in
Hardware
by Meike Sillevis Smitt,
on Aug 9, 2007 14:21
With a printer we can't just put ink on paper, but also make a physical object out of plastic. This
video shows how it works. The technique has been available for a while, but priced at $5,000 it is now available for consumers (
nn). And so the virtual world enters the physical world. Anything we see in the virtual world we will be able to copy in a plastic 3D model. Even a movie star on TV. Or a friend's funny face (or a different body part) on the web cam. Or a model from you future house you would like to see in 3D. It will be possible in just a few steps. Meanwhile, the world keeps turning. Generating a 3D model based on a couple of normal photographs will be completely normal. So if we have a vase we really like at home, we take a couple of pictures of it and a while later we have an exact copy of it. A child can do it. The sky is the limit..