NOVEDGE blog

Let's Connect!

NOVEDGE is much more than an online company: born out of the dream of two engineers to build the kind of online store they would buy from, it has grown to support creativity and innovation. That's why it is so important to us to stay in touch and to interact with you. We want to get to know you better and we want to hear what you are doing, what you love, how we can help you design and create.

We have an extensive presence on social media, so today I decided to take some time to list all the places you can find me, interact with my team and connect with other innovators and professionals like yourself.

THE NOVEDGE WEBINAR SERIES

We are very proud of our Webinar Series! You can find all 62 webinars on our YouTube and Vimeo channels and we add a new one every two weeks. And, starting in June, we will record a live webinar every Wednesday at 11 am. You can find all the details of the upcoming webinars and how to register on our website.

THE BLOG

Our blog features interviews with artists and innovators twice a week, like Chris Anderson and Joseph Drust, and occasionally our President and our CEO share their thoughts on a particular topic. We also introduce our new partners and update you on what's happening at Novedge.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Novedge is on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest and Linkedin. If you are present on any of these social media channels, follow us and get in touch! My team and I will get back to you within 24 hours during the week.

On Twitter, you can keep up with the latest webinar announcements and you can ask questions during the live recording by using #NovedgeWebinar

We also use #NovedgePromo to remind you of some of the best specials we run on our website and #NovedgeTeam and #NovedgeBlog when we post inside news and articles.

And search #NovedgeReview to read the latest reviews on our website, from users like you.

NOVEDGE PULSE

If you are interested in the latest news, subscribing to Novedge Pulse is for you! Pulse shows news and posts from 350 blogs, and sources about 500 different authors. You can also read it on Twitter or Facebook.

ONLINE COMMUNITIES

Kevin Luu is our online community manager and does a great job of moderating our three online communities, Rhino Jungle. WikiCAD and Vectorworking. If you haven't already, I invite you to join the one that matches your interests and to get involved with other professionals. Each community is also present on Twitter and Facebook, so you can easily keep in touch.

Rhino Jungle is the place to learn and share about Rhino, plugins and complimentary products. You can also connect on Twitter and Facebook.

WikiCAD is the place for all Autodesk product users. You can also check it on Twitter and Facebook. 

And Vectorworking is the community for all Vectoworks users. You can also connect on Twitter and Facebook. 

THE WORLD IS 3D

We recently created The World is 3D, our community for Media and Entertainment professionals. You can join it on Twitter or on Tumblr. We also publish an interview with an M&E artist every Friday on our blog.

LINKEDIN

Finally, you can follow us on Linkedin and also join our Linkedin Group, The Novedge Network. We are still shaping this group, so I would love to hear from you what in your opinion would make a great topic of conversation.

NOVEDGE'S TIP OF THE WEEK

And last, but not least, we just started a series of short videos of tips on how to best navigate our website. Our site has great tools, including user's reviews and detailed licensing information. I plan on posting one tip every Thursday evening, check out the first Novedge's Tip of the Week and let me know what you would like to see in  future videos.

That's it for now. Please take a few minutes to leave a comment and let me know which social media channel you like the most and what we can do here at Novedge to connect and build community.

 

 

Interview with Chris Anderson: "Technology is not important. What's important is participation"

I recently had the pleasure of talking to Chris Anderson over the phone, for Novedge's series of interviews with artists and innovators. I am a big fan of Chris's books and Novedge fits perfectly in his Long Tail business model . For those of you not familiar with Anderson, he is a writer and the founder and chairman of 3DRobotics, a robotic manufacturing company. He was also the editor of Wired from 2001 to 2012.

Novedge: I'm a huge fan of your books and really enjoyed Makers. My first question for you is: How would you define yourself? You're an entrepreneur, you're a writer. How do you describe what you do and who you are professionally?

Chris Anderson: I try to avoid that question (laughter) I do a lot of things. I try not to come up with any single label. I'm a CEO. I'm a boss

Novedge: One thing I'm curious about is how you became passionate about writing about trends and the future. What lead you to it?

Chris Anderson: I have been very lucky to be around people who were kind of doing the same thing. I was lucky to grow up with a family who encouraged kids to be thoughtful about where this is going and where you should go, and to be exposed to a kind of analytical culture in my family. Then I was lucky to work in places that encouraged that first at Nature and Science and then at Wired. Wired is a publication very much about ideas and trends, from science to future technology.

Novedge: How did you first come into contact with 3D printing?

Chris Anderson: I heard about Makerbot and I happened to be in New York shortly after they started. I asked to get a tour, went to Brooklyn and walked through the facilities. I ended up buying their 3D printer on the spot. I bought #380 and that was mind blowing. I put it together and it didn't really work very well but the next one I got worked great. And the rest is history.

Novedge: What's the favorite thing that you printed on your Makerbot?

Chris Anderson: I wrote about it in Makers. We printed a lot of things but the thing I actually like the most was furniture, you know, items that I do with my daughters. The things I design myself are pretty cool but I'm not a very good designer, so the things that we download from Thingiverse and print out, those are the ones that print so well. So, yeah, I like the furniture the best.

Novedge: Let's talk about how hard it is to use the printer and the software. Do you see regular people learning how to use the software or do you see more people downloading the designs and printing them at home? How hard do you think it is to use this technology, if you don't already work in a tech field?

Chris Anderson: It used to be very hard and now it's getting incredibly easy. So now my children do this. They don't need me anymore. They use Tinkercad on the web, which is super easy for kids, but also very powerful. So, by and large, it's not really any harder for them that using Word software and printing paper. It seems very natural to them. Again, three years ago this was super hard but now it's literally like regular printing.

Novedge: Apart from Tinkercad, is there any other software that you would recommend or that you love to use?

Chris Anderson: It really depends on how sophisticated you want to get. The kids use Tinkercad and I actually prefer it for most of my stuff. When I want to get a little more complex, I switch to Autodesk 123D and then in the office, professionally, we use AutoDesk Inventor.

Novedge: There are companies out there, like Shapeways, where you can get a design or you can order something already 3D printed. Is there one you like the best? Do you wish they did something different?

Chris Anderson: We use Shapeways all the time. About every week we send them something. What we use Shapeways for is the material that we can't touch at home, like metals. Shapeways's printing service is very easy to use, but it takes quite a long time, it can take a month for something to arrive. Ideally it's a little bit less than that. So you have to wait. But when it shows up, it's absolutely beautiful. We actually don't use designs that are already on Shapeways. I don't know why but we don't. We tend to use or create our own designs or download them from Thingiverse and then send them to Shapeways.

Novedge: What do you like the most about Thingiverse?

Chris Anderson: I just love the variety. My favorite designer there goes by the name of Pretty Small Things. She's a theatrical set designer on Broadway but as well as designing sets she puts these designs on Thingiverse and they're beautiful. So yeah, I just like the variety, I like the creativity. It's just there's always something new and cool there.

Novedge: I read your book Makers and  you talk about being an inventor vs. being an entrepreneur, how before it was hard to be an inventor and an entrepreneur and now things have become a little bit easier.

