Blog

Blog overview

Friday, June 13. 2008

TopMod3D - Give it a Try, Win a $50 Print

Comments 6
 


A few weeks ago I wrote about TopMod3D, a 'topological mesh modeling' tool that allows you to create really far-out and intricate models. I gave it a try and quickly came up with a simple design that I had printed. It's a crazy little thing, but if you put it on the table during a meeting, everyone will be playing with it all the time :-)

To give you an idea, the model only cost $26 to print because it's just a wireframe and doesn't contain a lot of material.

As my skills with this tool are obviously limited, I was wondering what someone with a bit more time and expertise would come up with.

So: I challenge you to come up with a fun and intriguing design using TopMod3D. I'll hand out a $50 coupon to the designer of the best entry to have it printed.

To participate, place the object in your Shapeways account and leave link in a comment below this post. We'll select the winner on Wednesday the 18th of June at 9am CEST (Amsterdam time). The winner will be announced later that day.

If you don't have an account yet, register as a beta user and enter 'TopMod3D' in the 'How did you hear about us?' field. We'll keep a close eye on the entries and invite you as soon as we can. Be sure to read 'How Does Shapeways Work' after logging in for the first time.

Have fun!

Bart
Posted by Bart in Contests, Inspiration, What's Hot at 09:34

Comments
Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

I tried creating something for this competition ("InfiniTangle Box", under Work in Progress at the moment), but the smoothed version (~130k faces) seems to have been too large for the servers, and the lowpoly copy that I uploaded in its place has decided to be about 8 metres across.

I suspect I've made a fairly bad mistake somewhere (trying to upload this close to the deadline, for one thing :-)). Would I get away with emailing the .obj file (the smoothed one) in, rather than uploading it normally?
#1 HydraulicDruid on 2008-06-17 20:08 (Reply)
Update: Never mind, it's showed up now! :-)

Although I suspect it might show up twice, and I'm still a little uncertain about the fact that it's decided to be eight metres across...
#1.1 HydraulicDruid on 2008-06-17 20:30 (Reply)
Yeah, we won't be able to print a model of 8 meters ;-) Try scaling it down and upload it again - if you can make it small enough to have it printed for $50, it's yours!

Bart

PS: You could also try making the thinnest parts a bit thicker. Our software will check if your model is printable, but with such thin parts it might still break easily..
#1.1.1 Bart Veldhuizen on 2008-06-18 08:58 (Reply)
http://www.shapeways.com/model/919/topmod_entry.html

That's my entry...I have a smaller version which should cost a lot less uploaded as well....

Can we have more than one entry here?
#2 pyrohmstr on 2008-07-01 05:11 (Reply)
No problem, we're happy to have a look at all your entries ;-)
#2.1 Jochem de Boer on 2008-07-03 07:48 (Reply)
Pudranse
#2.2 emmanuel (Homepage) on 2009-08-29 22:54 (Reply)

Add Comment

Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
Standard emoticons like :-) and ;-) are converted to images.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA
 
 

Quicksearch

Archives