I’ve been a fan of Rustboy ever since I first heard of Brian Taylor’s audacious effort to make a high-quality animation using a tool at which most professionals sneered. The results have been stunning (go see for yourself). And now via the good folks at Vinyl Pulse, comes word (Link) that the wayward metal contraption with the sorrowful eyes has arrived in vinyl. Hot.

{Image source: Vinyl Pulse}

I just surfed over to CGTalk and noticed an interesting ad banner floating at the top of the page (whoa, they do work on occasion!). That banner linked to a website for a company called “CrystalRender” (Link), a place that takes your 3D model and immortalizes it in… well, you know.

This is interesting. It’s certainly one way to do it. And the best part are these two snippets from their FAQ:

Which 3D formats can you accept?
…and even many game engine formats: X, MDL, MD2, MD3, W3D, PSK, U3D.
–
Do you offer any volume discounts?
Yes, from 10 to 10,000 pcs…

Seems pretty clear there’s an IP collision up ahead.

Having succeeded on the Doom3 front (see earlier post – Link), I decided to return my attention to Second Life (at least until someone culls the UV map from the videostream). In particular I wanted to get the proper config settings for Second Life and I wanted to compare the geometry. I noticed earlier (Link) that my prim object was composed entirely of individual triangles. When capturing an avatar on the other hand, the triangles fell in line with what I’d expect: triangle meshes for Head, Hair, Torso, Legs and Eyes (the last floating off in space).

What I hadn’t done was capture an avatar – with prim attachments – in a custom pose (i.e. something other than the standard modeling “T” pose). As you can see above, that was pretty easily accomplished. So at this point I suppose I’ll work toward getting both the Sentry Bot and my avatar to go “solid” in Pro/ENGINEER.

Lots of interesting stuff in Bruce Sterling’s latest post (Link) re: the ongoing adventures of VeriChip Corporation’s efforts to use RFID chips to tag and track the world; maybe even the whole universe. Only they seem to have a few hurdles… like cloning, MRI’s and maybe some sloppy record-keeping. Anyone else noticing how this technology, most often associated with tracking simple stuff, is sounding more and more like something out of Logan’s Run?

Remember that post of mine from a ways back when I talked about being able to build a killswitch into virtual objects so that they simply vanish (Link – in case you don’t)? Well… uh… what’s stopping someone from illegally pirating/cloning these things and doing exactly that on real people using a time-released or remotely-administered poison? Forget spiked Kool-aid, life is a Carousel, old chum.

Here’s another one discovered via Boing Boing (Link): the Cabestan watch. From the Europa Star article they reference (Link):

As Jean-François Ruchonnet (JFR to his friends) declares right up front, “This new timepiece, the Cabestan [capstan] is certainly very spectacular, but it is what I would call ‘techno-design.’

I don’t know if I’d call that “techno-design”, but I do know one thing: the widening gap between the wealthy and the rest of us(!) makes this an interesting case study for piracy. I’ve little doubt this could be fabricated for much less than the reported US$220,000 for which it sells, but anyone who wants to try first has to get one of them (maybe steal it), figure it out, replicate the parts in CAD, and then produce them at what is likely a considerable cost. That means they’re not going to be going for $10 in the Hong Kong night market. Why bother?

Unlike a Rolex, this thing is sufficiently unique to be a royal pain in the butt for someone wanting to pirate it. Additionally it would perhaps have to achieve the kind of iconic cultural status of a Rolex to sell in the volumes needed to yield a return on investment that would make this project worthwhile. Seems to me that pricing this thing so high and making it so unique is its best defense against rip-offs. We’ll see. Even I’m not sure as there are plenty of people out there who’ll do it for nothing more than a challenge.

{Image Copyright © 2005 Europa Star}