Chris Anderson: The process to go from invention to market is a two-part step. The first was to go from idea to prototype, and that used to require skills, machine skills, manufacturing skills, fabrication skills. And the second was to go from prototype to production and that required understanding, having access to mass production capacities and all of that. Both of those have now gotten much, much easier. Obviously a 3D printer is a great way to go from idea to prototype and likewise for a laser cutter or any of these technologies. So you don't need machine skills to go from idea to prototype. And then to go from prototype to production is increasingly easy as well because of so-called cloud manufacturing. Those same files that you design on screen and send to your 3D printer, you can upload online.  Manufacturing companies will take those files and mass produce products for you any way that you want. It's sometimes a little more complicated than that, depending on the product. But fundamentally, regular people have access to both prototyping and manufacturing, which was not the case when my grandfather was inventing things.

Novedge: Are we all entrepreneurs? Are we all inventors?

Chris Anderson: No, no, I don't think so. And that's fine. I think we are all creators in some way, but I don't think it's necessarily in everyone to become an entrepreneur. I think that one percent of people could design and innovate and everybody could start playing with their creations. Let's say most people do nothing but print other people's designs or distribute them, or customize them. Let's say most people do nothing creative with it: but one percent do have their own ideas or do invent something, or innovate. And let's say one percent of them decide they want to become an entrepreneur. That's one out of a thousand.

Would you say that that's a failure? You know, only one out of every thousand of these people becomes an entrepreneur. There are 300 million people in this country - that's when you realize that 0.1 percent is a very large number. It means you've got thousands or tens of thousands of new entrepreneurs, new manufacturers, new product categories, new products themselves that are entering the market that wouldn't have existed otherwise. And that feels very much like the Web, which basically gave everybody the power to publish and, you know, lots of people did nothing more than update their Facebook page but some people created Facebook. The lesson of the web is that the most innovative ideas, the most energetic entrepreneurs, typically come from outside the traditional industry. This is the first time that has been allowed to extend to manufacturing as well.

Novedge: I like the comparison that you made between the internet and 3D printing, this revolution in manufacturing. What are the advantages of actually having more people participate in making products? What are the benefits to society?

Chris Anderson: What we're talking about is what is called democratization. Personal computers democratized computing, the internet democratized communications and now we're democratizing manufacturing. Any time you democratize, you're basically bringing more diversity, more people, more ideas, more contexts to development. What you find is that typically most people are "amateurs", they're not professionally trained and they don't have credentials, they don't have work experience, they don't work for companies that are in the space. And yet, when you look at everything exciting on the web it was all created by people who were initially amateurs. When you look at the biggest web companies today, they were all started by people in colleges, more or less. And they weren't working for IBM when they created these products. They were working for themselves, or maybe not working at all. They were students or they were just users and they had ideas. Now, maybe they were only one out of a thousand or whatever, just a tiny fraction of people have those skills, but because democratization increases the pool of participants so hugely, that small fraction of geniuses creates a huge new pool of talent that wouldn't otherwise have been tapped. So it's simply that geniuses are hard to find. Great ideas are hard to predict, and the best way to do it is to increase the pool of participation so much that the geniuses will emerge.

Novedge: Would you say that it also equalizes the playing field a little bit? We are removing barriers to education and access to capital.

Chris Anderson: Yeah, very much. I think the combination of these tools and these web services and sites like Kickstarter, which brings access to capital to everybody with a good idea, are all leveling the playing field and lowering the barriers to entry. That's exactly what the web and open source software did and it works. Every important trend in technology over the last three decades has been essentially to lower the barrier to entry to participate. Some of the barriers were cost, some of the barriers were permission, some of the barriers were complexity, some of the barriers were community. As all of those things fall, people suddenly start doing stuff. They start acting. They start creating products and companies. People think that technology is important. Technology is not important. What's important is participation. When technologies work it is because they make it easier for people to participate. And I don't have to predict this any more. It's 2013. We are 40 years into the personal computer era. We are 20 years into the internet era. We are seeing what's happening and this is just the next chapter in that story.

Novedge: Companies are starting to hire differently, they're starting to have a different culture inside. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Chris Anderson: 3DRobotics is an open source community and also a company and so we are a traditional company in one respect, where we have employees who have roles and responsibilities and we create products. But we are also a community in the sense that we have an open platform that allows tens of thousands of people to participate and volunteer and create. Traditional companies do it all themselves and we share the function between professionals and amateurs, between employees and amateurs and engineers, between the closed and the open. So that's my company, that's the way we're structured. I wouldn't say that all companies should be structured that way. I'm sure most companies aren't structured this way but it is certainly one of the lessons from the open source movement that this sort of cross sourcing in a process can create the kind of sophisticated product that people thought could only be created by traditional companies. Turns out that a well-constructed community can be a powerful innovation driver. That's something I think all companies need to pay attention to, but it might not be appropriate for everybody.

Novedge: How different is it now to finance your project? Can you say something about Kickstarter and the impact it is having on the industry?

Chris Anderson: I think Kickstarter is really the final element that completes the industrial revolution of the maker movement. It lowers the last barrier, which is the access to capital. It does three miraculous things. The first is that it moves money forward in time. It moves money from the end of the process, when people buy a product, to the beginning of the process, when you actually need to invest in R&D and production tooling. So simply the act of taking presales and getting the customers to fund the product is terrific because the customers are ultimately the decider of whether it will be a success. The second thing it does is that it builds a community around the product so that lots of people pre-order something and they become invested in the success of the product. They want to promote it, by social media or otherwise, and they want to participate in its design and give feedback.The community is a very important marketing tool, to say nothing of a feedback tool, and using that tool improves the product before it comes to market. And finally, Kickstarter does market research. If the product fails on Kickstarter it probably wouldn't have survived in the market. Move on to something else. In a sense it "de-risks" a product. That's one of the hardest things to do in traditional industries and it's what Kickstarter was designed to do. Anybody can do it. And I think that's the last barrier. A bunch of other sites are doing the same thing and it's not perfect. We are seeing that some people are realistic about what it takes to get a product from prototype to production, and some aren't. But by and large it is less risky than traditional startups. So, I'm really enthusiastic about it.

Novedge: In Makers, you talk about the "happiness economy". You write that basically, once we achieve a certain standard of living, we are not motivated by more money necessarily, we look for more meaning.

Chris Anderson: I did talk about that. That's not my specialty. There are many other people who know way more about it than I do, but when I look at communities where the participation is open like our own, they are rarely driven by money. They are mostly driven by passion, by what we call scratching your own itch. Paychecks ? That's great but it turns out people are doing amazing things as volunteers, driven by passion.  And what you give them is a platform and opportunity to act on that. To take the passion and turn it into something that's shared, something that's a tribute to something bigger than themselves and inspire other people to follow their path. My previous book Free was all about that, about the non monetary economy. Meaning is another word, passion is another word. Connection. These are all forces that drive us to do things and when you think about it, most of our interactions with people are not done for money. Most of what we do is driven by non-monetary forces and to be able to turn those powerful social forces into an economic force just by harnessing passion, that's the opportunity here. So I think that the more control we have over our lives, the happier we are. That's kind of the big lessons. Fundamentally what people want is a sense of knowledge and meaning and certainty and all the things that come with it. To the extent that we can extend that to the products all around us, the sense that we can be more involved in their creation and use, the happier we are. Take food for example: wanting to have a connection to something as important as the food you eat makes you less of a passive consumer and more of an active participant . When you look at the people who are going to Farmer's Markets and buying local, there's a reason why what they want to know about the origins of these products. They want to have a connection to the community. They want to feel that there's more than just a product they're consuming, that there's a movement they're supporting or a story that they believe in or a value that they share. And that relationship with our goods is something that you are seeing across the board. It's just one of those things that emerges out of developed economies and I think that we now have the potential to take that beyond food and textiles to more sophisticated manufacturing goods around.

