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TimothyB

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 20, 2008
795
91
Bay Area
Just came across this software and they say they are developing an iPhone version that they hope to have out soon (according to last month)

Visit their page and you'll see a demonstration gif on how you create shapes in the program.

http://www.archipelis.com/

I wonder how successful they were with the iPhone interface.
 

TimothyB

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 20, 2008
795
91
Bay Area
Upon reviewing their PC demo, I wonder how useful the app will really be. It's main strength is creating things at profiles, like head on, or from the side.

Like that penguin, it's facing one way. You can draw the profile of new shapes from top, left and front, and it creates the blob shape. But that blob is pretty much locked to that angle, you can't rotate it 360 degrees. There's some swivel options, but it sort of skews, which lets you rotate but the profile you drew it in stays the same. This means it would be hard to create that penguin looking 45 degrees to the right, or any other careful posing.

So beyond that, you can create some cool models really quickly, but unless they change something for the iPhone, there's no posing, setting up scenes, rendering, etc. Maybe one could export it as an obj for iTracer to open and render on the iPhone.

To me, the desktop version could be useful for creating quick volumes of figures, then export to a sculpting 3D program to take it further with paint, detailing, and posing, or possibly retopology (recreate how the polygons flow) if you plan to animate or rig.

Here's a more clear tutorial on what the desktop version does with the right photo in hand:
http://www.archipelis.com/tutorialZebraFight.php

But for the iPhone, I wonder how useful it can be when it's so basic and designed for one thing. It's just a single tool that's part of a much bigger process, and if it ends on the iPhone, might be pointless.
 

macduke

macrumors G5
Jun 27, 2007
13,142
19,682
Wow, this looks a lot more intuitive than iTracer, which I already own. 3d modeling on the iPhone FTW!
 
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