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Yes.
After leaving Rockstar
Games, I built my own house
acting as the general contractor. I
designed the house using SketchUp and FormFonts
content. Using the digital model, my wife
and I knew what we'd be building before
we started construction. Construction details
may
have changed here and there, but the overall
look and feel is the same as in the SketchUp model.
At
the time when I was looking for a new work adventure,
Fred approached me about joining up with FormFonts.
I saw it as a great opportunity to incorporate
the skills and knowledge learned in the worlds
of architecture and video game production as
well as to learn new things and explore new areas.
What
is the driving motivation behind Form
Fonts 3D?
(MF):
There are two main ideas. First, the name says a lot
about it. 'Form' is the 3D part
and 'Fonts' comes from Ascii. The
goal is to some day have graphic styles (font
types) as easily interchangeable as changing
the font in a text document. The model/object
would be nothing more than a representation of
the thing, the platonic chair. The style/look/rendering
of the chair can be anything. As in a text document
every letter can be a different font so in a
representation of a built environment, every
object can have it unique style and rendered
look.
Secondly
there's the idea of Smart Objects or Intelligent
Objects for BIM (Building information Modeling.) In
order for BIM to work, the models need to have
information embedded into them.
For
the time being we're focusing on providing
quality models at a great price while we work
toward
our underlying goals.
Who
is your ideal customer and what do they gain by
using your service?
(MF):
People who love to get lost in creating beautiful
things. More specifically, this would be designers
in many fields: from architecture, stage design,
film production, comic books, construction planning,
graphic designers and those that need to represent
the real world.
A
subscriber gains access to thousands of high
quality, low polygon models as well as textures.
Instead of taking the hours
required to model the 3D entourage and building
products, a model
can be downloaded from our growing library. Being
a web-based subscription service, a customer
can download what they want, try it out, and
then try out another without having to pay for
each individual model.
And
being a pay-for service,
a subscriber doesn't
have to worry about the quality as opposed to
much of the free content on the web. Subscribers
can also request models to be made should we
not already have what they're looking for.
We like the requests because the subscriber is
more likely to ask for something needed by many
-- as opposed to us guessing what people may
need.
You
offer your 3D models in particular in several different
file formats. How did you settle on these?
Is this choice primarily customer-driven and if
not then how do you decide which formats to create
in?
(MF): As
the site has its origins in SketchUp, it is
our main file format. We've
added and removed formats over the years based
on what the subscribers are requesting and
downloading. We're currently supporting
SketchUp, ArchiCAD, Revit, DWG, 3ds and Collada.
What
is the most popular file format?
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