Woman, 83, Has World’s First Lower Jaw Replacement – In 3D [abc.com] In what has been called the first operation of its kind, an 83-year-old woman in the Netherlands has been fitted with a custom-made artificial jaw that was created by a 3D printer.
The titanium implant, which weighs less than 4 ounces, was created by taking a CT scan of the woman’s lower jaw and duplicating it with a 3D printer that lays down titanium powder instead of ink. The printer followed the pattern of the woman’s jaw bone layer by layer, fusing the titanium powder in place with heat. In just a couple hours, the 3D replica was ready.
posted by Fizz
on Feb 7, 2012 -
43 comments
ROSA (vimeo) A sci-fi short animated film created by a new Spanish artist, Jesús Orellana. This was a year-long, solo project created without a budget.
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Nov 11, 2011 -
8 comments
Photofly is a cloud based service that will construct 3D models of objects based off of a handful of digital photographs.
The NYT ran this story in June providing a bit more detail. Photofly can be used to capture
People (
more,
more, and
more),
Places (
so on, and
so forth), and
Things (
etc.,
etc.,
etc). It's also been used to create unreal effects in
this music video. Shaan Hurley, of autodesk,
explains the technology in this video.
posted by codacorolla
on Sep 21, 2011 -
15 comments
Artist
François Abelanet has transformed the courtyard in front of Paris' City Hall into "a new masterpiece of Land Art," on display until July 15.
Who To Believe? is a giant, living
anamorphosis -- a three-dimensional optical illusion that requires the viewer to stand at a specific vantage point to truly appreciate the work.
[more inside]
posted by bayani
on Jul 8, 2011 -
7 comments
Lightfield cameras capture the
entire photonic information of a scene with essentially infinite depth of field, meaning that pictures can be focused
after the photo is taken, and low-light conditions do not require a flash. Lightfield images are also “3D” without the need for stereo lenses.
Lightfield (aka “plenoptic”) technology was developed in the 90's: the first working prototype required dozens of separate cameras and a supercomputer.
Professional plenoptic cameras have been available for the past year; the
Lytro startup intends to release a consumer-ready shirt-pocket lightfield camera later this year.
[more inside]
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul
on Jun 22, 2011 -
54 comments
The official Google Earth plugin is one free download that makes all sorts of cool stuff possible in your browser. There's
a full screen version of the program (complete with underwater views and 3D buildings) which can be searched by entering queries at the end of the URL. There's
a framed version with support for layers, historical imagery, day/night cycles, and the Google Sky starmap.
Less useful but more fun are Google's collection of "experiments" demonstrating the possibilities of the Earth API, including
a "Geo Whiz" geography quiz,
an antipode locater,
a 3D first-person view of San Francisco,
a virtual route-follower, and
MONSTER MILKTRUCK!, a crazy fun driving simulator that lets you careen a virtual milk truck through the Googleplex campus, ricochet off the Himalayas, or explore any other place you care to name.
Lots more can be found in the
Google Earth Gallery -- highlights include
a look at mountaintop removal mining,
a real-time flight tracker,
a guide to trails and outdoor recreation,
a 360 panorama catalog,
geotagged Panoramio photos,
and the comprehensive crowdsourced
Google Earth Community Layer.
And while it's too large to view online, don't miss loading
the Metafilter user location map into a desktop version of Google Earth!
[more inside]
posted by Rhaomi
on Jun 9, 2011 -
15 comments
Hambuster: when your lunch goes berserk. Vimeo; Warning, funny, violent, and gory as Hell, so maybe NSFW. Also available in 3D.
[more inside]
posted by bwg
on May 21, 2011 -
18 comments
Film editor and sound designer extraordinaire Walter Murch
writes to Roger Ebert regarding a fundamental conundrum of current 3D technology: "It is like tapping your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time."
posted by oulipian
on Jan 24, 2011 -
84 comments
Fifteen years ago this week, programmer
Ron Britvich launched version 1.0 of
Active Worlds. Started as an autonomous project of
Worlds, Inc. (a spinoff of educational gamesmaker
Knowledge Adventure), Active Worlds was one of the first and most ambitious attempts to create a 3D virtual community on the web.
Built on the architecture of Britvich's
Worlds Chat beta, Active Worlds
debuted in the form of
Alphaworld, a sunny green infinite plane open to
public building. In its opening years Alphaworld experienced
a land rush of construction, resulting in
an anarchic starfish sprawl larger than the state of California. A sister company, Circle of Fire, was soon founded to craft
additional themed hubs, and once individual ownership of worlds became possible the AW community spawned a veritable universe of
hundreds of worlds.
Although
the company has seen its
ups and downs since those heady times and its fortunes have slowly dwindled, the
Active Worlds platform survives to
this day. Look inside for a simple guide on how to log in to the (free) service, rundowns of the best worlds, links to essays analyzing the program's legacy, and other content summing up
its venerable community.
[more inside]
posted by Rhaomi
on Jul 4, 2010 -
18 comments
First, there was
colossal miscalculation. Something so bad it could
make parable a four-letter word. Didn't faze him. His next was
"bizarrely compelling... Slower than watching a train wreck," but yet invoking,
"that same level of disbelief." It was also like swallowing spiky
clusters of manure. Maybe he had
lost his mind? But yet he rose again... Or should we say he blew? No really, it was the wind this time .
A feeble gust of an environmental horror story. "You feel like you're not watching the end of the world but the end of a career." Alas, like the undead, you cannot stop him. His latest, sitting at a paltry 0%* on the
Tomatometer, is
whitewashed, and offers an experience that's a
headache-inducing,
joyless,
soulless, husk that Roger Ebert called
"agonizing... in every category I can think of and others still waiting to be invented." It enchantingly makes,
"Jake Lloyd’s performance in The Phantom Menace look studied." And,
"the Golden Compass... look like a four-star classic." With
$150 million spent on production, and $130 million on marketing alone, has this
"auteur" finally created his
masterpiece? Or will it be the Last Straw® (in
3d!)?
[more inside]
posted by PBR
on Jun 30, 2010 -
267 comments
Toy Story 3 hits theaters today, and it's already winning
universal acclaim as an enchanting and heartbreaking wonderwork, employing
understated 3D and a
"real-time" perspective that
deftly capitalizes on the nostalgia and can't-go-home-again angst of a generation that grew up with the series.
It has a strong pedigree, with 11-year-old predecessor
Toy Story 2 the rare sequel to equal its forebear, 1995's
Toy Story (itself the first CGI feature in history).
And it joins a lofty stable of films: over the last 15 years, Pixar has put out an unbroken chain of
ten commercial and critical successes that have grossed over $5 billion worldwide and collected
24 Academy Awards (including the
second-ever Best Picture nom for animation with
Up), a legacy that
rivals some of the greatest franchises in film history.
But there's rumbling on the horizon. Although the studio has been
hailed for its originality (of the 50 top-grossing movies in history, only nine were original stories -- and
five of them were by Pixar), two of their upcoming projects are
sequels, both of them based some of their least-acclaimed films (
Cars 2 in 2011 and
Monsters, Inc. 2 in 2012). And while 2012 will also bring
The Bear and the Bow Brave, the first Pixar flick to feature a female protagonist
[previously], fellow newcomer
Newt has been
canceled. With
WALL-E/Up/Toy Story 3 guru Andrew Stanton focusing on
his 2012 adaptation of
John Carter of Mars and with
forays into live-action already in development,
does this mark the end of the golden age of Pixar? Or is this latest entry lasting proof that even the toughest case of sequelitis can be raised to the level of masterpiece?
[more inside]
posted by Rhaomi
on Jun 18, 2010 -
227 comments
