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Tuesday, September 28. 2010

The Generated Creator is here...

Comments 20
 
The next step for our Co-Creator platform is here. We call it a Generated Creator.

It allows you to modify a shape with pre-defined modifiers and generate a preview of the customized shape. If you like what you have made you can save and order it right away or you keep on modifying it until you are happy.

We already have real time Creators showing any modifications in 3d right away. Once you’re done modifying the 3d shape it’s ready for production right away.  
Some of our current examples are:
The LightPoem
The RingPoem
The Photoshaper

The other option we currently have are our Human Creators. Within this setup you can simply let the designer know how you want the product to be personalized. The designer gets this notification and will customize the product in its own software and upload it to the site again. This process is far from real time but it’s easy to setup and allows you to quite easily offer a customizable template.
The templates that are customizable in this way can be found in this

Co-Creator platform gallery

The Generated Creator is positioned somewhere between the 'Realtime' Creators and the Human Creators. The results are not realtime (when you press 'preview' it takes a few seconds to render a new image), but they are much more flexible and allow us to create new Creators very easily.

It has some very interesting advantages such as:

  • The development is done in such a way that new modifiers are (relatively) easy to implement and old modifiers are reusable
  • This Button Creator is made with Blender but this is not the only software enabling the development of these kinds of tools
  • The user gets a good visualization of the modification made before ordering it.

<< Click on the image below to go to the Button Creator >>


I am very much interested in your feedback and ideas regarding our Generated Creator concept. The buttons come out very nice and they looks good in many of the materials we have so go play with it and let me know what you think of it, how you envision the future for this and how you can benefit from it. 

<< Go to our first Generated Creator: The Button Creator >>

Posted by Peter Paul Cornelissen in What's Hot at 15:28

Comments
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first toughts: To be practical, everything should fit in one screen. No scrolling. A lot of notebooks have got a limited vertical resolution (wide screen)...
#1 fx2 on 2010-09-28 15:40 (Reply)
Good point the UI still needs to be optimized
#1.1 Peter Paul Cornelissen on 2010-09-30 12:32 (Reply)
When I'm on the button creator page, none of the links on the top of the page work. (Home | Gallery | Community | Support | My Designs). They all point back to the button creator page. I'm running Firefox 3.6.10 on OSX 10.6.4.
#2 Joel Wagner on 2010-09-28 19:58 (Reply)
Working on it
what do you think of the concept?
#2.1 Anonymous on 2010-09-30 15:21 (Reply)
Sorry "Anonymous" is my Peter Paul
#2.1.1 Peter Paul Cornelissen on 2010-09-30 15:23 (Reply)
This seems really awesome. But still I would like to see something like "SIZES" in models.
How does this actually work ? Is there some "how to" about creating such creator ? There's just one thing, that bothers me, how can you tell, if the model is printable in specific material ? (wall thickness, etc.) Can someone this way produce a model that won't be printable ? Or is there a way to avoid this ?
#3 Václav Mazaný on 2010-09-29 09:16 (Reply)
As I was trying the creator. It really lacks some things, some ruler inside the model image, to know what the actual dimensions are.
something like this http://www.shiboridragon.com/Notions/Gripper-Mini.jpg or this http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1103/803465920_1260e11e9c.jpg

And a really great thing, would be if you could preview the actual material you picked on the model -> some sophisticated rendering involved
#4 Václav Mazaný on 2010-09-29 09:22 (Reply)
I would love to see such a creator for simple custom designs. Stuff like thickness settings and text placements might be something that will be possible to realize in near future I hope. But first let's see what your own upcomming generators look like. :-)
#5 LKmedia on 2010-09-29 17:29 (Reply)
I like the concept very much!
As soon as I have some time, I will try to think up a few uses for this :-)
#6 Virtox (Homepage) on 2010-09-29 20:36 (Reply)
Right on!!!!
#7 Duann on 2010-09-30 10:54 (Reply)
Tried to put my web address on a button but am unable to put the "." The software does not allow for special characters at this point? I hope special (and not so special) characters are a possibility in the future. What a great idea for identifying the owner or creator of handmade items such as cases, putting a message on a shirt via buttons, etc..
#8 kirablossoms on 2010-09-30 18:43 (Reply)
same problem with ěščřžýáíé unicode characters, I guess its a font problem ?
#8.1 Václav Mazaný on 2010-09-30 19:34 (Reply)
watch your spelling

"The designer get’s this notification" - "The user get’s a good visualization" - "*Customise*: Button"
#9 Anonymous on 2010-10-02 05:50 (Reply)
Thanks will adjust right away....

Got some feedback on the Generated Creator to?
#10 Peter Paul Cornelissen on 2010-10-04 13:57 (Reply)
That is really cool! I can already think of a few niche markets that might use such a thing.

There is obviously a limit to the number of text characters that can be printed on the button, either on the top or around the outside.

There are probably two different limits. What are they?
#11 John Thro on 2010-10-05 19:33 (Reply)
As has been mentioned, the user needs to know the size of the object.

Am I buying a button with a 1 cm diameter or a 5 cm diameter?
#12 John Thro on 2010-10-05 19:38 (Reply)
Agree with the size indication.
How about other propositions, options of using this concept?

Peter Paul
#12.1 by Shapeways on 2010-10-06 14:10 (Reply)
this is an important and largely the way i see 3D printing coming into its own w/ its one of its best strengths- customization.

I saw Ego Paris's website w/ a beautiful interface for customizing their furniture - mainly just finishes, but on a 3D model the user can rotate-zoom-pan- see dimensions, switch to an image gallery... its really a beautiful presentation - http://www.furniture-egoparis.com/tailor-made-furniture/my-ego-configurator
#13 jeff bare (Homepage) on 2010-10-06 15:30 (Reply)
Just received my strong white and flexible button. I specified words with many characters. However, the characters I received are few and look like round white blobs. I had picked the smallest button with a small edge; the preview looked like it would be fine. Trying to find a magnifying glass to see if there is any detail at all. Disappointing.
#14 kira on 2010-10-11 21:07 (Reply)
Hi Kira,

Sorry to hear your experience was disappointing.
If you could share some pictures with me that would help so I can see how to improve the Creator.
If you can send me the Order ID I'll follow up with you via PM to fix the problem

Thanks Peter Paul
#14.1 Peter Paul Cornelissen on 2010-10-12 12:19 (Reply)

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