Novedge: Do you think the same will happen in manufacturing?

Chris Anderson: Yeah, I'm speaking to you in my office in Berkeley, which is next to a furniture design company, called Swerve. We're here in California but California is not a low cost labour market. And yet, they're making furniture. How do they keep on making furniture? The reason that people buy it, and pay more for this furniture, is that they feel that it's a superior design. And the reason they feel it is a superior design is that they see the designers. They talk to the creatives. They understand the process and they value the culture that this design came from, because it's their culture. It's shared.

Novedge: I have one last question. What advice would you give our readers about moving forward with the democratization of manufacturing?

Chris Anderson: It's hard for me to give advice to your readers because they already know a lot of this stuff. My breakthrough was not so much doing it myself but doing it with my children. When we brought a 3D printer home and started showing the children how it worked and using the tools, their own creativity emerged and that really encouraged me: if children could do it, anybody could do it. A lot of your readers probably have 3D printers at work. I would encourage them to consider a 3D printer at home. If they have children, a child growing up in a house with a 3D printer is a child that can imagine something and then can make it for real. And that's a powerful lesson. Some of them are going to become the adults who are the designers of tomorrow. It's an inspiration that my generation grew up with a home computer and we created, you know that generation created our web. This generation may grow up with a 3D printer and this generation can create the new industrial revolution

 

To learn more about Chris Anderson, visits DIY Drones and keep in touch with him on Twitter.

Makers by Chris Anderson is Novedge's Book of the Month.

Interview with Mark Perrett, Founder of Tips for Architecture School: "Take what you have learned from one genre and apply it to everything else you do in life"

I discovered Tips for Architecture School, while looking for great blogs to follow on Tumblr. Mark Perrett has built a great resource for anyone currently studying architecture or planning to do so. His blog is also a useful reminder of what it means to start on this path and how much things have changed. Here's what he shared with us.

Novedge: Tell us about yourself and your blog Tips for Architecture School. How did it start and why?

Mark Perrett: I started Tips for Architecture School out of pure necessity. My love for teaching pushed me to become a graduate teaching assistant at my university and my first day with the class was not what I expected. I knew I would be helping people with their designs, and teaching them new methods of drawing and construction they had never seen before, but I did not expect there to be so many questions about even the most basic things like what kind of glue to buy and what pencils to use. I began writing every question the students asked in my sketchbook and when I gave the class an answer, I would fill it in next to the question. After the first two weeks, my sketchbook was almost full with words, phrases, quotes, and questions answered from all my students. I showed it to a friend of mine and he, almost as a joke, said “You should save some paper and write a blog.” So I did. :)

Novedge: What inspires you?

Mark Perrett: I’m 26 now, but I died at age 5. When I was younger, I was thrown off of a horse and
trampled. I was rushed to the E.R. and became clinically dead for a few seconds before the doctors got to work. After a year, I completely recovered.

The older I get, the more I can’t help but think that I got a second chance to take advantage of life, and so inspiration comes in abundance. Over time, I have tried to develop a filter for greatness. I look at the world around me and sift through to find the good in everything. If I had to choose one person in particular who inspires me the most it would be my mother. She was, and still is, a great role model for me. Growing up, we lived a modest life, and didn’t really have much, but she taught me how to be positive, innovative, intuitive, and imaginative under any circumstances. This encouraged a fascination with learning and how things work in life in general.

When I got older, I marched in marching band and also toured all over the country for four seasons with a Drum and Bugle Corps. Still to this day most of my mentors, values, and work ethic come from all of my years with music. It is funny when my musician friends read my architecture school blog because they can point out the principles I learned from music as they read each post. Especially as I come close to graduating with my Master’s degree and entering the “Real World”, the need for inspiration and encouragement is growing by the day.
Whenever I am feeling inadequate, or that the work I am doing is not sending me in the
right direction, I have a few key players in my box of inspiration. And for the record, everybody should have a box of inspiration.

Here's what is in my box:

Eric Thomas | The Secrets to Success
Will Smith | Talent vs Skill
Morgan Freeman | Oprah’s Master Class
Robert Kiyosaki | Rich Dad Poor Dad
Barry Green | The Inner Game of Music (Self 1 and 2)
and Bruce Mau | Incomplete Manifesto for Growth
Just to name a few...

Novedge: What have you learned by writing your blog and answering questions from
students?

Mark Perrett: This blog has taught me not only a lot about others, but a lot about myself. In fact, Iwrite every post as if I am addressing myself from the past, which keeps me honest. It is almost like I am going back in time and sharing all of the secrets to life I have learned through experience, but instead of talking to myself, I am talking to the prospective students within my field. That is what teaching is, in a way, a real-time form of time travel. I am in the present, passing on my knowledge from the past, to help people in the future.

Originally this blog was meant to be a place for my intro students to go and read the tips I was writing for them, but the blog started becoming more popular within the Tumblr community and people from around the world began to follow. The questions started pouring in from Singapore, Serbia, Australia, France, Iran, England, The Philippines, and much more. It was surprising to see that I could answer a question from one student and it was beneficial for thousands of other students around the world.
It's not just architecture students either. The information can be applied across many platforms of design and life in general. In fact, I believe that application is the most important attribute to all education. Being able to take what you have learned from one genre and apply it to everything else you do in life is a key trait in maxing out your current knowledge to its full potential.

Novedge: What software do you use? What software do you recommend to architecture
students?

Mark Perrett: Software is undoubtedly one of the most integral parts of an architect’s education. Through school I have learned and used the following programs: AutoCAD, Adobe Photoshop, Rhino, Grasshopper, Revit, Adobe Illustrator,  Google SketchUp, V-Ray for SketchUP and Adobe Dreamweaver.There are many more programs out there like Kerythea and Adobe Lightroom that I seeused a lot, but If I had to pick three programs to prepare you for architecture school they would be AutoCAD, Photoshop, and SketchUP. Here is why:

AutoCAD is one of the most widely used in the industry, but it is so much more than just a software for making clean plans and sections. I use AutoCAD with our laser cutters and CNC Router to build accurate 3D models and prototypes. Another great feature is the 3D modeling capabilities to create high quality 3D graphics. If you are getting into the field of architecture, you will need to be able to use this program.

Adobe Photoshop is a great equalizer. You don’t have to be a wizard of rendering software to produce beautiful graphics. A proficient amount of skill in Photoshop can help you produce stunning graphic representations of your work even if you are not a pro at too many other programs.

SketchUP is the “McDonald’s of software” in the design profession. Everyone uses it, it works great, but it is not as “healthy” for you as some other 3D modeling software because of its brutal simplicity. Other 3D modeling software can do much more, but this is a great place to start. I have heard plenty of snide remarks from professors about this program, but I love it. I can either quickly sketch out an idea or spend hours detailing my entire model, but the program as a whole allows me to make quick, easy digital models for my projects which can later be exported to many other programs for further development. Plus, I can mass a model out in SketchUP and import it into Rhino if I want to use complex forms, parametric modeling, or print on a 3D printer.

Novedge: What innovations do you see in your field, now or in the future?

