Yay! The final part of my Details series is up on the Alias Design website.  Of particular note was that this part in the series was done in the Mac OS X version of Alias! I am pleased as punch to be working natively in Alias on my Mac and have few reasons to keep my Boot Camp partition around now. I look forward to all the projects that lay ahead for this software and it really is a game changer for my process. I plan on having a more in-depth ‘review’ soon!

Look for more tutorials from me in the future, but in the meantime enjoy!

J.

Autodesk recently updated Sketchbook Pro for 2010 (almost whole year early!). I was on the beta team for this one and it was a pleasure working with these guys. They have done an outstanding job refining an already great program. The addition of straight edges and ellipse guides makes the tool a whole lot more useful to me in many ways. It’s maintained it’s simplicity, but gained much of the attraction that sketching in Alias has had for years. Definitely give it a try!

This was a sketch I did during the beta cycle on a particularly rainy Sunday here in Seattle. Enjoy!

Alias Design has published my latest in my Devil in the Details series. In this episode, I show a methodology for creating geometry that looks geometric but ‘feels’ organic. My intent with this piece was not so much teach a set of tools, but a way to ‘see’; being able to identify problem surfaces and know how to achieve a better result.

Hey all! Alias Design has just published my most recent tutorial. It looks at some approaches to developing parting lines around difficult edges. The workflow is robust and takes full advantage of the construction history features and makes iterating quick and painless. Check it out here.

So I didn’t blog as much as I had hoped. AU had us pretty busy – real busy. Most of the sessions started at 8:15 AM and ran for about two hours until 7 at night – at which point there was a quick dinner and then off to something else – either a presentation or software user testing and the Design Slam. I was getting back to the hotel by 10 and just passed out from the day. Whew!

 Core 77 has some good coverage of the event here.

Among some of my favorite session were of course the Jay Shuster Pixar talk on Friday, and the Daniel Simon and Scott Robertson talks. All brilliant work.

Gray Holland’s class was great as well. I have an odd relationship with Gray – I’d never met him until this week, but have had the privilege of picking apart many of his files while consulting for Nike. My Natural Surfacing demos (1, 2, and 3) on the AliasDesign website are somewhat of an homage to him. Thanks Gray!

And then my mind got totally melted in the couple of Class A Automotive surfacing classes that I took. Those guys are maniacs. So much to learn and so little time…

Lastly, Stratasys had, as part of the opening keynote, a full sized FDM motorcycle. Yup – a rapid prototype print of a vehicle. It wasn’t built all in one piece, but all the major components were. The wheels were a single part each, the gas tank was a single part, etc… Those are some big pieces to print.