3D Systems has announced the launch of Cubify Sculpt, a virtual clay sculpting tool that can be used by one and all.
Powered by 3D Systems‘ volumetric CAD engine, itself a product of the Geomagic acquisition, it is designed for consumer printer users to create basic free form of organic shapes with ready-to-print output.
“Cubify Sculpt shifts the 3D modeling tools paradigm, making design for instant 3D printing something everyone can do,” says Rajeev Kulkarni, vice president and general manager consumer products for 3D Systems.
“As part of the strategic acquisition of Geomagic we intended to integrate Geomagic’s powerful software technology into both our professional and consumer content-to-print platforms,” continues Kulkarni.
“Cubify Sculpt is the first product to launch for our consumer platform Cubify. We are excited to see how users take advantage of the intuitiveness and empowering features.”
The software accepts and exports STL, OBJ and PLY file formats, and there are plans to fully integrate it into the Cube and CubeX 3D printer setup with direct plugins.
Cubify Sculpt is priced at $129, but it comes at a time when there are several alternatives queuing up.
Web-based sculpt tools are already available to all from the likes of SculptFab, offering anywhere modelling. It’s a little cruder than Cubify Sculpt’s offerings, but the general tool set of push, pull, slice and dice is there, and most of all, it’s free.
Elsewhere, game-based sculpture apps such as [the ridiculously addictive] Let’s Create Pottery and Autodesk’s 123D Creatures let people create and print via simple gamified App interfaces.
Meanwhile more mainstream CAD products such as SolidWorks and Rhino are adding in Sub-D modelling tools to their armouries, with Power Surfacing and Clayoo respectively.
At $129 it might be too steep a price for absolute beginners, while the increasing number of free web tools might eat into the space it’s hoping to occupy.
Geomagic Freeform is still the daddy amongst professional Sub-D modellers, artists and sculptors that can reach above Pixologic’s ZBrush price levels ($795), but this still leaves Cubify Sculpt occupying a strange space.
Either way, with a 14-day test period we’ll be giving it a shot.
//www.youtube.com/embed/3DVeDyApD-0?rel=0
