.

          So help the world out, publish your stuff!

      • Terragen is only free for noncommercial, function-limited use (tho for dabblers, one can't complain too much about the limitations). Reg'd version is $79. See http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/register.shtm l (beware the /. space)

        I'm forever losing its blasted URL, so thanks for the link :)

  • Sounds Like SketchUp 3D (Score:5, Informative)

    by N8F8 ( 4562 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @01:35PM (#7746357)
    I was researching 3D home design tools for my dad and came across a neat too called SketchUp 3D [sketchup.com] that sounds similar.
    SketchUp has a unique interface that allows 3D forms to be created, viewed and modified quickly and easily. The core of its simplicity is an interface that allows you simply to draw the edges of the desired model in 3D space, just as they would using a pencil and paper. Intelligent inferencing capabilities automatically determine the nature of the lines and "fill" shapes to create 3D geometry. SketchUp is used by all kinds of designers in many different industries. It is quick to learn, fast to use and hard to forget.
    • Actually SketchUp is very cool, plus they have a demo that lets you do everything you want for 6 hours of program-run time.

      Very simple to use, and they've thought of everything to make it simpler. Draw a line, and then click near the middle, it'll assume you want to find the center point (but you don't have to).
      It's really slick in realtime shading & rendering too.

      Wish I had the $$ to buy it, just 'cause it's fun.
      Now I've used my 6 hours on my computer at home, computer at work, laptop, and wife's co
    • Good link though; I appreciated learning about SketchUp, as I was not familiar with it.

      I'm the one who posted this article this morning, and I'm really bummed that the links quit working well before the article actually made it onto Slashdot. Otherwise, I think you (and everyone else) might have seen what is so different about SmoothTeddy: whereas SketchUp looks great for architectural design, SmoothTeddy is better for arbitrary shapes.

      The video showed a user drawing an arbitrary closed 2-D curve, and th
    • This system [mit.edu] is similarly aimed at architectural work. However it looks more like the Teddy stuff, as its based on generating points in 3d from 2d sketches (possibly scanned in) by looking at the perspective in the drawing.

      It's not true 3d though - they assume all the points drawn lie on a unit sphere, and project them onto that. However this is good enough to provide panoramic views from building sketches, for example.
  • now, nobody download that vid. let me do it and ill let everybody know about how it looks

  • Pathological cases (Score:5, Funny)

    by 200_success ( 623160 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @01:36PM (#7746362)

    So, what happens if you feed it an M. C. Escher drawing? Or a drawing of a Klein bottle?

  • See Sketchup (Score:5, Informative)

    by G4from128k ( 686170 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @01:37PM (#7746385)
    Although geared toward architectural sketching, SketchUp [sketchup.com] might serve some of these needs. (Disclosure: I've not used the software, but I do walk past their office on a near-daily basis).
    • Not really. Sketchup still relies on traditional polygonyl modelling techniques to create the models. SketchUps strength lies in its ability to render images that look like someone sketched the illustration but all the scale, shape and lighting are realistic. It's a very cool, though frustrating in some ways, program that does a good job of creating acrhitectural sketches, that can be updated easily and in real-time, from acrhitectural blueprints for client review.

  • What a tease! (Score:2, Funny)

    by 7x7 ( 665946 )
    ...and every nerd on earth collectively blows it up.

  • Sounds like... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @01:39PM (#7746409)
    This sounds like it might have a lot in common with the Priceton 3d model search engine [princeton.edu] covered on slashdot a while back.

  • 3d sketch applications, formz and sketchup (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bstil ( 652204 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @01:49PM (#7746478)
    Old news to architects.

    FormZ (www.formz.com) has had simple 3d sketching capabilities for years. SketchUp (mentioned in previous posts) is one of the most user-friendly tools available today. However, most Sketchup functionality already exists in formZ. SketchUp just makes sketching (1) fun, (2) easy, and (3) look like pencil sketch lines or cartoon lines.
    • I come from an archviz firm that has used FormZ extensively for over 5 years now...please indicate wherein this <sarcasm>wonderful</sarcasm> program we can find a sketch-type interface.

      Note: simplicity of modeling simple objects is NOT the same as a sketch interface.

  • Another 3d creation system (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @01:50PM (#7746498)
    This one using Squeak (Smalltalk) [Google Cached] [216.239.59.104]

  • well (Score:3, Interesting)

    by zboy ( 685758 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @01:52PM (#7746508)
    I'm not really sure about what was orignially posted, but in some ways it does sound an awful lot like ZBrush [zbrush.com]..I've seen it demo'd at the macworld expo on a few occasions and its a pretty cool looking piece of software
    • No ZBrush is totally different. It is interested in filling in areas, this is interested in the boundaries of areas.

  • Grumble (Score:5, Insightful)

    by iamdrscience ( 541136 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @02:02PM (#7746586) Homepage
    When will people learn that linking to a video from a Slashdot article is almost always a bad idea? Think about it, 40MB+ times 100,000+ people is easily into the area of multiple tens of Terabytes! That's abso-fucking-lutely nuts!

