123D Creature is a new iOS app from the team at Autodesk that allows students with no previous experience to engage and experiment with 3D modelling. 

Creatures are the name of the game and the app provides an intuitive interface that is easy to use. Starting with a skeleton, it is very easy to add limbs, bones & joints , sculpt details much like you would if working with clay. 

Processing your model or ‘baking’ as 123D Creature refers to it, allows you to add textures, poses, scale, colour etc. and to place your model into a background to produce photorealistic renders. 

I think it’s awesome.

Creatures can be exported in .obj format, and if you have access to a Makerbot 3D printer, you can import the .obj directly into MakerWare and start your print job. If you don’t have a Makerbot, you will need to import the .obj into blender and export as a .stl – the file format required by most 3D printers.

This is the scenario I am going to give students:

Download your own copy of this unit of work.

Thingiverse already has a number of exemplar models available to download. We are currently printing the Elephanticus on a Dimension 1200es series with layer resolution of 0.254mm – estimated build time of 10 hours.

Will post updates when done.

As part of PLANE’s month of gaming series, I mentioned briefly how the Cult of Done Manifesto had greatly improved my productivity and outlook on work/life. Reproduced here:

1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
3. There is no editing stage.
4. Pretending you know what you’re doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you’re doing even if you don’t and do it.
5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
7. Once you’re done you can throw it away.
8. Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done.
9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right
10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
11. Destruction is a variant of done.
12. If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
13. Done is the engine of more.

The salient points of the Manifesto, for me at least, are 4. & 5.

4. because it helps you overcome those moments of the fear of not knowing, the fear of failure, the feelings of not being up to the task or that someone else knows more or could do it better.

5. because it has helped overcome my Chrome tab addiction. Seriously, sometimes I would have the same 20 tabs open for a week. That’s not healthy. If you haven’t read or acted on those tabs within 7 days then you are not going to. Delete them. If it is a good idea it will find it’s way back to you.

I promise.

https://adriancamm.com/2013/02/13/as-part-of-planes-month-of-gaming-series-i/