subject: 3D Modeling for Profit [print this page] 3D Modeling for Profit 3D Modeling for Profit
In an earlier column, I wrote about the Effective Export/Import of 3D Models. This month, we'll look at the idea of creating 3D Models for profit, with the intention of selling licenses to use models for commercial applications. This is a variation of stock photography, where images are licensed on a limited basis for a variety of advertising purposes. This can create a decent, ongoing royalty stream.To find out how to build 3D Models for licensing, I spoke with Tom Avgikos, Director of the Digital Assets Division of Digimation, who offered some valuable pointers to people who wants to create models for resale. He said: "The first thing to consider is the issue of Polygonal vs. NURBS models. Our collection has a lot more polygonal models than NURBS models. And we find that in general, people are more interested in polygonal models than NURBS. But if the option presented itself, it's much easier to convert NURBS models into polygons, but not from polygons to NURBS. It's much more difficult and I wish it weren't because we do get requests from time to time for somebody who wants a model in a NURBS format and it's not easy to do."
N: Are there translation formats that handle that, or do you have to start from scratch?
Tom: "One program that we've heard of is made by Baren-Boym. They market a tool called ShapeWorks, an add-in for SolidWorks. ShapeWorks is able to take a polygonal model and strip away the faces, leaving a point cloud. 3D Models From there, they rebuild the model in NURBS using the point cloud as a kind of a template, but it's pretty labor intensive."
N: Is it mostly a stylistic choice to use NURBS as opposed to polygonal modeling?
Tom: "Well, if I had to choose a model format, I'd choose polygonal, because so much of our business is in that space, but because of the translation problems, I would choose NURBS so we could offer models in both formats."
