A while ago I wrote about Iterative Design and the potential of iterative design on how products are created in the future. Now Hod Lipson and his team brought this concept to the next level with their EndlessForms website.

They combine evolutionary algorithms and generative encodings with crowd sourcing of designs. The results are interesting 3D designs. You could argue the usefulness of many of the designs on the site but it does show a powerful new and easy-to-use way to 3D design and iterative design.

How does it work?

The user selects one of created designs in the gallery or chooses to start anew. The site then evolves this design in 15 different directions and shows the user 15 options. The user can then choose to explore one of the evolutions further, combine multiple evolutions and explore that, or save the 3D design. Optionally the user can choose to 3D printed  his design — which is disabled at this moment for some reason.

Here is video on how it works:

Their inspiration was Charles Darwin and the evolution of species. They found their name in the Origin of Species.

“… from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.”

— Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species

I love these types of innovations for new ways to create 3D designs. It makes 3D design accessible and fun.

I came across this awesome technology I wanted to share it here. It was first demonstrated on Siggraph this year. Japanese scientist have created a new technology to add touch to holograms.

Professor Hiroyuki Shinoda of Tokyo University says: “Up until now, holography has been for the eyes only, and if you’d try to touch it, your hand would go right through. But now we have a technology that also adds the sensation of touch to holograms.”

They use ultrasonic waves to create pressure when the hologram is touched. Although the current state of this technology is very embryonic I can imagine how this can be useful as extension for websites. Just think about touch and feeling a product before you buy it. Or as an extension to 3D television and movies to create a much more immersive experience.

Here is the video:

I am all excited about this and cannot wait to see (touch) this for myself.

In an earlier post, I wrote about The Design Dilemma, and how hard 3D design software is to learn and use. Fortunately, there is innovation happening in this area, and it is not coming from the existing industry players like Autodesk or Solid Works. These are small innovative companies, who each take an innovative approach to 3D design.

I divide them in two categories; software innovation and input innovation. I start with two companies who innovate on the software side. These are:

• 3DTin – online 3D design software using voxels or cubes. It uses WebGL to deliver impressive 3D performance for an online design software application. As an extra bonus, it lets you easily create 3D printable objects out of the box. I wrote about them in my post on 3D on the web and WebGL.
• Tinkercad – same as 3DTin but even more focused on 3D printing.

On the input side, innovation can be found in two areas. One is haptic interfaces. Haptic are freeform 3D input devices, which provide tactile feedback to the user when hitting something. The user can draw by holding a stick, which they can move in all directions. Here is a nice overview on available haptic devices on the market. A special mention for the Falcon from Novint. It only costs $200, which makes it very affordable.
The other area is 3D Motion Capture. This technology has been developed to track and record motions of people. The recorded motions can be used as input for game characters or figures in digital animation movies. But this technology can also be used to draw your 3D model as proven by Front Design, about who I wrote in my post 3D design your furniture in thin air. But there is also a simple proof of concept version available on Instructables using a computer, LED lamp and 2 webcams.

There is one company, who does not make 3D software, but did a great job on making easy to use 3D software, and that is surprisingly – or not – Lego. The Lego editor is a brilliant piece of software both from a functional perspective, as from a marketing perspective. Please take a look for yourself. Though they should make an online version.

I want to end this post with a great video showing Farah Bandookwala using a haptic interface to create her 3D designs.

One of the stumbling blocks to let anybody create in 3D, is the current state of 3D design software. They are hard to use and have a steep learning curves. That is where we are today. There are promising ideas and developments in this area. I am confident that this problem will be solved over time. In my next post I will write about these ideas.

Today, I want to show you a video of one of the more inspirational ideas out there. It is called Sketch Your Own Furniture by FRONT – a Swedish design studio made up of four designers Sofia Lagerkvist, Charlotte von der Lancken, Anna Lindgren, and Katya Savstrom.