Embedding Madeup Client
I’m working on embedding the Madeup web client in other contexts, like blog posts. Do you see a cornflower blue cube below that you can rotate?
Madeup Status Report #7
Madeup has come a long way in the past several months. The prospect of describing all of the updates in a status report has intimidated me, and I’ve pushed it off. However, this week I’m in Memphis, TN. Life is slower here. So I’ll write. You can find a summary of many of the software fixes below. […]
Fitting a Rectangle Inside a Rectangle
A common problem in computer graphics and user interfaces is scaling one rectangle to fit inside another—preserving the rectangle’s aspect ratio. For example, I’ve encountered this problem in the following situations: Placing an image of arbitrary size on a button of fixed size. Overlay a map on a corner of a game scene. Squeezing an image […]
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 […]
Deskstop
When I wanted to record my evolving egg animation, I went looking around for tools that would make it easy to repeatedly capture a particular area of my screen as it evolved. I wanted a stop-motion style of animation, but I could only find tools that recorded continuously. Regular screenshot tools don’t make it easy to […]
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 […]
Wrong Number #1
Everywhere I go I see shapes that can be modeled algorithmically in Madeup. It’s kind of fun to parameterize the everyday objects of our life, but then tweak a parameter. I open up a window into an alternate universe—mostly like ours, but with one thing very wrong. Here’s a familiar icon with one and only one […]
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, […]
Commit Logs
It’s time for another installment of Commit Logs, in which I share a selection of log comments left by my students when they commit their work. I’m fascinated by this condensed slurry of feelings we hold throughout the development cycle.