NOVEDGE blog

The Edge: Dave Schultze and the Retro-Inspired Computer

Novedge: Tell us about what you do.
 

Dave Schultze: I am an industrial designer focusing on a dynamic range of products, most of which have a technology component. In the last few years, I have designed robots, computers, cell phones, science and educational products, housewares, furniture, and lighting. I even designed a musical tooth brush for Hasbro called “Tooth Tunes”, which became the number one-selling toothbrush on the market when it launched in 2007.

Novedge: You have a Design Manifesto. What is it and how did it come about?
 

Dave Schultze: Funny story! The manifesto is not even complete yet, but somehow people have noticed it on my website and starting asking about it. It was initially inspired when I tried to build my own 3D workstation computer. I never found a PC case that was even remotely attractive as an Apple product, which really surprised me, since so many companies are prolific copycats of Apple. Out of this frustration, I started sketching a retro-inspired computer that ended up becoming the Philco PC. The goal of the design was to create something that was both new and familiar, but above all, had a unique and compelling personality with a touch of humor.

By contrast, if you look at the current lineup of smart phones; they are all black, shiny slabs that are indistinguishable from each other! I wanted my design to have more of an emotional connection and allow easy upgrades for sustainability purposes. Above all, I wanted to make a commodity computer less of a commodity and inspire people to hang on to it long term. As the Philco PC design neared completion, a competition came up from V-Ray, makers of the popular rendering plug-in. I entered the computer renderings and won Top Three honors. I then decided to share the news and wrote a press release, sent it to a few of my favorite websites and that is when the coverage exploded. The design was featured in the New York Times, on the front page of Engadget and Gizmodo, and ultimately in 25 magazines, including one cover.

Philco PC from Dave Schultze on Vimeo.

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

Dave Schultze: A recent project that is just hitting the shelves is Nancy B’s Science Club. It is a line of educational / science products aimed at younger girls and designed for Educational Insights of California.

The force behind the line is Nancy Balter, a former science teacher with an MA in Education whose mission is to spread the joys of science to kids everywhere. For this line, she observed that both boys and girls have equal aptitude for science at a younger age, but somehow the girls end up getting pink microscopes and they deserved better. Five products later, we have a full line and the sales are going great!

Novedge: What software do you use?

Dave Schultze: My primary 3D & design software is Rhino and I’m loving the new version 5.0 that just came out. Since compelling visuals can make or break selling you design, we couldn’t work without the V-Ray plug-in for rendering. The other mandatory plug-in is T-Splines, a brilliant set of tools that handles organic modeling beautifully. Of course, we have the entire Master Collection of the Adobe products to prepare and present the work. My favorite is After Effects, which we use to create all of our videos. I found After Effects so incredibly useful and just plain FUN, that I added it to the curriculum where I teach at Otis College of Art and Design. In the series of 3DVisualization classes that I teach, it’s the students favorite thing to do.

Novedge: What keeps you inspired?

Dave Schultze: Fortunately (or unfortunately), I am inspired by almost anything that captures my attention, which can get very distracting. I love great design of any kind, but I’m also inspired by architecture, movies, books, photography, museums, and now my latest hobby, paragliding.

Novedge: What are some of the rewards and challenges of owning your own business?

Dave Schultze: The reward is having total freedom with my schedule, but that is also a challenge since I frequently have the ‘freedom’ to work seven days a week. But, the freedom does allow me to work on one design research project or competition per year. Our most publicized design research project was the Philco PC, but the first one was a cell phone I designed for an LG Design Competition in 2008. My ‘Roto Retro’ cell phone design came in first place amongst a total submission of over 500 entries. It was extremely cool to win, but it also told me I was on to something with a re-thinking of current design aesthetics.

Novedge: If you could go back in time, what would you say to your younger self before embarking in your current career?

Dave Schultze: I might suggest not working so hard, but then again, I enjoy what I do too much to slow down. So, to answer the question, “nothing different.”

 

See more of Dave's work on his website and on his Vimeo channel. And read more about V-Ray, Rhino  and Adobe After Effects at Novedge: Tools to Design the Future.