Mark Perrett: Of course we will always be improving on things like renewable resources and energy
efficiency, but I think the innovations for the future of architecture will focus more on architectural amenities. And I’m not talking about bathroom tile.
I imagine that, as technology becomes more advanced, so will the way we inhabit space and interact with architecture. Interactive architecture is a growing interest in this field. Architecture has such a broad spectrum it really shapes the way we eat, sleep, work, play, and live life in general. Here is a video that always gets me thinking when looking into the future of architectural design: A Day Made of Glass... Made possible by Corning.

A section of my thesis also deals with interactive architecture in the public realm. A group of four students (including myself) from the University of South Florida School of Architecture + Design has developed an urban design collaborative called The Urban Conga. We activate public spaces by installing interactive installations in downtown/urban settings, creating arenas for exploration, and promoting free choice learning. Learn more about The Urban Conga here.

 

You can see Mark's personal work on his website and you can read his Tips for Architecture School on his blog. You can purchase his book Architecture Terms | A Guide for Students on How to Speak like a Designer here.

 

 

Interview with Important Looking Pirates (ILP), VFX for Academy Awards Nominated Film Kon-Tiki

We are excited to feature our interview with ILP today on our blog, a vfx firm from Sweden who has worked on many projects, from commercials to video games, and is now expanding to movies. Niklas Jacobson, the co founder of the company, answered our questions.

 

Novedge: Tell us about yourself and Important Looking Pirates

 

ILP: We are a visual effects / post production company based in Stockholm, Sweden. ILP was founded by me (Niklas Jacobson) and Yafei Wu in October 2007 with the vision of one day be able to compete with the best international studios. Since we come from an artist background, our focus has always been about the quality of our work, together with an inspiring and creative work environment to accomplish it.

Today we are 20 full time employees which we believe are among the most passionate artists, producers and support personnel in the industry. 

 

 

Our core business has always been visual effects for commercials, but in the last couple of years the way we consume media has changed quite a bit, with the internet and other technologies. So now we see ourselves more as content providers for all kinds of platforms like television, web, game industry. We recently finished the visual effects work on our first feature film Kon-Tiki which was a fantastic project to work on. And we are definitely looking forward to more film work as well!

 

Novedge: What or who inspires you? 

 

ILP: We take inspiration in lots of things. There are plenty of "nerds" in the office so there is obviously a lot of discussion around art, movies and games. But what drives us the most is the passion for what we do, the competition in seeing what other people and companies manage to achieve. I think it is very important to take pride in what you do, while remaining humble. There is so much we are constantly learning from each other, and from others outside of ILP, we all feel equal within our team.  There is a never ending journey of self improvement. This is a very fast paced and evolving industry and so you need to keep looking forward and not get stuck on old merits. 

 

Novedge: What is a recent project that you worked on?

 

ILP: We have recently finished about 60 very visual effects intensive shots for the upcoming Norwegian feature film Kon-Tiki directed by Joachim Roenning and Espen Sandberg. The film is about the legendary explorer Thor Heyerdal’s epic journey crossing the Pacific on a balsa wood raft in 1947.

The movie has been very well received and has just received a nomination to the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

 

 
This was an extremely fun and challenging project to work on. We worked on a sequence featuring digital white sharks and a digital parrot.

 

 

One exciting thing with this kind of work is that you often get to do some pretty in depth studies on very random subjects. For this project we spent a lot of time watching documentaries like "Life" and "Planet Earth" We studied the movement of sharks and the look of underwater footage. 

 

One of the greatest challenges with our work was that it had to look 100% believable. We are cutting between live action scenes and completely digitally created scenes which puts incredible high demands on everything, from models, textures, lighting and animation to compositing and integration of the computer generated elements. 

 

Kon-Tiki Making of from Important Looking Pirates on Vimeo.

Novedge: What software do you use? Tell us why.

ILP: Before we founded ILP, Yafei and I spent a few years working abroad in London and Los Angeles. We were very inspired by how well developed the industry was at that time compared to Sweden. A lot of the companies were developing proprietary tools and pipeline workflows which in a lot of cases gave them an edge in creating really stunning visual effects or in their workflow. We have embraced that at ILP and are not afraid of putting a lot of resources into research and development and pipeline work. Among our tools we have developed a proprietary volumetric render to meet our needs for speed while rendering effects like smoke and fire. 

Among the "off the shelves" software that we use, Maya is our main 3D software. Maya feels like industry standard in our field and is a powerful tool that many 3D artists know and like. We use The Foundry's Nuke for compositing for more or less the same reason. We sometimes use Adobe After Effects for more motion graphics work. We use both ZBrush and Mudbox for sculpting when you need that extra detail in your models. In case we have to finishing work directly with the client we have Smoke for quick playback and last minute tweaks but more often we work remotely and review work over the internet especially with international clients. For FX work and heavy simulations we use Houdini and Naiad. We render our images using V-Ray. We switched to V-Ray about 1.5 years ago and are really happy about that. It makes the look development process extremely efficient and V-Ray has a lot of ways to get very fast feedback while still keeping all the fancy features like GI. You can get a quick read on how your lighting will look and when satisfied you can increase the settings with very predictable results. Two other good reasons to use V-Ray is the pricing and the excellent support.

 

Novedge: What innovations do you see in your field, now or in the future?

ILP: There are lots of great things already happening on the software side of things. Things are becoming more accessible and new features are being implemented to make our work easier. However, the expectations are increasing as well. Higher resolution, frame rates and stereo production have been  introduced and make for a continuous struggle to keep your head above the water. The thing I personally look forward the most for ILP is the fact that we just started using Shotgun in our pipeline as a production management tool. I think the key to survive in a business with continuously increasing demands is making sure the work you do is made as efficiently as possible. And a huge part of that is production management. 

 

To see more of ILP's work, check out their website.

To learn more about specific software, take a look at Novedge Best of the Best Webinar Series.

 

Novedge RealFlow Webinar: Q&A with Gustavo Sanchez

Did you enjoy last week's webinar on RealFlow? We ran out of time to answer all your questions, so the team behind RealFlow answered all the remaining questions by email.

Q: Will there be a plugin for Luxology modo 601? Or will it be Alembic interchange?

A: We will be using Alembic as the interchange data format between Modo and RealFlow from now on.

Q: Will RF2013 Learning Edition support the use of external plugins?

A: The limitations for the 2013 Learning Edition will be pretty much the same as with the existing Learning Edition license for RealFlow 2012, which already allows the use of external plug-ins. Please contact us if you are having any issues with your current LE license and the external plug-ins.

Q: What about GPU?

A: The Hybrido 2 base solver, hy-flip, will have the ability to make use of the GPU, as long as it is openCL 1.1 compatible. To find out more about what are we doing on the GPU, here is a link to the presentation that Angel Tena gave at the nVidia booth last Siggraph.

Q: Is it possible to develop a plugin for RF?

A: If the question is whether anyone can develop 3rd party plugins, the answer is yes. There is a C++ SDK that allows for that.

Q: Will the 3rd party plugins (e.g the ones from WET WORK) work for 2013? The Plugins are expensive compared to their size..:)

A: The makers of any third party plugins will simply have to recompile those in order to be able to load them in the RF2013 version. We do not set the prices for these plugins.

Q: I have a one year student license for RealFlow 2012 (from the cgsociety workshop), can I upgrade the license to use 2013 instead?

A: Yes, we’ll have an upgrade available for $170. All RealFlow Learning Edition licenses bought within 2 months of the release of v2013 will be upgraded to v2013 for free. By the way, your RealFlow Learning Edition license is permanent – we removed the time restrictions!  

