Creating models from photos

I thought this recent post from my new favorite materials science and RepRap/MakerBot blog, Capolight, was great.  He summed up in one succinct post what I wanted to convey and probably didn’t convey with my verbose diatribe about my process for approximating facsimiles of props by tracing photographs in Sketchup.1234

((I’ve mentioned the Case of The Purloined Pig before, one of my favorite origami anecdotes.  Basically, contemporaneous invention is the result of funny little quirks in the universe.))

Capolight’s method is essentially the same as the one I described recently (only, as I mention, he does a much better job of it):

  1. Import a photo into Sketchup
  2. Trace image
  3. I spun my tracery and Capolight extruded5
  4. Scale newly created object to measurements
  5. ???
  6. Profit!

  1. You may officially now refer to me as an “insufferable word stretcher.” []
  2. To quote River Song, “Spoilers!” []
  3. Hey!  Remember that one post where I didn’t make any references to Doctor Who at all???  Yeah.  Me neither. []
  4. Crap.  One of my favorite actors, Maury Chaykin just passed away.  I really liked that guy. []
  5. Which is OH so much more appropriate, given our intended media. []