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 Matthew Sederberg, CEO and Founder of T-Splines

One of my recurring complaints about surface modeling is the intrinsic complexity of existing modeling systems. Even if the level of user friendliness of these systems has improved, sooner or later every user needs to invest some time to understand how the underlying geometry works and to accept the limitations that come with each modeling strategy. T-Splines are certainly one of the most important innovations in this field, but mostly important, the technological benefits of the T-Splines geometry make life easier for the user and the modeling activities faster and more enjoyable. The recent release of T-Splines 2.0 for Rhino shows the huge potential of this new technology. On top of this, T-Splines are fully compatible with existing NURBS modeling systems such as Rhino and Maya. Let's have Matthew Sederberg (blog), the son of the T-Splines inventor and CEO of the T-Splines company (website), help us to understand better what I like to call NURBS 2.0.

Matt can you tell us a bit about yourself and your professional activities?

[T-Splines] has received funding from the US Navy for its work in innovative surface modeling technologies

Hi Franco, and thanks for the interview. I started T-Splines, Inc. while still in college at Brigham Young University (Provo, UT) in 2004. The company hatched slowly for the first couple of years as our founding team graduated, but we've been growing strong ever since our first commercial industrial design product release in 2007. T-Splines has been the recipient of an NSF SBIR grant, a Utah Center of Excellence grant and has received funding from the US Navy for its work in innovative surface modeling technologies. The company is based in Provo, Utah where I also live with my wife. When I'm not working, I enjoy playing tennis with my wife.

T-Splines is not only a company, it's also a new way to handle a surface's geometry. Can you tell us when it was invented, by whom, and how it became a product?

The T-Splines technology was introduced in 2003 by Dr. Tom Sederberg, my dad

The T-Splines technology was introduced as a SIGGRAPH paper in 2003 by Dr. Tom Sederberg (my dad). Previous to inventing T-Splines, he had spent his career doing research in computer graphics, including inventing free-form deformation and doing extensive research with NURBS. We were very excited about the potential of T-Splines to significantly improve design processes, and since the CAD industry is usually slow to adopt academic research into commercial products, my dad and I decided to commercialize the T-Splines technology ourselves. For an even more focused commercialization, instead of writing an entire program, we wrote plugins: our first product, a plugin for Maya, was released in 2005, and T-Splines for Rhino was released in 2007. T-Splines 2.0 for Rhino was released in May 2009 and is a very significant enhancement.

What are the benefits of using the T-Splines system compared to using a standard NURBS modeling system? Are there any disadvantages?

a large percentage of NURBS control points are superfluous

NURBS are the basis for almost every commercial CAD software on the market today. However, NURBS do have several limitations as compared to T-Splines:

1. A non-uniform rational b-spline Surface or NURBS surface is defined by a set of control points which lie, topologically, in a rectangular grid. This means that, in practice, a large percentage of NURBS control points are superfluous in that they contain no significant geometric information, but merely are needed to satisfy the topological constraint. In a typical complex surface model, 40-50% of the NURBS control points are superfluous. In contrast, a T-Spline’s control grid is allowed to have partial rows of control points. A partial row of control points terminates in a T-Point, hence the name T-Splines. Minimizing control points makes it easier to create models, control surface smoothness, and speed up editing time.
2. As a direct result of the ability to create partial rows of control points within a single surface, the user can now create a surface with varying level of detail only where required. Refinement, the process of adding new control points to a control mesh without changing the surface, is an important basic operation used by designers. A limitation of NURBS is that refinement requires the insertion of an entire row of control points, increasing the density of the mesh across the entire surface. T-Points enable T-Splines to be locally refineable. Support for local detail in a single surface makes it easier to model complex shapes and create smooth watertight models.
3. With T-Splines, non-rectangular surfaces can be constructed using star points, also called poles or extraordinary points. This overcomes another fundamental NURBS limitation: In NURBS surface modeling, constructing a complex shape with varying detail, curvature or smoothness requires many individual rectangular patches. Maintaining continuity and smoothness across these patch surfaces is a significant challenge. Star points also enable modeling techniques such as extrusion, face deletion, and merging of surfaces that greatly increase design freedom for the user. Star points are used today in subdivision surface modeling, which is popular in animation, but T-Splines introduces them to industrial design in a NURBS-compatible format for the first time.

star points enable modeling techniques [...] that greatly increase design freedom for the user

As far as disadvantages for T-Splines, there are definitely some operations (such as exact fillets) where I would recommend NURBS over T-Splines. Also, where your design is primarily a prismatic part with mostly planar or cylindrical surfaces, a standard NURBS modeler is a better option. Today, T-Splines is an excellent choice for organic free-form designs and they are a great complement to existing NURBS modeling techniques. In the future, we expect to overcome the remaining limitations and T-Splines will have the potential to completely replace NURBS in modeling applications.