Q: Can we beta test the new RealFlow 2013?

A: We haven't hit beta yet. We’ll be getting there in the next few weeks (Jan 2013). At the moment, there are no plans to have a public beta period, but do feel free to get in touch to make your case and we will see what can be done 

Q: How do you tile RealWave with Hybrido - in Maya or inside RealFlow itself?

A: What RealWave and Hybrido share are the Statistical Spectrum waves, and the ability to export tileable displacement maps. One can use RealWave to get a faster look&feel, and then copy the parameters to the Hybrido displacement. In Maya, you will simply need to make sure that the area you want to cover is made of tiles, and use the displacement texture from Hybrido to displace the Hybrido mesh, as well as the surrounding areas.

Q: How does Realflow 2013 Hybrido compare to the standard of Naiad sims?

A: That will be for users of both products to decide. We believe that our hy-flip, the implementation of the flip solver for Hybrido 2 base simulations, is really good.

Q: Is the simulation flow multithreaded? If so, and Python also comes with 2013 I can definitely see the benefit of using the flow instead of Python. If Python does also come with 2013, has there been any work done to improve Python's speed and various bugs?

A: Regarding multithreading and nodes in the simulation graphs, any node that performs RealFlow internal operations that are multithreaded is multithreaded by definition.
Most of the nodes that perform array operations are multithreaded internally, and you will also be able to create multithreaded heterogeneous compounds using the Kernel node inside them.

Python itself is not getting any updates on this RealFlow version. Although Python will certainly still have its place inside RF, we believe that simulation and batch graphs will allow for greater flexibility with less effort.

Q: Please show step by step how to render a realistic Hybrido water material.

A: This will be pretty straightforward once you start using Maxwell Render inside RealFlow 2013. With Maxwell, the artist really does have the control.

Q: Any plans for a python base job manager/ submitter?

A: We currently have a Python implementation that we can share. Please send us an email if you are interested.

Q: Will Hybrido 2 have viscosity that can be changed over time?

A: Hybrido 2 won't have a viscosity model in this release. It will be implemented in a later release.

Q: Will you have a mental ray renderer inside RealFlow 2013?

A: No. We strongly believe that Maxwell Render is the way to go for fluid/particle rendering, and that is why we are implementing this Maxwell Render integration for previews inside RealFlow 2013.

 

And that's it! Leave your comment below and thank you for joining us for this latest installment of our Webinar Series.

If you have questions about purchasing a RealFlow license, please contact Bob Thayer at Novedge.

To contact the Next Limit Technologies/RealFlow team, you can use the customer gateway - or for non-customers, you can find a contact form here.

 

Interview with the Afinia Team: Aaron Pratt

Novedge: Tell us about yourself and what you do

Aaron Pratt: I’m Afinia’s Vice President of Marketing. In my personal life, I’m a husband and a father of seven, and I love playing the piano and reading. 

 

Afinia is the new business division of Microboards Technology, which has been developing robotics and printers in the CD/DVD industry for twenty years. In the new business division, we are experimenting with all kinds of printing-related robotic technology. 3D printing is the most prominent of them. But we're also playing with very high speed label printing, and with some devices for the medical industry as well.  It's a fun place to be. And we know 3d printers especially well because we use them in our own design and prototyping every day.

 

Novedge: What inspires you?

Aaron Pratt: I’m inspired by ideas. I spend a lot of time reading about ideas.  I like reading about foreign policy and economics, about communications and language, and about art and science.  To me it is important not only to test ideas and see if they work, but to choose to see the world through models and ideas that bring about good – good art, good relationships, good feelings.  I see 3D Printing as a tangible manifestation of that - enabling creation, transferring ideas to the physical world – making us all designers and artists. 

One of the best books I read last year was Seth Godin’s Linchpin. It talked about making good art and giving it away. As an artist, I was inspired by the idea of seeing my work as art and a gift to the world, and seeing income and career as a residual effect instead of the purpose. 

Not long after I read Godin’s book, I had a visit at my office from a 3d Printing Enthusiast named Peter Leppik.  He’s an endearing person, very smart and enjoyable to talk to.  He showed me a set of toy gears that clip together he’d designed for his nephew for his birthday.  You can see them (and download the files) here http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:30981.  What a great way to give something of yourself.  Maybe Sam will grow out of the gears someday, but what a great expression of love to design and print something like that. 

We also have another user who volunteers his time designing devices for helping disabled children. Because of how children grow and change, assistance devices require much more customization.  This guy is a talented mechanical engineer and designer. Before he bought a printer I invited him to send me a design he was trying to wrap up and printed it for him.  Even though I had put many hours in at one of our printers I was awed at how beautiful this part was when it came off the printer.  I remember we did it in yellow at his request, and it was the first time I'd used our yellow filament, and it worked absolutely perfectly, the first time, and was something that I was really proud to send him.

 

Novedge: What are you most proud of at Afinia? What is the biggest challenge you overcame? 

Aaron Pratt: I’m proudest of our out-of-box experience. If that sounds like a product pitch, well, it is, but it really is our highest accomplishment.  We were what you would call a “late market entrant”.  We came in to the market because we know how to commercialize a product, and we saw a lot of companies that don’t know how to do that.  Things that are painful to users are not obvious to companies that are experts in the technology.  We worked with a manufacturer and said “Let’s fix this.  Mount the LED here. Make sure it comes out of the box in one piece.  Fix the little tiny bugs. Rewrite the manual.”  We went around the country meeting with users. We toured supplier facilities in China. We’ve tested dozens of filament suppliers.  We changed everything, right down to the packaging itself, to make sure that users would want to tell their friends how easy we were to use, especially compared to whatever tinker toy they had pulled their hair out trying to assemble last.  You can see a very detailed description of the out-of-box experience as my counterpart, John Westrum, steps you through it here:

In it, he describes every step and every accessory in the box – in less than 30 minutes.  When I’m setting one up at a show, it takes me under five minutes to have it set up and recognized by the PC. 

Getting the product just right is what will allow us to recreate Peter’s experience tens of thousands of times.  One of our users designs customized parts for assistance devices for disabled children.  I just talked to another guy who builds airships who wants one for his shop and to introduce his son to design and prototyping.  That’s just a small handful of the many stories we’ve been involved in. 

Design by @dizingof

Novedge: What is special about Afinia's 3D printers? What software is best used when designing an object to be 3D printed with them?

Aaron Pratt: What's special about our printers is the experience.  The speeds and feeds of the various devices on the market is all about the same.  It’s what happens around the machine that makes us awesome.  Try calling our tech support – if they don’t answer immediately, they will within a business day. (Seriously – try it – 952.279.2643).  Or e-mail us. Or Twitter us. Or Facebook us.  We’re very responsive. 

The software is strong too – again, all part of having a flawless user experience.  Our software is one step: open the STL and hit print.  You can do some manipulation, of course – scaling it, placing it where you want it to print, rotating it, adjusting support material and so on.  But there’s no pre-processing, exporting G-Code, and so on.  That’s all done in the background. And once the file has been sent to the printer, you can unplug the USB cable and walk away.

So far we’ve had great experience with all the design software that can output STLs. In-house, we’re a Solidworks-centric company. But lots of our designers use the other major packages.  (And some of the obscure ones, too.)

