Want An Action Figure of Your Avatar?

Those amongst you who spend all your waking time on Second Life: rejoice! Simon Spartalian and Mike Beradino of Recursive Instruments are launching a milling service for SL users on June 1, so you can have actual physical representations of your avatar, builds or favorite SL objects made out of anything from foam to wax to stainless steel, up to 9”x5”x5”. They’re using Eyebeam OpenLab’s Blender. Blender then exports a stereo lithograph file for Desk Proto, which controls the mill. But why go through all this trouble?

Part of the goal of the project is to bridge the virtual and the real “by developing a cultural authority in the virtual that till now has been reserved for the physical,” Spartialian says. The service will allow residents to create physical objects that can take on personal importance or perhaps even come to have financial weight around the edges of SL’s in-world markets.

Now, there are lots of people making a lot of money offering services in and around of Second Life, and 3pointD correctly points out that 3D milling might appeal both to users just looking for real-world SL tchotchkes as well as companies that use SL for protyping. All well and good, but we tend to think the sign of a healthy enterprise is when sextrepreneurs start getting involved—3D milling for Second Life might be most fun in conjunction with the many prostitutes in the service, so johns can have souvenirs from their visit more tangible than virtual herpes.

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/software/3d-printing-for-second-life-residents-174778.php

Second Life residents will soon be able to order up physical versions of their avatars, their builds or their favorite Second Life objects in full 3D, and in a variety of materials, thanks to a pair of students at the Art Institute of Chicago. Simon Spartalian (aka Simon Jezebel in SL) and Mike Beradino (a recent graduate of the Art Institute) will launch the service on June 1, offering to mill SL objects up to 9″X 5″X 5″ out of anything from foam to wax to stainless steel. The pair are already documenting their milling efforts at their Recursive Instruments blog.

A cost model has yet to be determined, Spartalian tells me, but it sounds like a typical avatar, milled in foam or wax, would run something between $30 and $60. (Stainless steel milling would probably be “prohibitively expensive,” says Spartalian, though it is available.) Contact him at spartalian AT gmail DOT com for details.

Part of the goal of the project is to bridge the virtual and the real “by developing a cultural authority in the virtual that till now has been reserved for the physical,” Spartialian says. The service will allow residents to create physical objects that can take on personal importance or perhaps even come to have financial weight around the edges of SL’s in-world markets.

The service will work by exporting object data using OGLE, the Open GL Extractor from Eyebeam OpenLab. That .obj file is then imported into Blender, an open-source 3D mesh editor, where it is cleaned up and isolated for milling. Blender exports a stereo lithograph file for use by DeskProto, which calculates the tool path of the mill, which fits on a desktop. A lot of this process is documented on the blog linked above.

But will SL resident really pay 50 bucks to get a wee copy of their avatar to hang from their rear-view mirror? Odds are that at least a few will come up with the extra cash. It’s possible, too, that milling services could be offered to companies and individuals doing prototyping in Second Life. If Spartalian and Beradino’s service catches on, they could soon have more business than they could handle.

One interesting thought: Paying for a copy of your avatar will likely cause people to put even more thought into their SL appearance than they already do. Few residents are likely to shell out for more than one 3D avatar in any span of time, which means they’ll have to think extra carefully about just which av they want milled, and will take extra time to get it just right. Once their service gets off the ground, what Spartalian and Beradino should do is find someone to offer painting services as well. A 3D physical avatar model in full color? That’s pretty cool.

http://www.3pointd.com/20060517/3d-milling-service-offered-for-sl-residents/

-Kiamat Dusk

I want one.

Think I will pass on this one.

We have residents that blow thousands of bucks monthly on virtual land. I guess the answer to the question is "yes".

Although this does not appear to be something I'd be interested in at the moment, I support anyone trying to do something different in SL.

Good luck and good idea!

can I get a real / virtual model of my buildings on my land ?

I can't believe anyone here would actually say something along the lines of "Oh, gee, fifty bucks for someing tangible? That's insane." You people spend crazy amounts of money on fake, virtual land. I'm going to go cry now.

I will take one!

Hee hee, what good is something tangible? When you rightclick it nothing happens. You can't put it in your inventory. You can't show it to anyone except people in the real world.

Tangible = useless.

According to the articles you can. You can get a model of anything in SL.

-Kiamat Dusk

I am real curious what the stainless steel models will cost. If it's a few hundred bucks, I am sure some will sell.

Does it come fully colored?

If the technology they are using is what I think it is then no, you have to paint it yourself.

I will definately take one.

One please.

Y'know, stuff like this would make it cheaper for startup companies to protype things.

Exite has just entered the real world

Wow. That sheep looks almost like something that might resemble the model it was based on, if only it wasn't completely disimilar.

I may not want a model of my avatar but there have been some abosutely great items created in SL that would make great nick-nacks. The idea that I could now create my own nick-nacks (for want of a better term) and put them on my shelves sounds really cool.

Where else can you design, let's say a posed dragon or gargoyle, and then have a model of it sent to you to be painted? This could be a great hobby. Of course you can indeed do this in real life right now but I suspect the cost is normailly expensive and so are the tools. With items in SL you could create your own obviously but you could also buy other's designs to put in your home.

Maybe it's just that I myself never thought about it before but it sounds like a cool service with lots of possibilities for retailers in SL.

Desktop 3dprinters as Santa machines, for making allmost anything you want are
not far down the road, 3dprinting (mayby like inkjet, but with a much wider range of types of ink{for structural elements,active elements, circuitry...})

designs are crafted then 3dprinted as a (figure, tool, sensor, device, ... )
so software becomes matter, becomes real.

where as in SL designs are crafted then sold or given,
things that are designed, bought or given in SL can be made real!
Note: this is absolutly to encourage using SL for more than just the SL environment!!!
ie. design things you'd want to have in reality regardless of how pointless they would be in SL.

"the whole matter as software paradigm..." It's all about integrating object design distribution AND fabrication to aid people in solving locally relevant realworld problems

Laymans terms, please.

It would be Really Freakin' Cool to take the stuff onscreen and turn it into a little figure -- on hardware that costed less than a new car.

How much would it cost to, theoretically, get a life-sized copy of a female av with fully functional xcite IRL?

*giggles insanely*

I'm going to make one of MilosZ MilosZ and do unspeakable things to it. :x

More than it would cost to get one in real life.

Which is exactly the problem with current 3D printers.

realdoll.com