Here is a fun page with fictional Apple design products.
Not only are many fun or funny, but they are often really beautifully made. I would love to have some kind of clue how the heck people make such art from nothing. I couldn't even begin, and I'm supposed to be an artist and computer savvy.
The iWatches remind me of an article I wrote years ago, I hope you like it.
There is actually a technology currently developed, that aims to use a tiny amount of the blood's glucose to power tiny internal electronics, such as a pacemaker for example, or atheroma-breaking micro-robots. The resulting product would probably be lactic acid, normally metabolized by the liver.
ReplyDelete"The company takes no responsibility in case of fortuitous incidents in severe diabetics." ;-)
Holy cow, and I made this stuff up from whole cloth.
ReplyDeleteEolake said: "Not only are many fun or funny, but they are often really beautifully made."
ReplyDeleteIndeed, they are. I particularly enjoyed Apple's entry to the lavatory market.
In art, whenever beauty and humor meet, something transcendentally magical happens.
"I would love to have some kind of clue how the heck people make such art from nothing."
Some of the images look like existing product photos, with the Apple logo and other mods carefully "photoshopped" in.
But the more impressive ones are clearly full 3D renderings. If you want to do that, i.e. "paint with light", take a look at Cheetah 3D. It's a native MacOS Cocoa application (i.e. not a port like many other 3D packages), and very reasonably priced ($99).
I have been testing this product for the last couple of weeks and decided to buy it myself.
That's really cheap for a real 3D app.
ReplyDeleteI agree. But I think it's a smart strategy from Martin, the developer. The market for 3D apps is quite saturated. By offering a product equal in features to the expensive packages, but for 1/10th of the price, he has been able to build a sizable userbase. Expect the price to go up in upcoming major releases (at least that's what I would do).
ReplyDeleteI think the modeller in Cheetah 3D is actually better than in most of its higher end competitors.
The current state of the art in ultra photorealistic rendering is Maxwell Render. But that's just a renderer. You still need to model your objects somewhere. Plus, reportedly Maxwell is slow (takes a day to render a complex scene).
Cheetah 3D does not directly support Maxwell as a back end (after all it has its own inbuilt much faster renderer), but it seems to be possible to import your Cheetah modelled objects into Maxwell for final render. I am currently looking into this as my workflow.
By the way, Maxwell might appeal to a "Homo Photographicus" like you. It's the first renderer where you actually set ISO, F-Stop, Shutter speed etc. It is quite revolutionary. They refer to it as a "light simulator".
Stray thought:
ReplyDeleteif I were a software company, I would keep selling the last two major releases always, at reduced prices, very cheap. It would be a great way to catch the customers.
It's easy to see you've never been in the software business. :-)
ReplyDeleteThe problem with your strategy is that it would be a support nightmare. Whatever you ask money for, you morally need to provide support for. The newer versions do not just add new features, they address the issues that have come up in support calls in the past.
Supporting your users is the achilles heel of being an independent software vendor. Anything you can do to make your software "just work" and reduce those calls is worth the cost. This is why vendors would like their users to upgrade as soon as possible.