Friday, November 16, 2018

Video and 3D Update

If you read some of my first posts, you'll know that I was interested in my home-movie archive as a possible augmentation to my own memory. Well, I have begun to digitize those videos and to edit them into viewable clips. In fact, I've begun offering this as a service in my own local area. I call it "Brian's Digital Boutique." You can find my info page at bit.ly/BDBmain.
I've been using FOSS tools such as KDEnlive and Natron to do my video work.
In parallel to this activity, I've been doing some work in 3D. I've been exploring Structure-From-Motion software which transforms a series of photographs of an object or a place into a 3D model. This could be a shortcut for someone who wants to reverse engineer a mechanical part or to make a new copy of a broken item. Additionally, I've gotten some time in on Solidworks, a commercial 3D design and drafting (and analysis, and...) suite. I'm taking a class in this software, which allows me to own a student license. But as soon as the class is over, so will be my access to this powerful program. I've only just begun to look for alternatives, and so far I have only looked at OpenSCAD. This program looks powerful but has an entirely different user interface. Instead of sketching in 2D and then extruding into the third dimension (for example), in OpenSCAD you define your object using a programming language. This is far different so it will take some getting used to. And so far I have no idea how assemblies are created; whether there is an equivalent to "mates." Mates are instructions to the software that tell it how two parts relate to each other in space. It's so powerful. Just the other day I was amazing myself by building a ball-bearing from the ground up, with balls and races that were mated to each other. The balls could roll around in the races, and the whole thing could be turned just like in the real world. Can this be done in OpenSCAD? So far, I am totally ignorant.
I can't believe it's been over a year since my last post. How is anyone to take an interest unless they can expect regular posts? Sheesh.
Maybe I'll try to do a regular Weekend Update.
That's it for now.
-Brian

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