Based on your experience who are the users who can benefit the most from T-Splines?

our customers are industrial designers, architects, and jewelry designers

Most of our customers today are industrial designers, architects, and jewelry designers. T-Splines is also used in marine design and toy design. The sweet spot for T-Splines is for modeling organic designs, where the designer would like explore shape variations by pushing and pulling on the surface, and where staying compatible with NURBS for downstream applications or manufacturing is required.

In my opinion surface modelers have always suffered from an intrinsic complexity -- that of exposing too much of the underlying data structure and algorithms. How close are we to a truly user-friendly surface modeling system?

we've created a simpler interface by allowing users to select faces and edges and move them around

Great question. The benefit of surface modelers is that they give a high level of control over the surface being created, and this control often conflicts with simplicity. With the just-released T-Splines 2.0 for Rhino, we've created a simpler interface by allowing users to select faces and edges and move them around, Sketch-up style. We also let the user toggle on and off precision tools such as tangency handles, and have introduced a manipulator that can be used to intuitively rotate, scale, and move objects.

You choose to offer T-Splines as a plug-in for existing modeling systems rather than creating your own standalone application. What convinced you to go for this option?

converting any T-Spline to NURBS is a push-button operation, as is converting any untrimmed NURBS to T-Splines

The T-Splines technology is not the first alternative surface technology to be invented; however, T-Splines stands apart in its compatibility with NURBS. Converting any T-Spline to NURBS surfaces is a push-button operation, as is converting any untrimmed NURBS to T-Splines. Consequently, we decided to lower the barrier for designers to use T-Splines in conjunction with NURBS by placing T-Splines right into NURBS modelers. This also allows us to focus our resources on developing unique T-splines functions instead of rewriting NURBS routines.

I would like to thank Matt for taking the time to answer my questions. If you have any questions for Matt or for Novedge, please leave a comment below and we will be glad to answer.

Franco Folini

V-Ray and T-Splines Webinar for Rhino 3D Addicts!

What makes Rhino 3D so special? The power of the NURBS modeling commands? The affordable price? The strong and supportive community? The kindness and generosity of the McNeel team? Or the powerful set of plugins available to expand the Rhino 3D in every conceivable direction?

These plugins make Rhino 3D the optimal solution for an incredible diversity of vertical markets

I guess the answer is that all of these factors contribute tremendous value to Rhino users. In my opinion what pushes the popularity of Rhino to the next level is the variety and quality of plug-ins. These tools, created by advanced users as well as by professional software developers, make Rhino the optimal solution for an incredible diversity of vertical markets. You can be an architect, jewelry designer, or a shoe designer -- just to name a few -- and the Rhino "family" has a professional, high quality, affordable solution for you.

The Rhino platform also supports plug-ins intended to improve horizontal features, shared by all Rhino users, such as modeling and rendering. Among these horizontal plug-ins T-Splines and V-Ray are extremely popular.

• T-Spline for Rhino is a powerful extension to the modeling engine of Rhino that can simplify the creation of rich and sophisticated shapes while preserving 100% compatibility with the Rhino platform.
• V-Ray for Rhino is a fast and powerful rendering system able to produce amazingly photorealistic images of 3D Rhino models.

On June 23, 2009 between 1:30 PM and 2:30 PM EDT you will have the opportunity to see how T-Splines and V-Ray can work together to improve your Rhino 3D. This instructional webinar will feature two exceptional experts:

• Matthew Sederberg, CEO and founder of T-Splines (Matt's profile on RhinoJungle)
• Fernando Rentas, 3D Visual Artist and V-Ray Trainer (Fernando's profile on RhinoJungle)

I recommend registering as soon as possible through this page.

Franco Folini