Design by @dizingof

Novedge: What innovations do you see in your field now or in the future?

Aaron Pratt: The big ones that everyone is talking about are print envelope (larger part sizes), speed, and materials.  I see all three as part of the near future.  I think the first one you can expect to see from us is a larger print envelope.  We also recently announced an enhancement in resolution (from .20 mm to .15mm), and I anticipate there will be more of that in the future.  The one I am most excited about is materials.  I can’t promise anything yet, but I am really looking forward to being able to make some announcements about different plastics and beyond.

All images courtesy of Afinia.

Interview with Joseph Drust, Character Artist: "By far Zbrush is the tool that has changed how I work the most"

If you are a ZBrush user, you have probably already heard Joseph Drust and his video tutorials. He is not only a wonderful artist, but also a great teacher. We asked him to share a little about his work and his passion for character design.

Novedge: Tell us about yourself and what you do

Joseph Drust: I am a Character Artist for Ubisoft residing in Pittsboro, North Carolina. Growing up I always knew I wanted to do something with art. In High School I wanted to be a graphic designer/product designer (work on design elements for retail packaging etc..) I also played A LOT of games; pretty much anything I could get my hands on (One Must Fall 2097, Quest for Glory, Madden, X-Com, Doom, Quake, Raptor:Call of the Shadows, and anything on a Nintendo system.)  I never really thought about games needing artwork until my senior year when my drafting teacher by the name of Stephen Satterwhite said "You enjoy playing those games so much why don't you make art for them." Until that point I had never thought about games needing artwork to exist.  After that all my artwork through college shifted to having something to do with games (along with any elective courses I could take.)
I have been creating character art for video games for over 10 years.  I have worked on projects such as Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon, Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, Ben 10 Alien Force, Earth Defense Force Insert Armageddon, and Ghost Recon: Future Soldier.                

 

Novedge: What inspires you?

 Joseph Drust: There is no sole item that inspires me.  I have a large library of Art Books that I reference constantly, then a dedicated folder on all the computers I use that is home to any image I find appealing on the internet and right-click save.  I use these two resources quite frequently to find inspiration. I feel that the wider range of art you expose your mind to, the better art you will produce. I also find a lot of inspiration in nature, focusing on patterns and structures that organically exist. For most of the work I produce, I try to establish functional realism and lore. I think this is a product of creating military characters for quite a bit of my career. Now the list of Artists that inspire me changes constantly, some of the artists I have been enjoying following recently (their philosophies and art) are Danny Williams, Andrew Jones, Derek Stenning, Kris Kuksi, Odd Nerdrum, and Maarten Verhoeven.

 

Novedge: What is a recent project that you worked on?

 Joseph Drust: When working in games, production cycles can sometimes go on for years before the product ever sees store shelves.  The most recent game I worked on that shipped was Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. I was tasked primarily with modeling the high-res and low-res customizable headgear objects that the player could select in multiplayer.

 

 

At home during the late evenings after my toddler goes to sleep I continue working on various other projects in my shop. Most of the time I am up till the wee hours of the morning sculpting, kitbashing, recording tutorials, writing zplugins, or painting something. The Piggyson Steam Series (kitbashed vinyl KidRobot Munny's) has been one of my larger fully tangible endeavors  I am currently working on creating a new line of those and some larger scaled steampunk style robots (that function of course).

 

 

 

Novedge: What software do you prefer and use? Tell us why.

Joseph Drust: The main software I use daily for digital sculpting is ZBrush. Then I also use 3ds Max (varying versions pending on what the project requires), Photoshop, xNormal (for map baking), Headus UVLayout, CrazyBump, Marmoset ToolBag, and occasionally Marvelous Designer. I am always on the lookout for new software or tools to help speed up my production pipeline and let me do more art and less technical processes. Most of the tools that I use are related to my production pipeline (sculpting, generating retopology, unwrapping, map baking, and previewing).

 

By far Zbrush is the tool that has changed how I work the most on a day to day basis. Before Zbrush my day to day job was pushing and pulling single vertices, and turning edges inside of 3ds Max.  With the release of Mudbox  (before Autodesk acquired it) I was instantly hooked on digital sculpting. After AutoDesk acquired Mudbox there was a lull period for the program and I had a friend by the name of Abraham Valdez that convinced me to give Zbrush a try. After getting used to the Interface I never went back.  I've been using Zbrush for about 80% of my working day since then. It's a excellent tool and it keeps getting stronger with every version release. So now I go to work and sculpt with a Wacom Stylus rather then move single vertices with a mouse. I was a Zbrush fanboy even before I started creating tutorials for them :) 

 

Novedge: We are big fans of your tutorials. How did you get into teaching? What do you like the most about it?

Joseph Drust: I'm glad you enjoyed the tutorials! I hope they were useful!  My desire to teach started back in college. At the time it was extremely hard for me to find any information on creating game assets. I spent most of my time doing trial and error attempts for a lot of the processes (this was back in the Quake1/Half-life1 mod era.)  When I got my first game job, I was fortunate enough to be able to stand behind an artist by the name of Eric Armstrong.  In a period of one week of 'over the shoulder' learning I had every single question I had about creating game art answered.  After that, I decided that when I could I would help distribute my knowledge of game art to others.  My first open forum for tutorials was with the original Ghost Recon.  I set up a FAQ page that covered how to mod Characters, Weapons, and Vehicles to Ghost Recon.  Users could email me questions and I would reply with diagrams and 'how to' steps if necessary.  Back then there were a lot of little things you had to rotate/place/label in order to get items running in game.  From there I started giving talks at local schools and writing tutorials. The tutorial writing eventually was upgraded to video and that's were we are now.

The thing I like the most about teaching is the ability to share knowledge. I find that if I can share knowledge with someone, then they have the potential to do something that I may not have thought about, then if they share that knowledge the cycle continues.  This also directly relates to inspiration; giving others information to help them create better art that in return inspires.

 

 

Novedge: What innovations do you see in your field now or in the future?

Joseph Drust: Even just since I have been in the gaming industry the field has changed considerably. I see the character creation process in the industry continuing to move to more traditional methods (but of course with Undos and Symmetry.)   The 3D printing is taking off as well (in the future maybe having the ability to go to Sears and have a part for your lawn mower 3D printed right there!), and so is 3D Scanning (the resurge of photogrammetry.)  I see the usage of 3D printing, digital sculpting, traditional sculpting, and scanning to be intertwined as standard practice for character creation. 

In other technology I personally would love to see the removal of the UV mapping process/requirement for game assets. Never having to create a UV map would be great, someone needs to get on that ;)

 

To see more of Joseph Drust's art, visit his website.

To learn more about the latest ZBrush release, register for our webinar here.

To learn more about Marvelous Designer, watch our most popular webinar to date.

Discover and learn with Novedge's Best of the Best Webinar Series.

Novedge Clayoo Webinar: Q&A with Rafael Del Molino

Our 61st webinar on Clayoo was so engaging, we simply ran out of time during the Q&A. Rafael Del Molino of TDM Solutions agreed to answer what he didn't get to reply to last month.

Q: Assume that I have a model already created in Clayoo and then the engineering group has a change in just part of the profile. If they send me a curve that represents a change of just part of the surface of my completed model will Clayoo allow surfaces to snap to the newly supplied curve? 

Rafael Del Molino: Yes we can adjust the model using the match to curve tool to do it

Q: Once the ring was done and converted into NURBS was it possible to work inside the finger area and build a nice bump into it? Called comfort fit.

