I am a seasoned (really old) Graphic Designer who is jumping into this 3D printing and need some techno advice from you experienced users. I am a Mac user, always have been, don’t own a PC. What is a good 3D software for Mac that I can learn to use without too much hassle? I plan to purchase an ISense Scanner that attaches to an Ipad for mobile scanning away from home to make scans of custom showcars and people. I would take the scanned image and open in the 3D software, manipulate it accordingly, then save the file and print.
How difficult is the software to master enough to utilize it fairly well to achieve my goal here?
If there is someone in the Atlanta area who owns this printer and wouldn’t mind showing me the in’s and outs, i could make it worth your time, unless you are a charitable person.
I suggest downloading Rhino 3d beta for Mac. I believe it’s free at the moment. If you learn Rhino, you won’t need anything else. Pretty easy to learn too. Lots of tutorials all over the web.
Hi Jerald,
I just wanted to add a note here as an ISee owner that if you haven’t already spent time with the iSee scanning cars then try and do so. The results are variable to say the least and I’d hate for you to be disappointed.
You can get goos results but typical reflective surfaces don’t scan very well and it’s unlikely you are going to get something you can use in Rhino that won’t involve a huge amount of work.
iSee is fun and I have get some really good scans from it particularly people in the right conditions which I’ve then gone on to retopologize in Zbrush for detailed sculpting but .wanted make sure you have realistic expectations.
Thanks Kevin, I had read several reviews saying that about reflective surfaces. May not work at all, but I can play with it in a darkend light so there is no reflective light sources off the glossy finish. Of course, the laser is a light source it self, so I may not be able to achieve the goal set out, but may be able to get away with just the front end or a section of the car… We’ll see. Thanks again!
I’d try Fusion360, it’s supported on the Mac (though not quite up to where the PC version is I guess,) It’s also free for hobbyists (though I think you have to submit an application or something.) It has traditional modeling (extrude, cylinders, boxes, etc,) and T-Splines for freeform stuff. If you’ve ever used Autodesk Inventor, it’s basically a light version of that.
It’s very powerful for its price (even if you are paying for it: $300/yr,) but it’s a bit buggy yet. It’s definitely in a different league than the free CAD tools I’ve used (123d, Creo Elements direct, Sketchup, Freecad, OpenSCAD)
