Sketch Your Furniture in the Air

justelite writes "Is it possible to let a first sketch become an object, to design directly onto space? The four FRONT members have developed a method to materialize free hand sketches."

Other uses

I'm thinking this has other uses, such as feed it a wireframe graphic of anything you like (would be handy for architects) and out the other end comes a ready-made model of your building, object, or what-have-you.

This is nice...

I always want more ways to do freehand computer interfaces because I am considered disabled [wikipedia.org] by the fascists [logitech.com] who design high end interface devices.

The Righties keepin'us down.

this is rad

it's like etch-a-sketch, pilsbury brownie bake oven, and toothpaste all rolled in to one!

Sorry, but no

Unless you could get this to somehow work with a holographic projection so you could see what you are doing in a realtime fashion, then, the pics in the article speak for themselves.

And even if it did work, what about design details? It would seem not a truly optimal design solution, but an interesting 3D scratch pad concept

Perhaps this would work if say, general shapes were queried against an object database or furniture catalogue.
From the shape and dimensions specified, the best matches in the inventory could be selected and ordered with whatever options available. However, I would not see much of a market beyond interior designers and the like... but who knows.

Very Cool

While all these technologies have been around for a few years, this has to be the coolest combination of them I have ever seen.

This is the type of story that kind of makes you sit back and realize what a wonderful age we're living in right now. Image - you can draw something in thin air and have it created on demand in a matter of hours. Sure - it's not perfect, and it's not economical to the average consumer, but neither were mobile telephones as little as 25 years ago.

What a horrible UI

So this is what furniture looks like when it's designed by blind people. Or at least people who can't see what they're doing.

As an art project it's interesting, but as a way to actually design anything its silly. What professional designer would use a tool that gave them no feedback? (Well I suppose there's the extruded dingus, but that takes a few hours.)

What material?

Unfortunately, the materialized furniture is composed primarily of bullshit...

This is fairly cool stuff

I want to say this is lame -- look at those lopsided, asymmetrical forms, that bland whiteness! But on the other hand, there's something aesthetically pleasing about rounded, continuous, organic forms. Add to that, each piece is unique and "yours" in a way no furniture built from plans or in a certain style can ever be.

Now, there are refinements to be made. For one, interpreting the motion-capture as spline curves, instead of simple smoothed collections of points as they apparently are doing now, would allow for easy tweaking of the design. It would also allow imposing some automated corrections on the form, like "shift the top of this three-legged table until the center of gravity is on a line perpendicular to the plane of the legs which intersects that plane at the geometric center of the triangle defined by the ends of the legs" (which is to say, "make this three-legged table as stable as possible").

Or, "make all four legs of this chair coplanar in a plane parallel to the plane that best fits the seat, and make the geometric center of the seat lie on a line perpendicular to the plane of the ends of the legs that also contains the geometric center of the polygon defined by the ends of the legs" ("make the chair not wobbly and stable to sit on")

On the right track

The biggest thing hindering the development of a "Santa Claus machine" http://www.tinaja.com/santa01.html [tinaja.com] imho is design. The biggest problem with the design side of things is user interface.

If I were talking to a custom furniture maker I would be gesticulating. This device plus a holograph might provide an awesome way to design furniture. eg. I want it this high. Like this? No, a little lower. Like this? Can we slope the armrest down a bit here? Like this? etc. etc.

The other problem is that most rapid prototyping machines work with only one material and most of the things we use are made of several materials. That's another problem though. I still see the user interface as being the hardest problem.

I have to say it

Let me draw you a chair...

Interesting for design, but...

I rather like the abstractness of the furniture they've mocked up, particularly the swirly chair thing, but I think this has a 'better' use. I'd love to see what sort of 3D forms it'd make from a ballet dancer or a gymnast. Turning graceful movement into sculpture would be fascinating.

Um, no.

For this to be able to work you have to have some kind of tactile feedback. There is a reason none of the things they drew had straight lines or sharp corners.

Autodesk tried this in the 1980s.

This was the concept that propelled Autodesk into working on virtual reality in the 1980s. Drawing in 3D on a screen required (and still requires) a complex interface; gestures in 3D looked like a way to make it a freehand job.

Didn't work. Humans can't draw with any degree of precision in 3D free space. Clay sculpting works because of tactile feedback; it's not a pure eye/hand thing. And drawing in 3D free space gets really tiring within minutes. Technically, you can get the hardware and software to work. But it's too hard on the users.

So virtual reality CAD R&D was dropped.

Chairs and tables, yes, but...

Can it draw a bath?

- RG>

What kind of machine?

I want to know what the machine is from which the chair seems to rise from a pool of white goo. That's amazing -- what is it called? How much do they cost?

Air guitar

Yeah, I can the universe of possibilities unstacking before me like mirror images in a barbershop.

If you can play air guitar, you're already set. Everyone knows what a virtuoso musician you'd be with an actual instrument in your hands. Why not the same for furniture design?

Not materializing

This is very cool. It also has nothing to do with materializing free hand sketches. It is a technique where you can draw in the air, in 3D, then render the image. Nothing is materialized. The Slashdot summary makes it look like some sort of 3D printing device.

Head set display?

Sorry if this has been said, but couldn't the designers head position also be tracked by the cameras so a view from their prospective could be fed back to a heads up display? This would allow for a real time overlay of what was being designed to be seen on top of the real space. Could be much more useful, almost like making a sculpture. This would be similar to a technique used in LOTR to shoot using a hand held camera in a virtual environment.

Wii-niture!!

Big N's next secret project!

Sexism...

FTFA : "It is nice. Maybe in the future we can draw a lot of things like a new wife or a new TV." I'm a man, and I feel sorry for the female engeeners that read that... certainly including the two girls that perform the 3D sketching, who are not only cute, but also described as FRONT members.

No one's posted this yet?

Remember, in Soviet Russia, the furniture designs YOU.

I did this but better four years ago

The project was called "Installation." I did it in the Aesthetics + Computation group at the MIT Media Lab. http://acg.media.mit.edu/people/simong/installatio nNew/cover.html [mit.edu]

Agreed..

Looks like it was made of Polar Bear puckey.

I prefer maple, cherry or oak.

Slow news day indeed.