A new user can start assembling their own robot from these pieces, clicking and dragging as the software intelligently snaps the parts together. Each kit is a collection of pre-made parts that Autodesk's designers think you might enjoy using to customize a design.įor instance, the robot kit has a collection of heads, eyes, arms and other robotic components.
There's a house kit and a train kit and a robot kit, with many more to come, available for download from the web. The best illustration of this approach can be seen in the prepackaged kits that ship with the software. _123D Design _(November 2012): Create 3-D shapes from scratch or from templates to facilitate 3-D object printing.To do this, Autodesk has taken pains to flatten out the learning curve as much as possible. 123D Make (May 2012): Converts 3-D objects into templates suitable for laser cutting and reassembly into physical 3-D objects. Autodesk's servers do the processing while you wait. _123D Catch _(May 2012): Generate a "scanned" 3-D model by taking photos of an object. 123D Sculpt (August 2011): iPad app that allows you to sculpt on your tablet in a clay-meets-fingerpainting interface. The 123D Timeline:_123D _(April 2011): Desktop software Autodesk's first foray into DIY 3-D design. According to Christian Pramuk, product manager for the 123D apps, the goal was to build something that was super intuitive for new users, while having enough features to keep intermediate and advanced users interested. 123D Design is a cross-platform 3-D modeling tool - it runs on iOS, Mac, PC, or in a web browser.
It's the latest addition to their family of free 3-D modeling applications for the rest of us. Today, Autodesk is launching 123D Design. 123D has gone on to spawn a family of specialized apps, all linked together via cloud sharing and all aimed at making it as easy as possible to turn your ideas into physical designs. They started their new push in 2011 with the release of 123D, a piece of desktop software meant to democratize 3-D design, and then turned heads by acquiring Instructables, a community for sharing DIY how-tos. If a revolution is coming, Autodesk wants to be at the forefront. You can re-stitch more than one additonal photo for accuracy though - just close the stitching interface and select another photo - your points will be saved.For a company best known for being the maker of high-end software used in construction projects (NYC's Freedom Tower), industrial design (Tesla cars), and blockbuster Hollywood special effects ( Avatar), Autodesk sure has invested in a big way in the future of DIY. Rather than explaining this in text, this tutorial from Autodesk explains the process rather well I think.īe warned that restitching will mean the entire project needs to be recalculated in the cloud. If you see any that are greyed out with a yellow warning sign on them, you can attempt to manually stitch them into the scene.
If you're capturing humans or live animals, make sure they absolutely don't move an inch!Ĭheck if manual stitching is needed by scrolling through the photo browser at the bottom of the main screen. Transparent, reflective or overly glossy objects won't capture. If everything looks the same, it will be impossible to figure out which points match. To help stitch photos together, add additional reference points - color squares to a blank wall for example - or anything to increase the complexity of the scene. To do this on the iPhone, hold down on a focus point - you should see the text AF/AE lock now appear at the bottom of the screen (this, and more iPhone tips in our free, downloadable iOS5 guide).ĭon't perform any editing on the photos themselves - no cropping - just keep the camera in a fixed orientation, and give the app good quality, consistent shots. Taking pictures on an overcast day or somewhere with fixed light (in a studio, for example), will help or simply use the exposure and focus lock on your camera.
Use a fixed exposure and focal length - camera-phones will often auto-adjust exposures for each shot. To avoid this, there's a few things you can do: On your first attempt, you may end up with a blurry mess or nothingness or you may just get a render error.