A rocket launcher of our own

The object to the right may not look like much, but it's one of the more mind-blowing things I've encountered. You know how the worst Hollywood cliche of bad cybermovies is that some kid is playing a videogame and he gets SUCKED INTO THE SCREEN and then must fight game baddies for real? Well, what if that could happen in reverse? What if you could turn videogame vehicles, characters and scenes into real objects?

Now you can. Here's how.

I'll start by letting reBang, where I discovered the picture, explain it:

The image is a screen capture from Pro/ENGINEER CAD, perhaps the most widely used product development 3D application for design and manufacturing. That object is a piece of a virtual game object “captured” from id’s Quake 3 videogame (the barrel of a Rocket Launcher). It was not created in my CAD application. It was not ripped from the game files. I “hijacked” the data streaming to my monitor using a freely available tool. And now, if I desired, I could manipulate the data and create a real product.

Let's pause for a moment to let that sink in. What reBang is describing is nothing less than a three-step process for turning cool bits into even cooler atoms:

1. Capture a scene from your favorite videogame.
2. Import it into a CAD program and isolate an object you'd like to have.
3. Send it to a fabricator, either a 3D printer or a computer-controlled milling machine, and watch it emerge as a physical object.

Presto--your own rocket launcher, just like those in Quake.  It won't work, but it will look just right (especially after you paint it). Why wait for some toymaker to get around to making an action figure of your favorite videogame character? Do it yourself!

I think I will. Inspired by a Neil Gershenfeld fablab speech, I plan to eventually convert part of our garage into into the coolest screen-to-steel battlebot factory around. Right now we're still in the Lego league, but I figure that the way to win the kids over to proper DIY matter hacking is to start by magically turning their fave virtual characters into real ones.

reBang doesn't describe the process, but here's what my research has turned up. That "freely available tool" that captures 3D coordinates from videogames? I think it's HijackGL, which intercepts a videogame's OpenGL calls to the video card and outputs the geometry data in standard 3D CAD formats.

We'll edit that data in Blender, an open source CAD program. Then, since we're not quite ready to buy our own 3D printer yet (even on eBay), we'll probably send it off to be fabbed at our local 3d printing shop.

That's good enough for toys. But for real battlebots, we're going to want to make individual parts out of metal and plastic, and for that we'll want to move to a proper computer-controlled milling machine. Right now a Roland MDX-15 is less than $3,000 on eBay, so as soon as the youngest of the kids gets out diapers we'll be ready to start building a workshop for the 21st Century.

For more fablab goodness, here's a weekend reading list:

Worldchanging embraces iFabricate
John Hagel sees the big picture
Fortune discovers DIY 

Comments

[Brandon]

Here is the link to Neil Gershenfeld's speech at ETech '05: http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail460.html

[csven]

You're correct in that i used HijackGL. But where most people would have a problem is getting useful data for a rapid prototype part. What i don't get into is converting the data from a mesh (the triangle data captured by HijackGL) into "solid" geometry, which is what most CAD apps work with in order to create "real" products. One can RP triangle data - .stl is a mesh format - but additional operations on a mesh file are problematic. For example, one of the first things i'd do is "shell" the part, meaning create a wall-stock part instead of a solid hunk of material. This not only reduces the cost of RP (both by reducing time and material use) it allows for more complexity - as in making a working toy rocket launcher as opposed to only a statue.

btw, there's at least one other way of which i'm aware to go from videogame models to RP. Only a matter of time before people do it.

[Nick]

I saw your post via MAKE blog.
Depending on the size of the part you wish to make and your electronic fabrication skills you can get a desktop CNC mill for less than $3000. The Taig line (which I sell, but I don't mean to be spamming, so I'm not including my URL)of CNC mills starts at around $2000 and if you get their CNC ready mill for around $1000 and make your own controller/stepper setup you can get it done for around $1500.

There are even cheaper options. I highly recommend getting on the cad-cam-edm-dro yahoogroup and seeing what sort of home cnc projects are working today. There is a revolution going on in home CNC right now! I am sort of evangelical about home shop machining, so forgive my enthusiasm.

Here is the latest project I did, a perfect involute spur gear:
http://mechanicalphilosopher.blogspot.com/2005/05/gear.html
No more buying gears for my projects...
(cross posting comment to the MAKE blog as well...)

[matt]

isu actually has a 3-d fabricator ... this intrigues me.

[csven]

I wouldn't recommend using CNC.

[Nick]

"I wouldn't recommend using CNC."

did a CNC machine kill your dog?

[Chris Anderson]

In a post on reBang, cseven asks why one would screen capture videogame characters when so many games have file structures that let you extract the objects directly from the files.

This is a reasonable question, but the point is that there are plenty of games where you can't rip the object files and, even more to the point, an increasing amount of 3D data on our screens that aren't part of games. The cool thing about screen capturing is that it's application agnostic.

As for the fabbing part, for now that's just a cool project to do with the kids. I'm aware that the part won't look as good a real toy. But cast your mind forward and imagine what will be possible in a few years...

[csven]

"and, even more to the point, an increasing amount of 3D data on our screens that aren't part of games."

Thank you.

I've gotten a few emails and have read a few posts by people who appear unable to get past the "make toys at home from videogame models" concept, which to them - after reading your entry - appears to be the whole idea. That particular element of my post was only demonstrating the increasingly permeable boundary between the real and the virtual (especially relevant now given the growth in virtual economies). It was within a much broader context - everything from DIY'ers to IP issues to concepts of "value" - that I was reacting to Seth Godin's entry. It goes well beyond simple "fabbing".

[fignoggle]

pretty cool stuff. i think make also has something on this. just buy a sieg x2 mini mill and do a cnc conversion on it. now you can make this thing in your garage! check it out: http://www.fignoggle.com/plans/cncplans.htm (cnc conversion plans)

[matt]

Especially interesting if games companies are using real CAD specs on their side...either for realism or speed.

[Ulia]

Get discounts while shopping here at Couponalbum.com.........So many latest video games are also available here.....!!

[rohs screening]

Yeah I just created my own rocket launcher out of a pvc pipe a battery and a lot of wires and a ton of gaffe tape I wont to congratulate all of you out there who have done this before me.

[xmas gifts]

This is very great post.Lot of informative information all have share.Thanks for sharing such an useful post here.I was wondering this topic only.It is very useful for me....