pixelplucker

One of 3d systems machines uses gypsum plaster that is colored along with an adhesive layer between. The models are pretty light and they toughen them up by soaking them in cyanoacrylate (super glue). You can imagine a room full of that can't be too healthy to work with. Wonder if you took the AM model as an OBJ and backed it through a program like Hexagon and added a thickness to the main shape. You can add the thickness inner rather than outer and save some material. All the 3d printers that require post processing to clean up weather it's poly jet that require a clean bath to remove support material, gypsum based, wax that need the lower temperature wax support to be dissolved, all these the models should be hollow and a hole should be added to empty the void out. This saves quite a bit on material costs. One of the big reasons I am finally looking to go in house with printing is because the dependability of outside companies isn't there. Majority of the shops that print will orient the model to gang up as much as they can to print as many models at a time rather than orient the models to best suite print quality. Good example is if you made a coin and printed it on edge the face would have build lines making the model useless. Even at 16µ-25µ (25µ is just under .001") these lines show. In the case of the Form1 the variations in materials are for different purposes. The clear material is for visibility for seeing something work, Gray for general purpose and the Black for fine detail. Reason black is because the uv light exposing the material doesn't spread (bloom) as much giving a finer finish than other color types.

Example of what I was meant is if you made a perfect circle then added a cp or disconnected a cp the curve of the circle is changed. This makes mechanical modeling a little more tedious than if the curvature was preserved. I did notice and think someone mentioned this already that Shift Clicking when adding cps no longer creates a sharp edge or noncontinuous spline but just adds as if it was a normal click.

There are major issues with finish quality if people are using plastic models for investment casting. Some do but there is residue left behind that can cause fissures with the cast as it flows through the mold causing weak spots as well as rough and contaminated surfaces that maybe hard or impossible to clean. There are wax printers that they use for lost wax casting that burn off clean used in the jewelry and dental industry. They work with heated heads that print layers of wax. If you are doing lost wax casting you can take the plastic model and make a rubber mold of the object that you then make wax casting replicas. These wax replicas you can do investment casts from. Extra steps but the end result is much better. So far for all the machines I had stuff printed on the Form1+ seems to be the best no matter what price for plastic output quality. There are build lines but they are so fine it is almost not an issue. Price is hard to beat, most office printers cost this much or more.

I tend to use a mix of objects in AM. Objects that need to be articulated with bones or are characters etc I would spend the time to model them in AM. Static objects that fill the scene I often use cad models and import them in as obj's. I would love to see the ability to place decals on obj files in AM but currently you can't do that on props, at least not at this time. In that case I either uv map and paint them outside in 3d Coat or I make and decal the model in AM. My only beef with AM for mechanical modeling is not so much a precision issue but rather the auto bias handle balancing. This can be an annoyance when you need to go back and tweak handles. I wish it could be turned off or have some way of freezing their relation to each other.

That is pretty cool, rule of thumb is all shapes must be closed surfaces. You can have shapes intersect each other since the final layers will be derived from the solid bodies. Looks like it was done with fdm out of colored abs. If so then there is a lot you can't do with that method because it uses tool paths instead of just layers alone and there is no real support for printed materal that overhangs. I might be getting the new Form1+, getting to the point it isn't cost effective for me to send out. If I do get one I'd be happy to run stuff out for the people here, certainly wouldn't cost $80 since the material is much much less and total machine costs is far less than what I had been using. They have a several materials to print from nearly crystal clear, white, gray and super fine resolution black. I had a sample part come back and the resolution is much better than the polyjet machines out there.

I think much of this can be done already on most of your gaming video cards, might be easier to implement into AM than we think.

Hmm I don't see that at all on my system, pen and cursor are dead on all the time no matter how fast. I have the 21 ux. Not sure why the latest one drags like he showed. Could it be the cpu's? Not enough to drive them along with the programs? I never had that as an issue even when I had just the one processor and 1/3 the memory. The MS Surface really lags, at least the ones I have tried so far. I find that annoying and distracting.

Starting to see more and more real time renderer's but on an animation sense are the attributed baked into the models? Can you animate the lighting, reflection and texture attributes over time? This something AM is leaning towards say version 30 or something?

Another great piece!

Wasn't there a virtual studio set up here already? Not sure what could be funded if the users already have the software. Would the funding be used to create tools for AM? Now that might be worth it, a new rigging system similar to TSM, maybe some new translation tools such as FBX I/O, and even some mocap via kinnect that the Poser people are adopting.

I have to check that out, does it work off group names?

Pretty much all tablets use the Wintab driver and all perform pretty much the same on a machine, ie a bamboo would be similar to the higher end tablets. Overall just about any average machine should have little or no drag to them. I am thinking there must be just a lot of background applications and/or processes eating up resources making it slower. Also how clean is the machine inside? CPU heatsink clean or dusty? Intel chips will throttle down when they heat up. Every few months I blast out approx 1.7 cats worth of fur out of my machine, maybe 1.4 I might be exaggerating.

I was just thinking of doing a Kick Starter for my early retirement, haven't really set a goal amount or determine quite how much I would like but thought it would be far easier than trying to come up with a project and look for investors and hope to make something out of it all. Always looking for a shortcut

Nah, that program is poly based, more like Silo or Hexagon than AM. AM's modeling is splines which are closer to nurbs but have special rules you need to be aware of when it comes to continuity of the splines. Big advantage of AM is the splines are more resolution independent than a sub division surfaces that poly models require use to smooth surfaces out. Good example is to do a displacement map on a poly model you need thousands of polygons but can do the same displacement with just a few patches. Character models are easier to assign bones to and weight on a spline model rather than painting weights on tons of polygons.

