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Harvard Software 3D Prints Articulated Action Figures
An anonymous reader writes with an excerpt from an article at Geek.com "A team of computer scientists at Harvard University have developed a piece of software that allows anyone to 3D print their own action figures at home. Not only will the models carry the likeness of the character, they will also be fully articulated. The software can take an animated 3D character and figure out where best to place its joints. In what is referred to as reverse rendering, the software first looks at an animated character's shape and movement and identifies the best joint points (original paper, paywalled). It then adjusts the size of the different parts of the model so as to allow a real joint to work once printed. Optimizations are then carried out to produce a model as close as possible to the on-screen version, but at the same time workable as an actual real-world, articulated 3D model."
The bad news: Harvard is patenting everything and wants to commercialize it on a proprietary basis. The good news: An anonymous reader pointed toward the paper in full.
My very own Evil Wil Wheaton action figure can be a reality!
"The bad news: Harvard is patenting everything and wants to commercialize it on a proprietary basis." So tired of this. I get it, but I'm tired of it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
http://www.baecher.info/fab_char_sig12.html
I've printed (and designed) models that get sent to the 3D printer, and are articulated/movable fresh from build (after suitable cleanup), no post-printing assembly required.
The new idea is the "take a character and automatically place/design joints" part.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
So how would the AFAA (Action Figure Association of America) implement some kind of DRM on action figures anyways? Would they try to force a blacklist of designs onto every 3d printer? Too bad for them the first thing I'm printing out is an army of pirates.
---
cheaper action figures --> more crappy sequels to market them
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
"Anyone at home" is an interesting take on that. Just how many people have a 3D printer in their home? A tiny number I would think.
That's a serious question, how many?
The plans are free, the software is free... they should call it free-printing!
Why would the shark be in orbit? It's the subject that jumps, not the shark.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
First of all, the shark doesn't do the jumping. Second, how do you buy action figures that aren't available for sale, like cartoon characters from obscure TV shows? Third, it's a nascent technology, so give it time to mature.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Oh crap, they've switched from lasers to nukes!
Anyone who actually goes to collector sites like One Sixth Warrior or Sideshow (Freaks) Collectors knows there are already people doing this. I've seen many zbrush sculpted, 3d printed custom head sculpts for high end collectables.
Last time I checked, toy figure designers (requires 3D figure drawing skills, and a knowledge of plastics and manufacturing processes and mold-making) were paid quite well and were in high demand.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Or you could look at it as another labor-intensive job that humans don't have to do anymore. Unless they really want to.
Last time I checked, toy figure designers (requires 3D figure drawing skills, and a knowledge of plastics and manufacturing processes and mold-making) were paid quite well and were in high demand.
William
And that's BAD, how?
Really, you should work for RIAA/MPAA. The argument you make is essentially the same reason they're fighting against new technologies - protecting the status quo for no other reason than to protect the status quo.
Then I choose Jabberjaw as my action figure. And I'll print up a jet-pack accessory. That way, when it jumps the shark, it will indeed be an orbiting shark.
And a laser, must also print out a laser accessory. That's right: Orbiting Laser Shark!
Mwahahahaha!!!
well now they can go on working on designs for better factories or higher end art.
why do you think it's good that talented material designers are tied up with toys?
(besides, it doesn't do that, they can still just make better stuff).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Yeah! Just like that Telephone thing. Really, if you want to talk to someone, just meet them face to face and talk with them. Sheesh!
And the Television. That's just a fad. It will never last.
And who would want to buy a car when you can raise your own horse?
This has been commercially available for a long, long time. Frankly, I fail to see how Harvard could legally hijack what the CAD/CAM/CAE segment has been doing for years. Shame on Harvard for riding on other people's coat tails and taking credit for.
I can do it to....I have this new invention I call the "weel". It's round and you put four of them on a vehicle so it can make go.
Harvard FAIL.
Harvard is supposed to be a non-profit entity and, unless I am mistaken, is tax exempt for this reason.
I think Universities should pay taxes right along with the rest of us. Fuck 'em. They should get deductions for scholarships but they should be paying tax on all their profits, just like any other greedy money hungry bunch o' sumbitches.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
Humans have an innate ability to comprehend the spatial organization of an object and to replicate it in another medium, even to scale it automatically. Most of us are not expert sculptors and so we would do a rather poor job of it, but nevertheless, the ability is inherent in us all.
The so-called "reverse rendering" in the article is, again, just part of our innate object recognition ability. Without that ability, images would unrecognizable to us as 2D projections of 3D objects. The ability appears to be quite widespread throughout the animal kingdom too, it's certainly not limited just to us.
