Avisual Maze
Around the same time that I discovered 3D printers, I ran across this compendium of maze algorithms by Jamis Buck. Just as our stomachs unite the various dishes of a meal into a puddle of nutrients, so my brain united these two ideas into a puddle of … plastic. I had long wondered how a […]
Husky
A student and I are attaching a bunch of accelerometers to a wooden mannequin. When we pose the mannequin, an Arduino will pick up the new orientation of the limbs and communicate the pose to a Unity game, which will manipulate the corresponding virtual model inside a game. In a sense, the mannequin will be […]
Barrel
Every school year I forward to The Summer of Really Learning 3D Modeling. Unfortunately, it keeps getting canceled—usually by equally good things. But I really can’t let September come around again and not have made any 3D models in a traditional modeling program. So, I watched an old video that I had saved and made […]
Tyrannosaurus Rex
I assigned this model to my students in 3D Game Development the other day: This is his T-pose.
Coupe
Now that Madeup allows me to subtract one mesh from another, I am able to accomplish one of my dreams: print a car for my car-loving children. I traced out the body of this little coupe, extruded it, and then subtracted away three dowels for the window and axles: I printed four half-cylinders for the […]
Reaction Ball
A couple of summers ago, we picked up a SKLZ Reaction Ball at a local sporting goods store: It bounces in funny ways to help you train your hand-eye coordination. We decided to make our own using the new mesh intersection operator in Madeup. A reaction ball is the union of one big sphere and […]
Egg
In Mathographics, Robert Dixon tells me that any curve can be decomposed into a sequence of arcs. One can also go in reverse: lay out a bunch of intersecting circles, trace an arc on one circle, but then jump ship to another arc when you reach an intersection. If the circles intersect such that they also pass through […]
Bezier Turtles
For Christmas, my children received a Printrbot Play. We didn’t have time to get it set up on Christmas Day, as we were traveling to see family. On the road, however, my seven-year-old son and I modeled a turtle in Blender. We took a picture of this turtle eraser to guide our work: In Blender, […]