The balsacam era may end sooner than we think. The fact that pro HD cameras have gotten smaller without sacrificing resolution (see our "Hands-On HD" cover story, page 29) is just one example of how manufacturing is keeping pace with innovation. But there’s something really exciting going on, even before these cameras – and a lot of other things we live and work with every day – hit the production line.
Attendees of this month’s International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York are seeing furniture prototypes that aren’t so much sawed, sanded and assembled, but printed into one smooth, fluid ceramic, plastic or metal three-dimensional object.
That’s right, though the 3D animation technology revolution has transformed the craft of filmmaking in recent years, another 3D process called Rapid Prototyping, or RP, is all the rage these days in modern furniture design.
These new sculptures, chairs, tables, bowls, vases and lights, I was intrigued to discover in an article last week in The New York Times, are true 3D representations printed layer by tissue-thin layer. They begin inside any number of CAD design programs and get transformed, much the way digital images do, into geometric patterns that are then dissected into thousands of layers. The RP printers themselves, however, are still extremely massive and expensive (think seven figures), so mass production could be years, if not decades, away. But we all know the power of the printed word (and image). Think what a printed 3D prototype could do?
What fascinates me most about the concept of RP is how it could inevitably, as Times reporter Sarah Verdone put it, "usher in an era of‘mass customization.’" Imagine that. As Moore’s Law goes exponential, we might someday be creating RP prints of personalized studio office furniture at our desktops, trying them out for size, and then, and only then, ordering that mod telephone table for the lobby or glowing orb for the client room. And not long after that, we might even be able to download and print a model of that new camera we saw at NAB, tricked out with a custom grip, eyepiece and viewfinder or simply finished in our favorite color. I’m looking into whether any of the big manufacturers in our industry are already using RP, or at least considering it, and will report back soon on what I find out.
Once there is an affordable way to mass produce these 3D prototypes, I’m guessing there will also be a burgeoning market for them on the next-generation of eBay (as well as a backlash against prefab designs that, one can hope, would make original Knoll and Haywood Wakefield tables and chairs affordable again).
For the here and now, just turn to the tutorial on page 18 to learn a simple animation and tiling technique that will help you add rich, seamless textures to your next video project- no RP or synthetic procedural texture generation required. All you need is Photoshop, Luxology’s new imageSynth plug-in, an NLE and, um, a fresh head of broccoli.
– Beth Marchant, Editor-in-Chief
bmarchant@accessintel.com