So, I’m by no means a sculptor. I don’t know the first thing about it or how to do it. (Though I do remember sculpting a box in some 9th grade art class. Didn’t turn out well…)
Regardless, I can appreciate how awesome this new iPad app — Beautiful Modeler — is and the potential impacts it might have on sculpting in general in the 21st Century. Plus, it lets you sculpt without ever having touched the clay, thus your hands stay clean. (Bonus!)
So what is it? Well, Beautiful Modeler is an iPad application that allows you to mold virtual clay on your iPad into whatever model you want. There are apparently no limitations (from what I read in the article about it here) as you can stretch the clay, squeeze it, twist it around, etc. Basically, my take is whatever you can do with real clay, you can do with this. Pretty cool. While you are using your iPad to creating your masterpiece, the model you are creating is displayed on your laptop or desktop computer. This allows you to better see what you’re actually sculpting.
From there, once you finish your model, you can actually print it out, export it as an STL file and fabricated it immediately. There is a video that shows the whole process here:
All this was created by the Karl D.D. Willis. More info on him and his work here.
As the article points out, the potential impacts of this tool are pretty huge. For many, using CAD software for 3-D modeling just isn’t an option. Why? Well, apparently it’s pretty hard to learn and sometimes even harder to actually use. For those designers out there that actually want to use it to produce their own stuff, it seems as if it may be more of a hindrance than a help. I’m no pro on this, so don’t quote me. I’m just passing along what I read and hear.
If sculpting is as easy as this video makes it out to be though, I might just need to take it up. A new generation of Michaelangelos may soon be born.