Hmm shouldn't lag though, it is just a monitor. Does the mouse cursor lag at all?

I know what you mean, gets tough when you have similar programs and the shortkeys are different for the same function. Though I still love my space mouse, no real buttons on that, its just a knob.

Big problem is converting sub division surfaces into usable splines, there is an obj importer and an external program called Troher that can sort of translate the quads into splines with some success. Problem comes in with non quad or nsided faces. Because AM is spline based there is a lot more information embedded into each cp which is something that isn't done with polygon models or sub division surfaces that may have information tagged to the base control shape. Recently they added the ability to trace over high poly objects with splines like retopology which works nicely and will give the purest AM model with the least amount of translation problems. I used to think that the parallel theories between poly objects and AM models could make for a descent convert until I dug deeper and found that it is horrifically complex. It might be possible but not sure at what cost. Alternatively BVH is pretty successful when bound to an AM Skeleton, there are some tutorials around on the forum.

I stumbled across this little program that can assign key, key combos, joystick or mouse movements onto other input devices. It was designed to make game controllers like xbox 360 controllers compatible with all programs but it also works on space mice. This would certainly work in enabling the joystick on the game pad to work in AM. www.xpadder.com There is no installer for it, program just runs, the interface is a little different but pretty easy to set up. It does not auto switch profiles created for each application so you have to load what you want to use. The program is $9.99

If your Cintiq has lag then maybe the pc is a little slow for it? Cintiq is just a monitor/tablet and it's performance is as good as the system it runs on. The Sony's flip had a slight lag but nothing like the Surface, the flip also had a dedicated video card and not the usual built in Intel which I am sure was a big factor. Can't say on the Companion since I haven't seen one first hand. I don't even know what kind of video card is in the Companion, haven't been able to see it on their specs. For all we know it might be the same. On another note I thought this was pretty cool.. Tiny projector that is also a touch screen via stylus. http://news.yahoo.com/tiny-android-projector-puts-80-inch-touchscreen-wall-161213199.html;_ylt=AwrBJSD8ItpT6ngAApTQtDMD

Don't be discouraged but rather be determined. Not everyones business model is the same. If your work is comparable to someone in the area that is charging $100 an hour then you shouldn't be selling yourself short at $20 an hour. Not only does it lower the market value for the work but it cheapens the expectations from the client. It's nice to be competitive but don't go crazy. When I had a screen printing shop I ran into tons of basement printers that had 0 overhead and didn't even charge for their artwork or setups and their cost per color charges where so low they didn't even cover the cost of their electric bill. This was a huge pain because the customers felt they were getting ripped off going to legitimate printers. The basement printers wouldn't last a year but were damaging to the business. Be subjective about your work and see what the market will bear based on others.

I've been self employed almost 30 years now, scary thought. Yup taxes are not in your favor being self employed, hours are long and you may not have a boss over your shoulder but you have clients yelling and screaming instead. It took me a long long time to weed out the garbage, I am only a contract worker (work with other companies in my industry and not directly with the end purchaser). 99% of the people that want your services are unlikely willing to pay the price for them especially if your doing work for free. Never just give away work in hopes of them coming back. Typically these people scavenge around for suppliers that give something away in hope of returning business. If you actually got a job out of them then your first paying job is only worth half the rate you would normally charge so is that really worth it, will they come back again or find some other sucker to do the same thing again. Look around for what the going rates are and the quality of work that is being done. Most likely if you count your costs of doing business (rent, utilities, and other silly things like food) How many hours can you stay busy (billable time) Cost of your hardware and software. If you really consider these and work at home then you may fit in the realm and might have a shot. Before you quit your job and end up on the side of the road in a cardboard box and run your comp off a stolen car battery while using a hijacked Internet connect, try to build up steady work where the income from the new venture is equal or greater than your getting now. Do this over th course of a year since most work has its cycles. For myself I have had a blast with the great people I have worked with and wouldn't trade it for sitting in some cubical in an obnoxious office somewheres. No lie it is really really hard to do but also the most gratifying. If your going to do this for the long haul also keep in mind how industries change and try to keep up and evolve with them.

I tried the Surface Pro 2 and 3 out and found the cursor lags behind so quick sketch lines will be a problem. Nice to see the comparison between the 2 but I realized neither are any good for any serious production work and on their own are pretty limited. They aren't all that portable by the time you add a mouse, keyboard, number pad if the keyboard doesn't have one, space mouse that I use often, and external hard drive since most built in drives are just too small. So sitting at the couch and loading up a coffee table with all the accessories and stooping over to work isn't all that great. They have yet to solve the lack of a mouse wheel on the stylus, suppose it is possible to put a slider switch along with the 2 buttons but none have yet to do that. For myself I have a lot of difficulty getting touchscreens to work with my fingertips because they are so callused and end up using my knuckles to get the screen to react. Bottom line is unless your traveling and working the Cintiq is probably still the best option. What would be good is a wireless version of the Cintiq that uses your pc remotely. The stock stand is less than adequate and the arm is a slight improvement.

Actually Steam isn't a half bad way of distributing, good advertising too.

My avatar showing? I would be lost without it.

So this is what all the fuss is about. Not too shabby,