Plushie

OK, so this post is going to be a bit out-of-left-field for regular readers, but what the heck... cool knows no bounds, and, if it's good enough for the ACM (saw a story on this in their print rag), it's good enough for us.

I've always had a touch of the artistic bent, and I routinely take a stab at combining that with my other skills... but 2d and 3d art on a computer always strike me as needlessly complicated, especially 3d variants. What should be as simple as molding something out of clay and painting the results always seems to devolve into exacting placements of polygons and splines, followed by "texture maps" of 2d images over the top, a counterintuitive process if ever I've seen one.

Enter Plushie, software from Japan built for the sole purpose of letting average users get a handle on another non-intuitive crafting process... making stuffed animals (be sure to check out the vid). It's cool enough on its own (I've got a niece, in particular, who would likely love the idea of designing her own stuffed animals), but I think it could become more, with a little work. You've already got real-time generation of 3d bits from simple drawing, and separation into a minimal number of 2d parts... make it where you can add colors and/or textures, either to the parts themselves or directly to the 3d representation, and you've got a nice, primitive tool for creating a 3d model, for whatever use you care to put it to.

I'm going to have to check out the demo one of these days... maybe make some nice, Lovecraft-inspired monstrosity, just for kicks... :)