The A-B-C’s of Mass Customization

Link to full article here (via Replicatorinc.com)

A - Aviary is the most advanced online photo editor providing tools that rival desktop apps like Photoshop at a more affordable price. This gives consumers powerful tools to create online before having their creation manufactured.

Also see: ArrowEye, manufacturers of custom greeting, gift, and credit cards.

B- Build-a-Bear workshop has created a half billion dollar business in what was a slow growth industry by offering a customized experience.

Also see: Blurb, print on demand pioneer. Brother, who manufacturers many of the most advanced CNC embroidering machines.

C - CafePress.com is one of the oldest and most successful print on demand companies allowing people to express their unique brand on a variety of products ranging from tshirts to coffee mugs.

Also see: Cricut, is a low cost paper plotter that can cut shapes out of thin sheet materials and the $2000 Craftsman Compucarve, which carves designs into wood based on user supplied CAD data.

Haptic Telepresence

At Siggraph 2008, I was fortunate enough to demo this product by a company called Butterfly Haptics. Although the range of motion was not great, the sensation of precision was incredible.

Papervision3D

When it comes to bringing 3D to the web, Papervision3D is a flashed based XML format that opens the doors to amazing interactive possibilities.

I decided to place a few valuable links here that are worth archiving:

Mr.doob's Papervision3D Previewer - (a great way to test a 3D scene before publishing)
3DSMax Texture Baking & Papervision3D (video tutorial showing process of creating baked 3D model for import into Papervision3D)
Installing Collada exporter for 3DS Max

Guy Kawasaki Videos

Guy Kawasaki is a first class investor and marketing genius. The following are a few presentations worth watching...

Slides (pdf): The Art of the Start
Slides (pdf): The Art of Raising Capital
Audio (mp3): The Art of Raising Capital
Slides (pdf): The Art of Selling
Audio (mp3): The Art of Rain Making
Article (pdf): Perfecting Your Pitch
Audio (mp3): The Art of Pitching
Audio (mp3): The Art of Bootstrapping

Additional Resources from Garage Ventures website:

Small is Beautiful (Slides. PDF)
New Opportunities and Challenges For Entrepreneurs and Investors, by Bill Reichert.

“The Art of the Start” 2006 Conference
The presentation slides from the conference.

Top Ten Lies of Entrepreneurs (Slides. PDF)
It's good to be an enthusiastic entrepreneur, but avoid using these "lies" when pitching your company.

Top Ten Lies of Venture Capitalists (Slides. PDF)
A tool for understanding what venture capitalists really mean when they use these phrases.

Made to Stick - Overview

Over the past year I have read many great editorials in Fast Magazine from the authors of the recent bestseller Made to Stick. The subject matter seems very relevant to the brand strategy of Lifeform3D and Lifeform Design. The following checklist from the book is a good reminder as the foundations of Lifeform Design continue to be laid:

SIMPLE “It’s hard to make ideas stick in a noisy, unpredictable, chaotic environment. If we’re to succeed, the first step is this: Be simple. Not simple in terms of ‘dumbing down’ or ‘sound bites.’ What we mean by ‘simple’ is finding the core of the idea. ‘Finding the core’ means stripping an idea down to its most critical essence.” (pgs. 27, 28)
UNEXPECTED “The most basic way to get someone’s attention is this: Break a pattern. Humans adapt incredibly quickly to consistent patterns. Figure out what is counterintuitive about the message—i.e., What are the unexpected implications of your core message? Communicate your message in a way that breaks your audiences’ guessing machines.” (pgs. 64, 72)
CONCRETE “Abstraction makes it harder to understand an idea and to remember it. It also makes it harder to coordinate our activities with others, who may interpret the abstraction in very different ways. Concreteness helps us avoid these problems.” (pg. 100)
CREDIBLE “How do we get people to believe our ideas? We’ve got to find a source of credibility to draw on. A person’s knowledge of details is often a good proxy for her expertise. Think of how a history buff can quickly establish her credibility by telling an interesting Civil War anecdote. But concrete details don’t just lend credibility to the authorities who provide them; they lend credibility to the idea itself.” (pgs. 138, 163)
EMOTIONAL “How can we make people care about our ideas? We get them to take off their Analytical Hats. We create empathy for specific individuals. We show how our ideas are associated with things that people already care about. We appeal to their self-interest, but we also appeal to their identities—not only to the people they are right now but also to the people they would like to be.” (pg. 203)
STORIES “A story is powerful because it provides the context missing from abstract prose. This is the role that stories play—putting knowledge into a framework that is more lifelike, more true to our day-to-day existence. Stories are almost always CONCRETE. Most of them have EMOTIONAL and UNEXPECTED elements. The hardest part of using stories effectively is make sure they’re SIMPLE—that they reflect your core message. It’s not enough to tell a great story; the story has to reflect your agenda.” (pgs. 214, 237)

... in closing... “Those are the six principles of successful ideas. To summarize, here’s our checklist for creating a successful idea: a Simple Unexpected Concrete Credentialed Emotional Story.

Huge Potential for 3DTV

An excerpt from IT Broadcast and Digital Cinema is definitely worth the read.

