From: Bill Richards (brich@deltasearchlabs.com)
Date: Wed Mar 06 2002 - 21:35:22 EET
Hi, Brian,
The animation industry is a different paradigm from the 3D CAD industry, though in the 3D CAD industry, we benefit from the advances made by programming done for the animation industry. Animators are more concerned with making an object look good, rather than "being good." So there are a lot of shortcuts and cheats they can use that we cannot use when modeling for rapid prototyping. Also, a lot of the software used by animators is custom written and highly proprietary. But that technology usually trickles down to the CAD industry after a few years when it becomes blase' to the animation industry. (It also becomes a good revenue stream to license the technology)
You actually answered your own question about whether or not it would be better to write application specific programs vs. using the generic ones out there. Using 3DMAX and Rhino, you stated you felt that was beneficial to the work you were doing.
If there was (and I bet there is) a program written to be optimized for work in recreating structural information of bone, it would probably be quite expensive. The reason, as you correctly surmised, would be because there is a very limited market. At the other extreme, there could be such a program written by a university somewhere, and it could be public domain.
Reverse engineering of medical imaging data is certainly a highly potential market. As long as there are humans and/or other sentient beings on this planet, there will be a demand medical services. The better the data a doctor has to glean through, the better he'll be able to use that data for his diagnosis. If I have to ever face brain surgery, I would very much prefer my surgeon to have a nice, clean, and VERY detailed 3D model to review, instead of trying to interpret a series of fuzzy, sliced images from a CAT scan.
__________________
Bill Richards
Delta Search Labs
T: 617-551-4615
F: 617-551-4651
----- Original Message -----
From: Brian Caulfield
To: Rapid Mailing List
Sent: Wednesday, March 06, 2002 3:25 PM
Subject: 3D modelling
Dear All,
I find that using animation tools such as 3DMAX and other programs like Rhino are very benefical for both 3D computer models and making actual physical models. I use MAX to help smooth contours and increase clarity of NURBS curves that are exported for MIMICS.
When I use these programs I am generally talking about Medical Models or very complex non-linear models which can't be dealt with by the usual methods i.e. CAD.
Do you think that there should be a strong link with these types of programs and RP/Modelling and with such technolgy increasing at a dramatic rate ( We only have to look at animations now a days) it would be better to use that than try and design specific Medical Imaging tools.
What do you all think.
Brian
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