Rafael Del Molino: Yes it is possible to do everything after converting the model to NURBS, it will be a Rhino object and all the Rhino tools can be used as well.

Q: No Mac version planned yet?

Rafael Del Molino: As soon as Rhino has a Mac version, Clayoo will have one too.

Q: Do I have to convert in NURBS to export as an STL?

Rafael Del Molino: No, we can export to STL directly from a Clayoo mesh.

Q: Is it possible here to split straight?

Rafael Del Molino: This functionality is in our to do list for the next version but now you can adjust the faces subdivisions to divide them as you want with the extract command, so we can say yes.

Q: Dimension wise can we increment motions in 1 direction? Let's say I wanted to set a thickness for this spoon, is there an easy way to enter a value?

Rafael Del Molino: Yes we can define a value for the thickness using the shell tool for example.

Q: Free support? For life?

Rafael Del Molino: Yes, even before you buy it.

Q: This looks very similar to T-splines - is it ? What are the differences?

Rafael Del Molino: We don’t compare Clayoo with any product.

Q: Can you import a mesh into Clayoo?

Rafael Del Molino: Yes, using the tool create by mesh you can do it. Or you can use retopology command to create a Clayoo surface from your mesh with the desired topology.

Q: Is Clayoo scriptable with Python?

Rafael Del Molino: We are wide open to give that option to our users, but which functionalities do you want to use in Python?

Q: Will there be any Grasshopper add-on related to Clayoo in the near future?

Rafael Del Molino: We are wide open to building Grasshopper Clayoo components. Which functionalities do you want to use within Grasshopper?

Q: Clayoo to Rhino works fine. What about Rhino srf to Clayoo srf?

Rafael Del Molino: We can use the create by surface tool to do it but if we need details or to define the subdivisions we can use the retopology tool.

Q: How accurate is shelling or offset? Is it good enough for manufacturing?

Rafael Del Molino: It depends what sector are we talking about but, if we need more accuracy, we can use the Rhino tools to do it.

Q: Can we choose lines that will be bordered to NURBS surfaces?

Rafael Del Molino: Yes, after converting the Clayoo model to NURBS.

Q: Are you using keyboard numbers to change the # of faces?

Rafael Del Molino: No, we change them in the command parameters.

Q: Can you change a NURBS surface to a Clayoo Object?

Rafael Del Molino: Yes, we can use the create by surface tool to do it but if we need detail or to define the subdivisions we can use the retopology tool.

Q: Can the control points of a Clayoo object snap to, say, the endpoint of a line?

Rafael Del Molino: No, but it will be added to the next version.

Q: When he selected a face I didn't see where you can type in numerical values to move the face, edge or point specific distances. Same with scale and rotate.

Rafael Del Molino: For the moment is not possible but that will be added on the next version.

Q: Any ability to snap selections to curves, faces, edges?

Rafael Del Molino: Yes, We can snap the selection with the selection mode.

Q: Does Clayoo have symmetry?

Rafael Del Molino: At the moment we can use the mirror from rhino with the record history activated to do symmetry, but we are working in other options.

Q: Is it possible to view in Zebra?

Rafael Del Molino: Yes, all the surface analyses tools can be used.     

 

Find out about upcoming webinars with Novedge here.

 

Interview with Dario Scapitta: Jewelry Design and 3D Printing

The moment we saw Dario Scapitta's work online, we fell in love with his designs. What really caught our attention, though, is his use of 3D printing technology to manufacture jewelry. We asked him to share a bit about his work and inspiration.  

Novedge: Tell us about yourself and what you do.

Dario Scapitta: I was born in Valenza (Italy) a capital of the Italian jewellery business. Since a young age, I heard about jewelry design, my parents and my brother were all working in the business. I studied jewellery design in high school, then received a degree in set and costume design at the Academy of Fine Art of Brera in Milan. My passion was always jewelry design, though, so that entire time I worked in the field. I started experimenting with 3D CAD more than 10 years ago and I was hooked. In 2005 I came back to Valenza, where I joined a 3D CAD and prototyping studio that specialized in the jewellery sector: it was there that I discovered the truly amazing power of 3D printing technology.

Two years ago I decided to move to The Netherlands. New country, new culture, new experiences. I had a desire to change, find new inspiration. I started to work on new personal ideas and finally, on my birthday, Dario Scapitta Design was born! Running my own company means I can be very independent. I put my energy and all I have learned in creating original collections, designing different objects that people would like to wear. Jewelry design for me is not only diamonds and gold, but also different materials, which is why 3D printing technology is so perfect for my work, it allows me to experiment and play with colors and shapes while focusing on designing something beautiful.

Novedge: Where do you find inspiration?

 Dario Scapitta: I find inspiration in nature, fashion, the arts, architecture and everything that surrounds me. Every day I can find something different that amazes me and that can be transformed in a piece of jewelry. Research and curiosity are very important for a designer, especially when involved with fashion. I have an artistic background and I have learned a lot from the past, from Giotto to Leonardo da Vinci, from Michelangelo to Picasso. Today I am also influenced by the media. And as an Italian I love our big fashion designers, especially Giorgio Armani, with his pure and elegant style.

Novedge: What is a recent project you worked on? 

Dario Scapitta: At the moment I am focusing on promoting my work and my collections. In June 2011 my STONE necklace won Second Place in the   3D Printed Jewelry Contest by i.materialise. This meant a lot to me, as I pushed myself out of my comfort zone with this project. 

Another great opportunity was another i.materialise contest, the Hats off to 3D Printing Design Challenge where my BUTTERFLY hat was selected as runner-up and showed for the first time in the fashion show during the Materialise World Conference in Leuven, Belgium.

This was an amazing experience, where I met other great designers that are using 3d printing to create wonderful pieces of art, like Eric van Straaten and Mark Bloomfield.

My collections are often inspired by nature, like my BLACK ROSE collection. I wanted to design a pure and simple rose silhouette that would look like a drawing on the skin.

My SPARKLING collection is inspired by the sparkling bubbles of Prosecco wine.

And the SNAKE collection is a modern jewellery set, a simple and contemporary design easy to wear with different outfits.

All these collections are made using polyamide (sintered nylon) and 3D printing technology. I love polyamide because it is flexible and strong and it has a texture that resembles organic material. These collections are printed by SHAPEWAYS, and it's thanks to their great technological and advanced support that I can do this type of work.

I also use other materials, like silver for my PEPITA collection. These pieces are 3D printed in wax and then produced through the lost wax casting procedure. This collection is produced by i.materialise.

I'm also working on new designs and projects:I would like to mix different materials together, like stainless steel or silver with polyamide. 3D printing technology is evolving so fast, the only limit is our imagination.

Novedge: What software do you use? Tell us why.

Dario Scapitta: I use Rhinoceros. It is very good software, not very expensive, and easy to use. You can model starting from curves and surfaces and using different plug-ins. I find its tools especially ideal for jewelry design. Also, when combined with T-Splines, Rhinoceros is perfect for modeling free forms. You can export files in xtl format which is perfect for 3D printing. For me, this has been the best solution.

Novedge: What innovations do you see in your field, now or in the future?

Dario Scapitta: 3D printing technology has been used in the jewellery field for almost 10 years. It has really improved, and the most important 3D companies are testing new materials every day. It would be great to be able to print linked metal objects, like a link of chains. I'd love to see that, and it's only a matter of time, as this technology is improving so fast.