    If you really want to have people see a video, at least get a friend to setup a bit torrent tracker for it in advance or something, then the site will at least have a chance.
    • Maybe editors are just hoping that with enough Slashdot frustration someone will reinvent then internet and solve all of our bandwidth issues forever. So they're not kicking your server in the nuts because they're stupid, they're kicking your server in the nuts because they care .

  • reminds me of a neat sketched out physics sim (Score:4, Interesting)

    by RevAaron ( 125240 ) <revaaron AT hotmail DOT com> on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @02:03PM (#7746591) Homepage
    Saw a video a few months back of new research (teddy is old) having to do with using sketches to draw out a physics simulation. written in Java. IIRC, done at MIT's Oxygen lab. Anyway, it was incredible- the guy draws a ramp. Draws a box at the top of the ramp, adds wheels. hit go and the whole thing is played out at 1 G in the way it would here on earth. I would knife someone to get a hold of that. Ok, maybe not that, but yeah, it'd be great.

  • Apt summary (Score:4, Funny)

    by cgenman ( 325138 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @02:06PM (#7746624) Homepage
    It was the demonstration video that made my jaw drop.

    It was also the demonstration video that made the server drop.

  • Why not use clay? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by skazatmebaby ( 110364 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @02:16PM (#7746695) Homepage
    I don't understand; if it's as easy as modeling in clay, why not use clay? The tactile feedback while using clay has to be much more than using a pen tablet. There is technology that can scan something in 3D.

    Perhaps I'm old fashioned...

    • Re:Why not use clay? (Score:3, Informative)

      by HansF ( 700676 )
      Basicly you're right. Using clay would be the most 'natural' way to do it.
      Unforunately, if you want to do it in clay, you would have to find a way to digitse it.
      That means you need a 3d-scanner of some sort (here [minoltausa.com], here [3dscanners.com], here [minoltausa.com]).
      Needless to say, these can be very expensive.
      Ofourse serious /. geeks would build it themselves [muellerr.ch].
      On the other hand if you want to stay with the clay option, go for stopmotion. It worked for Aardman [aardman.com]!
      • Not necessarily. You assume the object being modelled is something that'd be possible to make in clay. This isn't often the case. For organic shapes and creatures, it may make sense; if you've worked in Maya or similar, you know that making the basic polygons for an object can take a while to get right, and doing that part in clay before adding details might be nice.

        But many things can't be made in clay. Either they don't support their own weight, or aren't structuers that are easy to make, or are machin

    • Perhaps I'm old fashioned...

      Well, call me old-fashioned, but why would I want a pile of mud in my house when I can use a computer instead?

    • I don't understand; if it's as easy as modeling in clay, why not use clay? The tactile feedback while using clay has to be much more than using a pen tablet. There is technology that can scan something in 3D.

      Well, it's a lot harder to email someone a lump of clay. Tends to clog up the ethernet port.

  • There is a PS2 game that uses something like this. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by darkmayo ( 251580 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @02:18PM (#7746704)
    Magic Pengel : The Quest for Color
    You draw a doodle and the game will turn it into a 3d sprite that you fight with.
    anyways here is a URL from Gamespot about this

    http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/strategy/colorquestt en tativetitle/

  • while the video is unavailable (Score:4, Informative)

    by butane_bob2003 ( 632007 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @02:30PM (#7746875) Homepage
    try the application itself. I was going to try it, but it requires windows for some of it's native rendering code (looks like direct x calls).

  • Artform Curvy 3D (Score:4, Informative)

    by GeLeTo ( 527660 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @02:34PM (#7746910)
    Check out Atrform's curvy 3d [curvy3d.com]. It is quite similar to teddy but much more advanced. You can create very complex shapes with just a few strokes. The gallery and tutorials are very impressive.

  • It is still a toy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cabodine ( 664424 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @02:45PM (#7747020)
    I have seen this demoed at CMU it was cool but for the most part it was useless, just a toy. I do have a back ground in 3D so I know something of the subject. Any one looking into 3D animation or modeling for a hobby would be bored with this in 10 minutes. You have no control over fine details, it is worse then trying to sculpting clay with boxing gloves on. If there is a program out there that looks like it can make it so easy to make a 3d model then it falls into one of two groups niche or toy.

    Niche; being that it works great on one thing, programs that can take a set of photo pictures into a 3D model.

    Toy; like smooth teddy. Microsoft had a 3D program back in the day it was so basic it was more a tool / demo of what Windows 3.1/95 could do , this was before they owned Softimage.

    That is my two cents.
    • I have seen this demoed at CMU it was cool but for the most part it was useless, just a toy.

      If you were at the CMU demo, I'm surprised you forgot what Takeo was billing this as. He wanted to use this for rapid 3d visualization. The idea is that right now, the easiest method to describe many things to people is still with a pencil and a piece of paper and doing a sketch. It's hard to do this with 3d objects -- you end up doing things with your hands to try to form extremely rough models to get ideas ac
  • Can't see the videos, but it sounds an awful lot like ZBrush [pixologic.com]. ZBrush is a 2D and 3D tool, looks really interesting (if only I had a larger 3D app budget).