Improving this process by computerizing the object capture from 2D images and replicating the object through 3D printing is obviously very useful on a practical level, but hopefully the process is not being claimed to be something new. The process is quite obvious to us because we do it in our heads and with our hands as a natural ability, and it has thousands of years of prior art.
Doing it on a computer with a lot of maths doesn't change that. And maths isn't itself patentable, or at it least shouldn't be.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
The shark is in orbit, you still have to jump over it. Duh.
i thought they just cranked out assinine CEOs and douchebag bankers
I can see how they determine joint location, my question is whether or not the joint type selection is automatic. I.e. The knees didn't appear to be pure ball joints, but more like pinned joints. the tail and neck were obviously pure ball allowing multi-axis rotation, but the knees looked like single axis joints.
If only we could fall into a woman's arms without falling into her hands
You underestimate the home market for 3D printing an action figure of your boss in order to perform voodoo rituals.
Those who already work in the industry probably won't be supplanted by this anyway. Designing for a run of 10,000 is a different skillset than designing your own Iron Man Mark 1 action figure and hoping it doesn't crash your MakerBot.
bah.
Here is a legal analysis of the situation:
The Intellectual Property Implications of Low-Cost 3D Printing
It's somewhat long, but a one-line summary of what they concluded could be roughly:
It's worth reading the whole thing though, as it covers many different forms of legal restrictions on object replication. It certainly foresees problems ahead for commercial companies in this area, but provides legal opinion why personal printing is largely immune to it all.
Of course this means very little in the US legal system where anyone can sue anyone else for anything or for nothing.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
And could you partition the figures between joints, and print a life-sized droid... or human?
mark "inquiring minds, and alla that""
iTunes will sell 3D models for downloading to your iCam?
I drank what? -- Socrates
3D-printing action figures is something that I've wanted to do for a while. In case anyone with knowledge or expertise in printing action figures happens to read this, I'd like (1) to scan an existing, articulated action figure... somehow, perhaps using 123dapp Catch (123dapp.com), (2) to modify the resulting mesh using 3D modeling software such as Blender and (3) to make articulated 3D prints of the modified action figure. Please share any advice, recommendations or links that might be useful. Thanks in advance!
I foresee within the next decade that we'll see a major explosion of piracy of 3D models of popular toys. Why buy that 10 dollar Batman figure for your kid when you can download the 3D model and print out your own? And of course toy companies will freak out much like the record labels did.
This is going to be pretty interesting. If I owned stock in a toy company or whatever, I'd be thinking about selling it.
The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity.
Unfortunately the Harvard gazette article and the summary fail to mention that this was joint work with Cornell and TU Berlin. The professor from Cornell involved is Doug James, famous for great work in animation and sound rendering (for which he was singled out in a hilariously misguided way by you-cut-government: http://www.livescience.com/9108-scientists-call-citizen-review-funding-misleading.html).
If you took a look at TFA. The output was done, in one color/transparent/translucent plastic.
Right now painting them is can still be done by a person.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Great, another cool tech way to generate useless stuff and toys.
Fast and cheap to buy a completely custom action figure? Yeah, I don't think they have those at Toys'R'Us.
One-step articulated toys have been my standard example of "really impressive shit 3D printing could someday do" for years. I just hope that Harvard's fucking patents don't prevent anyone else from doing it better and more affordably.
On that, from a decade ago: http://www.pdfernhout.net/on-funding-digital-public-works.html
Also by me, as a shorter version of the above:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/open-letter-to-grantmakers-and-donors-on-copyright-policy.html
"Foundations, other grantmaking agencies handling public tax-exempt dollars, and charitable donors need to consider the implications for their grantmaking or donation policies if they use a now obsolete charitable model of subsidizing proprietary publishing and proprietary research. In order to improve the effectiveness and collaborativeness of the non-profit sector overall, it is suggested these grantmaking organizations and donors move to requiring grantees to make any resulting copyrighted digital materials freely available on the internet, including free licenses granting the right for others to make and redistribute new derivative works without further permission. It is also suggested patents resulting from charitably subsidized research research also be made freely available for general use. The alternative of allowing charitable dollars to result in proprietary copyrights and proprietary patents is corrupting the non-profit sector as it results in a conflict of interest between a non-profit's primary mission of helping humanity through freely sharing knowledge (made possible at little cost by the internet) and a desire to maximize short term revenues through charging licensing fees for access to patents and copyrights. In essence, with the change of publishing and communication economics made possible by the wide spread use of the internet, tax-exempt non-profits have become, perhaps unwittingly, caught up in a new form of "self-dealing", and it is up to donors and grantmakers (and eventually lawmakers) to prevent this by requiring free licensing of results as a condition of their grants and donations. "
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.