It is intended to take the place of photographs for a large number of products that vary only in colour. This saves a lot of time and effort and enables one to adjust the scene afterwards to suit, for example, a change in corporate design.

I used quite a few short cuts to get down to 11 clicks but it doesn’t take long to remember these. I am sure you won’t be too worried about wasting a few clicks on the tool bar either.

It is also very easy to enter the exact inner diameter so you know that the ring fits. If you click once with the circle tool then enter the radius and press enter, a circle of that radius will be created.

I will start off with Geoffrey Mann’s “Attracted to Light”. The form of the light shade is the form of a moths flight pattern around the light source that attracts it. Time is simply represented in form, kind of like a 3d long exposure. The idea couldn’t be more simple but still gets everything right.

Geoffrey Mann - Attracted-to-Light 1. Photo: Wadedemasiado

It is quite an old project by now, especially in terms of 3D-Print. However, it is often the first project that comes to mind when I think about ideas that I wish I’d had myself.

Geoffrey Man - Attracted to Light 2. Photo: Sylvain Deleu

Since “Attracted to Light” Geoffrey has completed a number of other projects like Crossfire and Blown which are well worth checking out too.

I then looked at how it would create its own representation of me staring at it. The result is a script that starts with a flat mesh. It then moves each vertex point in a random manner and then compares the rendered mesh with an image of my face. It repeats this process over and over trying to get closer to the image it has of me. I use a fitness algorithm which influences how much the vertices move dependent on the how close its part of the image is to the source image.

The geometry it creates is quite different to my face, but when rendered on the screen it is a fare approximation. It reflects the fact that a computer model of someone is build quickly but does not necessarily represent reality.

Source Code

As an avid biker I often find the need for a 5mm allen key. Since I don’t make a habit of wearing a bike tool on my belt I am often left wanting. I only really need the 5mm allen key so I am going to replace the others with a philips head and a flat head screwdriver.

The word decimation comes from the Roman form of punishment in which a regiment was divided in groups of ten. One soldier in each group was killed by the other nine.

The problem with interpolating between points in that you get lots of points close together when the control points are close together. You can see this where the triangles are really small in the image below.

What the getDecimatedVertices function does is give you the points on the spline spaced out evenly. You can see in the image below that the triangles are all of a similar size. This gives a really good quality mesh which reduces the risk of getting artifacts whilst rendering.

It is a really simple use of animation to explain a rather abstract concept. The relationship between simple harmonic motion, a circle and sin becomes immediately clear.

It kind of reminds me of the ancient (pre Pythagoras) Chinese proof of the Pythagoras theorem that doesn’t even need words.

To help sketch interface elements there are these great stencils available for iPhone, iPad, Android, etc…