This has got to be one of the coolest 3D applications I have ever seen, I’m not sure how to describe it exactly but the video below makes it pretty clear what this program is capable of. Insane!
“Takeo Igarashi from the University of Tokyo has a very impressive java applet/program, called Teddy, which he describes as ‘A Sketching Interface for 3D Freeform Design’, and basically allows you to sketch in simple 2D and have it automatically converted to full 3D. The tool is certainly very impressive and there is a demonstration video available. The end product looks like a hand-drawn object instead of the usual clinical, perfect 3D objects that are designed using standard rendering tools.”
I’ve got to try this out sometime, and seeing as it fits nicely into my work with 3D face recognition I don’t even have to do it on my own time 
Create your own super hi-tech 3-D laser scanner. Using just a laser pointer, wine glass, rotating platform, and a digital video camera, you can make accurate 3-D models of a object or person.
- Convert the video to an avi.
- Use an edge detection algorithm to find the location of the laser line.
- Reconstruct your 3-D model
Update: I’ve had trouble downloading the m-file so when I got it down I put it up here for anyone to grab.
Thanks to David for the link to this cool demonstration of the face tracking abilities of logitechs quickcam.
Complexity is everywhere. It’s a structural and organizational
principle that reaches almost every field imaginable, from genetics and
social networks to food webs and stock markets. Contemporary scientific
and technological accomplishments—including mapping the human
genome, decoding neural networks and opening up the ocean to
exploration—have seen our ability to generate and acquire
information outpace our ability to make sense of it. With a surfeit of
facts and few ways to synthesize them, “meaningful information” quickly
becomes an oxymoron.
I really was just interested in the pretty pictures part though They’ve got images of neural networks from a mouse brain, the interconnecting structure of trees/leaves/branches and my favourite the “The World of Music: SDP Layout of High Dimensional Data” – this comes from Yahoo! music which I’m actually a paying member of… so I guess I helped to make some of these little interconnecting lines