    Also as a Cinema user, I purchased Mesh Surgery [cgtalk.com], which has some nice tablet or mouse free hand painting effects. It's a nice tool (a little buggy the odd time), great for adding muscles little ripples, painting landscapes. Good Stuff, and pretty cheap (if you have C4D 8.2)

  • A-VOLVE (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mattr ( 78516 ) <mattr&telebody,com> on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @02:54PM (#7747104) Homepage Journal
    Also Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneaux developed a while ago another Siggraph-shown art project called A-Volve [iamas.ac.jp]. I think their server can take it.. Also here [telefonica.com] you can see the drawing screen. You make fish by drawing the schematic and they swim in a crt under real water.. and have kids who look and act a bit like the parents! Nice people too. See the interaction [atr.co.jp] and a bigger picture [sva.edu]. They also developed gesture recognition based projects and were at NTT's ATR lab in Kyoto. Now I think still at IAMAS in Gifu, Japan. This maybe precedes Igarashi's work though his is also great stuff.

  • This reminds me of Magic Pengel (Score:5, Informative)

    by ProppaT ( 557551 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @03:15PM (#7747338) Homepage
    Gamers out there might remember a game that game out about a year ago on the PS2 called Magic Pengel. It reminds me quite a bit of this project.

    In this game, you used a variety of different brushes to draw a monster. You had different options, such as picking a "head" brush to signify the object you were drawing was part of the monsters head, etc...but, for the most part, the game just saw the lines you were drawing. The AMAZING part of this game was that it would take your 2d sketch and, for the most part, flesh it out in 3d. Not only that, it would also fully animate the model through a built in algorithm.

    The impressive part was how well this worked. Not only did it do what it was supposed to do but, in most cases, it actually realistically animated the monster. It's a little cutesy, but you guys who are into this kind of thing should check it out!

  • Using the program (Score:5, Informative)

    by MilenCent ( 219397 ) * <johnwh@gmai[ ]om ['l.c' in gap]> on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @03:28PM (#7747464) Homepage
    I downloaded SmoothTeddy when I first saw it on boingboing and have been playing with it a little. It's nice being able to create 3D images so flexibly, but there are bugs in the system. The interface has many elements of gestures (delete a shape by drawing a line from it to a trashcan, cut it apart by drawing a line across it, mirror it by drawing a line from a shape off into the air). However it's written in Java and it shows. It's more of a technology demo than something that can be used for real work at the moment. The program's only export format is to Alice, a combination 3D modelling/programming system (well... that's technically true at least, heh). The guy's page said that there's a commercial product in Japan that uses the Teddy technology, but that it's Japanese-only.

    Ignoring the bugs (many of which cause the program to freeze if an incorrect stroke is drawn), there are some cool elements to this. Most things you can draw end up looking almost exactly like a big pillow. You can draw objects on the pillow that intersect it and then adjust their location on the pillow's surface. When it gets where you want it you can "merge" it with the pillow. The program tries to create smooth meshes wherever it can, and making sharp corners is almost impossible without creative use of the cutting tool.

    Verdict: fun to play with if you have a good tolerance for bugs and don't mind that you won't be able to easily get your work into another program.
  • Over a hundred comments and not one complaint about the alleged slowness of java?
    Slashdotting rules! :)

  • smoothteddy.avi.torrent (= (Score:5, Informative)

    by algeliten ( 733634 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @04:05PM (#7747752)

    From me, to you. But I don't except the server to survive a real slashdotting, so behave.

    the video [alge.nlc.no]

  • MetaCreations Canoma (Score:4, Insightful)

    by GoRK ( 10018 ) on Wednesday December 17, 2003 @04:26PM (#7747924) Homepage Journal
    MetaCreations had a product called Canoma that you'd import a photo or two, describe the 3d scene in the photo with basic modelling, then it would create a 3d textured representation from the photos. It didn't make really really wonderful scenes or anything, but the stuff you could do with it in about an hour were incredible.

    Adobe purchased the product from MetaCreations and it's not being sold anymore. Perhaps it will come out again in the future to compliment their horrible Atmosphere product.

    Also, Java sucks.

    ~GoRK

  • Mirror of the video (Score:2, Informative)

    by Kjellander ( 163404 )
    You can use this mirror [csbnet.se] to view the video.
  • ...was Professor John Hughes [brown.edu], currently on sabbatical from Brown University. In case anyone cares. Brown's graphics group [brown.edu], which includes Dr. Hughes, has been doing sketch-based 3D for around a decade. I worked in that group for a time.
  • who says..."as easy as if they were molding clay with their bare hands" it's easy?
  • From what I can see - this software has a lot of great tools for increasing productivity of a 3d modeller, but in a lot of cases, I saw it making some huge assumptions. Like in the extrusions. How does the software know how to do the rotation, how thick you want the shape, what kind of cross section, how much to curve it. Such assumptions won't make every modeller happy in every case, so they've got to enter this data somehow. So they're only showing half the story here.
    I assume that the 3rd dimension i

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