Tag Archives: 3D

Fantasy creatures among us

Reading Time: 2 minutes

A baby dragon, a cat with wings, and a pixie with a puck – the characters from different mythologies were created on 3D print as sculptures in the greenhouse of the Siberian Botanical Garden of Tomsk State University.


Stories about winged cars can be found in different cultures of the past. For example, in Ancient Egypt, a goddess named Pasht had a body of a winged cat. In countries of Turkic origin like Tatarstan and Kazakhstan, there are still symbols of winged cars, more precisely of snow leopards. However, there are scientific explanations for the origin of stories about winged cats. A winged cat may appear to have wings because of poor grooming or birth defects.

Pixies are very small and magical creatures who throw funny parties and give blessings across the countryside in England. They wear pointed hats while having pointed ears. Although they can be mischievous, most time they are cheerful and helpful to people. It was said that if you show an iron cross to them they would turn away and go.

Puck is quite similar to a pixie though it has horns and in Norse folklores is a nature spirit, who does everything to save trees and plants from people. Puck supposedly appears in all sorts of guises to confuse people and play little tricks on them. And according to old tales, these spirits would be happy to have new clothes because they walked naked.

Baby dragons are playful and hunting animals with sharp teeth and visible claws. While living in a nest with a mother for some time, after growing up they become big and independent as well as being able to breathe flames. Since these creatures are visibly and culturally connected with dinosaurs, the sculpture of a dragonling is in the Evolution of Plants exhibition, with the group of plants that have been existing during the age of dinosaurs. These are cycads, clubmosses, horsetails, ferns, and ginkgo.

The whole idea was to create photographic, moisture-resistant sculptures that would complement the greenhouse exhibition and draw visitors’ attention to mythical creatures. The models of the sculptures were designed and printed on a 3D printer, then polished and painted to look like a stone.



Links:

https://www.allthingsnature.org/what-is-a-winged-cat.htm
https://www.infobloom.com/who-is-puck.htm
https://habr.com/en/company/top3dshop/blog/596297/
https://www.mythical-creatures.com/pixie/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winged_cat
https://tools.bgci.org/plant_search.php

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Apple acquired motion capture technology used in Star Wars

Reading Time: 2 minutesApple acquired a startup Faceshift, who developed a widely used motion capture technology. Rumors about buying the company from Cupertino Faceshift were before, but now Apple has officially confirmed the purchase, according to TechCrunch.

The publication writes that Apple has not confirmed the deal direct text, but the company voiced its standard response to the case of the purchase: “From time to time Apple buys smaller technology companies. And we generally do not discuss our goals and plans”.

Company Faceshift, founded in 2012, is located in Zurich. It motion capture technology is actively used in scientific research, computer games and film industry in particular, for the filming of the latest Star Wars.

motion-capture

Faceshift is the author of the method of animation characters and objects without the use of markers. This technology requires no special costume or sensors, that is the actor was for the camera in any clothes. Markerless motion capture is especially convenient when shooting the fights, falls, jumps and other complex movements, during which markers may be damaged.

Faceshift has consumer software solutions, including Faceshift Freelance and Faceshift Studio. Sales last stop after the company was bought by Apple. With this program you can create characters and export them to the software for 3D-animation.

It is unknown what the purpose of the acquisition of Apple. In addition, company from Cupertino have patents on the technology of motion capture, face recognition and augmented reality, which Apple acquired earlier along with three other European companies working in this field – PrimeSense, Polar Rose and Metaio. The media speculated that the company uses the acquired technologies in the new generation Apple TV.

More info on a company : Here

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A condom or antivirus? – i.e. the future of sex and not only.

Reading Time: 4 minutes

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Robo-pole-dancing

The world full of robots seems to be really tempting. To be honest when I was a child I loved animated sitcom The Jetsons about the family which lived in futuristic utopia where everything was robotized – even their maid! Next example – Fururama – series about shameless, cigarette-smoker and alcohol drinker robot – Bender – that becomes a best friend of a pizza delivery boy in 31st century. But it’s all about cartoons so far. Let’s get to the more subtle examples. Remember the movie Artificial Intelligence: AI in which Haley Joel Osment was playing a robo-child that was replacing seriously ill real one? THAT WAS SCARY. At least for me the thought that we can freeze our sick children and then replace it by the robot-one was unbeliveble – even if its the most realistic one. But then I started to think that I might be an exception.

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Anatomy of a sex-bot

Nowadays we are surrounded by high-tech equipment. Our smartphones are so smart that they can predict where are we going, what we would like to do on Sunday’s evening and when we should stand after a proper amount of time spent on sitting by the desk. Also producers are not sleeping. They want technology to be as closer to the user as it’s possible. Robots are humanized, software becomes more and more intelligent so why wouldn’t they combine it together to create something next level? There are robotic soccer matches and in a few years there would be a robo olympic games. We are heading into the times of developing very advanced technology and getting so familiar with it that actually sex with robots won’t sound so wierd at all.

Guess which industry contributes most significantly to the developing of technology? Yup, you’re right – the porn industry. It started with popularizing Blue-ray standard and automatic subtittle generation (e.g.: like on youtube). Now boobs are in 3D, VR-sex is avalible where you can change partners, places or even your gender and last but not least – robots. Porn industry gave us more than we think and robo-sex is the future.

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Vision of future prostitures in “AI: Artificial Intelligence”

Coming back to AI movie – remember the character played by Jude Law? – that sexy-robo-man-prostitute which was just like human? Of course it was a Hollywood fiction but we are now closer to this vision than you think. The most human-look alike robots were created for being a.. sex toys. They’re called fembots and their creator is called modern-Gepetto (by the name of Pinocchio creator). It is said that by the 2020 sexbots will be common and by the 2050 they will be using AI and be able to make humans loving them (doesn’t it remind you the movie Her? – I don’t like the whole vision and Scarlet Johansson in general, but if intelligent computer systems had her voice…).

You think that’s crazy? People already confuse reality with its virtual substitute so it’s getting more and more real. But think about the moral aspects of this. Well first of all would it be still cheating? I guess new definition must be set. Human relations or relationships? Would anyone be still interested into looking for their „other half”? What for when you can marry your intelligent sex-bot that satisfies all your desires?

robotLove

Is that how future romance/relationship will look like?

The thing is that sex-bot to be fully functional must have AI to work – to analyze what its user wants, how to please him, when to start/stop or raise the tempo. This sphere of humans is really delicate and must be „serviced” very gently – this is why they need AI. But (also basing on the movie fiction) it may have a pretty bad consequences. I don’t want to bring Terminator saga or Matrix one example of human extermination attempt cause they are slightly too drastic but think about movie Chappie. Some guy created a robot with mentality of a child which started to learn/grow among humans and in a very short period of time it became a criminal (of course by a series of unfortunate accidents but still..). It might be too hard to control. But should we control them? I mean we, as human beings, know that there are social rules and laws that we need to obey but as concious creatures we can ignore that and do what we want. Of course it results in possibility to be improsined but we have a choice. Should robots with AI have the same option? Also in Chappie there was another problem – should we treat once launched intelligent machines as a human beings or as a technical equipment like a vacuum cleaner for example? I think THIS is a real problem of a research about AI. We need to think about the problem of responsability of creating such beings because soonly cutting off the power may be treated as murder and in my opinion this is something that humans are not ready yet to handle.

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