I'm using 3D printing not only to show how many complex forms I can design, but as a new tool to realize my ideas. It's a perfect solution to test a new design, and to test materials and how an object feels on the body. I can't wait for more and more materials to become available, it will be fun to come up with new designs to use them.

To read more about Dario and his work, visit his website at Dario Scapitta Design.

 

Interview with François Lévy, Architect

We had the pleasure of meeting François Lévy last November at the West Coast BIM Camp organized by Vectorworks and which Novedge co sponsored in San Francisco. François is not only a talented architect, but he also wrote BIM in Small-Scale Sustainable Design, our December Book of the Month. We asked him to tell us a bit about his current projects, what inspires him and the software he loves to use.

Photo by Karen Mosher thesebrowneyes.com / Houzz.com

Novedge: Tell us about yourself and what you do

François Lévy: I am an architect practicing in Austin, Texas. Most of my commissions are for single-family residential projects by virtue of my being a sole practitioner, although I occasionally work on commercial projects too, and collaborate with other firms on larger projects from time to time. I have also taught digital design and environmental controls courses in architecture schools off and on for about 15 years, and last year Wiley published my book on using building information modeling for designing climate-dominated sustainable architecture, BIM in Small-Scale Sustainable Design, really the first of its kind. In the book, I discuss at length how the quantitative information inherent to a BIM workflow can be used for greener design. Finally, I also engage in design research in space architecture (design for human activities in orbit and on extraterrestrial planetary surfaces). Right now, some colleagues and I are finalizing a paper inspired in part by DARPA's Hundred Year Starship (100YSS) initiative, which we hope to have published in a journal this year.

Novedge: What inspires you?

François Lévy: I'm inspired by the delicious dialog that can arise between a building and its place. When buildings are carefully indexed to their climate, the natural world can serve as a guide for architectural form. Solar orientation, prevailing winds, the scale and pattern of vegetation, the topography of the land, and the context of neighboring natural and human-made structures all can inform a project. Buildings that are responsive to their place can not only perform better, but they can be truly beautiful and satisfying—not because they parrot the mere form of natural structures, but because they are deeply absorbed in the laws of natural systems. See video animation here.

Novedge: What is a recent project that you worked on?

François Lévy: We're about to start construction on Boussoleil (a made-up French word meaning 'sun compass'), a single-family rural home I designed for a couple a short drive from Austin. They've had the land a few years, and been patiently awaiting their new home. Their sensibilities are modern, but also quite practical, and they have high standards for building performance and quality. At the same time, they wanted a home that would be sympathetic to the land and sensitive to nature.

 

Because my clients wanted a home with a modern aesthetic that could accommodate solar photovoltaics, I initially designed a shed roof that was oriented due south, with an elevation (pitch) to maximize summer solar collection (the peak load due to cooling needs). Unfortunately, an ideal building orientation for passive cooling in our climate (long axis running east and west, with maximum northern and southern exposure) created a site problem, as one end of the house would be seven or eight feet out of grade. (One requirement of the owners was that the house be all on one level, with no steps). So early in the design process, I investigated varying the building orientation somewhat, looking at the impact the deviating the long face from true south might have on solar collection and passive heat gain, and comparing that to the site work cut-and-fill implications of an orientation that was more or less parallel to the site's topography.

 

I was able to use my design software of choice, Vectorworks ARCHITECT, to evaluate these competing objectives using its built-in heliodon (solar animation) and site modeling tools. In addition, I referred to the research literature to help me determine how much I could rotate the roof azimuth from due south and not suffer a significant loss in solar collection. Simple online tools like PV Watts helped me fine-tune the roof orientation and validate its elevation, and BIM sun studies were essential in avoiding tree canopy and self-shading. Extensive sun studies throughout the design process, in fact, helped me refine roof overhangs and window sizing and placement.

 

 

There were a variety of other ways that I used the quantitative analysis opportunities of the building information model to inform my design decisions. A few examples:

• Balancing the amount of south-facing glass to internal exposed thermal mass (concrete floors and masonry fireplace surround) for winter passive solar heating;

• Designing an appropriate thermal chimney height and ventilation openings for passive cooling using the stack effect;

• Dynamically sizing the rainwater harvesting cistern based on available roof area;

• Providing material takeoffs for lumber, roofing, wallboard, brick, metal siding, concrete, etc. for project cost and material waste analysis as the design progressed;

• Optimizing the acoustic ceiling area in the living room to control reverberation times and therefore acoustical quality.

Novedge: What software do you prefer and use? Tell us why.

François Lévy: I've been using Vectorworks ARCHITECT for years, since it was MiniCAD+ in the early 90s. Like several other BIM authoring tools, Vectorworks allows the designer to produce detailed, intelligent 3D building models. Moreover, what I've found to be particularly attractive about Vectorworks is that it encompasses a breadth of modeling tools. These include the kinds of building-specific tools one might expect (walls, doors, windows, stairs, roofs, etc.), but Vectorworks also allows very flexible free-form modeling, from NURBS to primitive solids and Boolean operations. As a result, Vectorworks is very much a designer's BIM, as Jerry Laiserin has aptly described it. Also, Vectorworks' output, from 3D renderings to 2D drawings, just look great. As a result, my entire design workflow, from site analysis and conceptual design all the way through construction documents and construction administration happens in Vectorworks.

In my experience design is not a linear process, but requires frequent iteration. There's inevitably a redoing of work or loss of information when transferring files around a suite of separate digital design tools. While each of those tools individually might be quite powerful (and for some tasks essential), there's a corresponding loss of efficiency when exporting or importing files. As a result, the designer is discouraged from making too many "round trips" from, say, modeling to drafting and back to modeling. Since my model and drawings are linked throughout the design process, in many cases it's easier, not harder, to make 3D model changes even late in design. My models are always up to date, and I'm freer to make changes. That's very powerful. 

 

Novedge: What innovations do you see in your field now or in the future?

François Lévy: It's difficult to predict the future, of course. There's an obvious path before us suggesting more, better, faster of what we already have now. What's harder to see is what the next big leap will be. The Architecture/Engineering/Construction industry is also pretty conservative and slow to adopt change. While very large construction forms have been on the cutting edge of adopting BIM, small builders are slow to adopt technological innovation. So I suspect that in my world (smaller architectural projects), change and innovation will be driven by consumer products and software more so than by professional-grade hardware and software. For example, we've only just begun to see the impact of tablet computing. Tablets aren't really computers as we tend to think of them, and I doubt we will be authoring a lot of content on tablets soon, but they are getting quite powerful. There are already great tools that make documenting a site pre-construction and during construction more effective. I think those tools will evolve as tablet computing moves forward. More contractors will use their tablets in the field; perhaps the architect's model could be superimposed with live walk-through video of the project under construction, flagging inconsistencies between the two. Another consumer product that will predictably advance and get cheaper is the display. Displays may, within the foreseeable future become so lightweight, portable, high-resolution, and affordable as to replace a roll of job site drawings. This is already happening on very large projects. I don't know that paper will completely disappear over the life of my career, but digital displays may become more widespread, even on small projects. Imagine markups in the field coordinated in real-time with the entire design team (and the building official!)

 

François Lévy's book was Novedge's Book of the Month in December.

To see more of François Lévy's work, visit his website.