Stereoscopic 3DTV could be the next home entertainment blockbuster, the logical sequel to today's high-definition flat-screen TVs. But the path to 3DTV winds through more twists and turns than the road to the Emerald City, passing through forests of alternative file formats, compression schemes, display technologies and patents.

Market analyst firm Insight Media tracked as many as 22 unique approaches to 3D displays, and it's still early in the technology.

No one has yet figured out a low-cost way to deliver stereo 3D to LCDs. What's more, many CE giants, as well as key technology providers of digital cinema, have yet to announce their products and directions for 3DTV. Others say any approach that necessitates glasses — a requirement for high-resolution 3D images today — will never be more than a niche with consumers at home.

Nevertheless, the hunt for a mainstream standard is on, driven largely by rising interest from Hollywood. At least four major industry groups have formed this year to plough a route forward.

"You are seeing a lot of overlapping activity here because everyone sees this problem," said Chris Chinnock, president of Insight Media, who helped found the 3D@Home Consortium, an ad hoc industry group.

Real-Time Gradient-Domain Painting

The following research is done by James McCann and Nancy S. Pollard. Real-time Gradient-domain Painting, ACM Transactions on Graphics (SIGGRAPH 2008), August 2008, Vol 27. No. 3.

Abstract

We present an image editing program which allows artists to paint in the gradient domain with real-time feedback on megapixel-sized images. Along with a pedestrian, though powerful, gradient-painting brush and gradient-clone tool, we introduce an edge brush designed for edge selection and replay. These brushes, coupled with special blending modes, allow users to accomplish global lighting and contrast adjustments using only local image manipulations -- e.g. strengthening a given edge or removing a shadow boundary. Such operations would be tedious in a conventional intensity-based paint program and hard for users to get right in the gradient domain without real-time feedback. The core of our paint program is a simple-to-implement GPU multigrid method which allows integration of megapixel-sized full-color gradient fields at over 20 frames per second on modest hardware. By way of evaluation, we present example images produced with our program and characterize the iteration time and convergence rate of our integration method.



Portraits sketched by M. Mahler using Gradient-Domain Painting Program

Link to website
Link to PDF research paper
Link to video

Shading Based Surface Editing

The following research is by Yotam Gingold and Denis Zorin In Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 2008, Los Angeles, USA, Aug.'08

Abstract

We present a system for free-form surface modeling that allows a user to modify a shape by changing its rendered, shaded image using stroke-based drawing tools. User input is translated into a set of tangent and positional constraints on the surface. A new shape, whose rendered image closely approximates user input, is computed using an efficient and stable surface optimization procedure. We demonstrate how several types of free-form surface edits which may be difficult to cast in terms of standard deformation approaches can be easily performed using our system.

Link to website
Link to PDF research paper (14MB)

Freeform surfaces from single curved panels

The following research is by H. Pottmann, A. Schiftner, P. Bo, H. Schmiedhofer, W. Wang, N. Baldassini, and J. Wallner. - (ACM Trans. Graphics, Vol. 27/3 (2008).Proc. SIGGRAPH 2008)

Abstract:

Motivated by applications in architecture and manufacturing, we discuss the problem of covering a freeform surface by single curved panels. This leads to the new concept of semi-discrete surface representation, which constitutes a link between smooth and discrete surfaces. The basic entity we are working with is the developable strip model. It is the semi-discrete equivalent of a quad mesh with planar faces, or a conjugate parametrization of a smooth surface. We present a B-spline based optimization framework for efficient computing with D-strip models. In particular we study conical and circular models, which semi-discretize the network of principal curvature lines, and which enjoy elegant geometric properties. Together with geodesic models and cylindrical models they offer a rich source of solutions for surface panelization problems.

Link to PDF research paper

Developable Surfaces - Curved Folding

Curved Folding by Martin Kilian, Simon Floery, Zhonggui Chen, Niloy J. Mitra, Alla Sheffer, Helmut PottmannACM SIGGRAPH 2008

Abstract:
Fascinating and elegant shapes may be folded from a single planar sheet of material without stretching, tearing or cutting, if one incorporates curved folds into the design. We present an optimizationbased computational framework for design and digital reconstruction of surfaces which can be produced by curved folding. Our work not only contributes to applications in architecture and industrial design, but it also provides a new way to study the complex and largely unexplored phenomena arising in curved folding.

Link to website

Link to PDF research paper (Siggraph 2008)

Link to 22MB slide presentation

Free-Form Sketch

Another unique approach for 3D sketch modeling byHaixiong Wang and Lee Markosian can be found here



Link to website
Link to PDF research paper

Real-Time Shape Deformation

The following video showcases new development of shape deformation. I can see this technology make real-time computer animation interaction fun and entertaining.

T. Igarashi, T. Moscovich, J.F. Hughes, "As-Rigid-As-Possible Shape Manipulation",
ACM Transactions on Computer Graphics, Vol.24, No.3, 2005

Link to website

Link to PDF

Link to MovingSketch software

Refing the HDR imaging technique

My friend Brian asked me to take Christmas pictures of his family to send out to their relatives. I thank God for providing such a beautiful day at Salt Creek Beach!

Good times with my bro at Salt Creek Beach

Winter is favorite time of the year in California - some of the only times of the year you will actually see cloud formations in the sky, a wonderful break from the boring blue haze.

The Color of Metal

A fascinating look into the beauty of metal.



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