Dreamforge (YC S12): Make your own superhero

http://toys.dreamforge.me/

by nemild • 14 years ago

59 49 14 years ago

toys.dreamforge.me

zio996• 14 years ago

Very cool! But does he have to stand like that? Or can we change it?

nemild8• 14 years ago

Thanks for checking it out! That's right, you can change his poses in our product. We're adding some crazier poses in the days ahead - drop me a note if there's a particular pose you're envisioning and we'll add it in.

zio996• 14 years ago

Thanks! Would love to see other models too!

zio996• 14 years ago

Thanks nemild, just ordered one. Took a few tries, but once I got it, I made sure to pin it, tweet it, facebook it! Good job guys!

dogeye• 14 years ago

Add the Tebow pose!!

brackin• 14 years ago

Great stuff! Very cool, wish I had this when I was little.

zio996• 14 years ago

Btw, are you using WebGL?

jat850• 14 years ago

It would seem so, when I visit in a non-WebGL enabled browser there's an indication saying it is required.

46Bit4• 14 years ago

Hi! Yep, the viewer is WebGL. We're using the Three.js library (http://mrdoob.github.com/three.js/) to handle the actual rendering for us, and there's lot of programming magic behind the scenes to customise the meshes and textures on the fly.

guscost• 14 years ago

I want a good 3D Printer!!!

stevewilhelm• 14 years ago

How big is the ceramic figurine market?

sadga• 14 years ago

Read landing page, <insert gender-alienation lecture here>

zio996• 14 years ago

Just ordered my very own 3D printed superhero! First YC S12 company to get my money!

46Bit4• 14 years ago

Super! Really happy you like it - we'll be in touch about the delivery.

patdennis• 14 years ago

FYI, I hit this glitch: http://imgur.com/QxQT0

In retrospect, I should've ordered it...

46Bit4• 14 years ago

Sorry about that. We noticed a few bugs like this during development that seem to be due to the 3D renderer rather than the code to resize the superhero, but we'd love it if you could save the superhero if you encounter this again and pop us an email (to contact@dreamforge.me) linking to it.

laserDinosaur• 14 years ago

Am I missing something or is the only thing you can make a generic looking man in different colours?

lotyrin• 14 years ago

Also the rotation controls are strange. Why would I want to do anything besides rotate around the vertical axis? I don't really need to see what my hero looks like leaning like the tower of Pisa.

nemild8• 14 years ago

Thanks for the comment. For our first product, we have a standard looking superhero which you can morph musculature, change colors, and pose. More different figurines to follow.

aurora72• 14 years ago

In my Firefox 14.0.1 it says " Sorry, WebGL is required Your browser doesn't support the technology we use to help you design superheros. Please consider upgrading to a better browser" linking to the Chrome. Are they paid advertisers of Chrome, or do they really think the only browser in the world which supports WebGL is only the Chrome?

sliverstorm• 14 years ago

Typically they just recommend whatever browser the guy who wrote the error is fond of. I wouldn't take it as anything more than that.

nemild8• 14 years ago

You're spot on. No slight meant to Firefox, and we'll change the wording.

keeran• 14 years ago

Cool to see custom toys taking off, http://makie.me launched something similar earlier in the year.

bjustin• 14 years ago

The site told me how to enable webGL in my browser (Safari) which is helpful, but I wonder how many Safari users will actually follow said instructions.

diiq• 14 years ago

It told me how to engage webGL in Safari, but I was using Chrome. And apparently it recommends Chrome to anyone using firefox... fancy a game of three-browser monte?

An image of what we luddites are missing out on would improve the no-webGL error message, and make me more likely to take the time to turn webGL on. (Yes, I hunted down the gallery, but no, that's not the same.)

will_work4tears• 14 years ago

Weird, I got the error in Chrome but it worked fine in FF.

andrewflnr• 14 years ago

I got the same notice on my Android phone.

chao-2• 14 years ago

Neat. Very similar to something we're working on for a client (http://www.actionfigurelabs.com).

There's probably no chance I live near you (Houston here), but if I did I'd REALLY love to grab a beer and chit chat about some of the battles we're both fighting with WebGL, and the different choices we made as a result.

And for anyone who plays with it, please forgive some functionality on Action Figure Labs at the moment. It's not meant to take web orders for another few days, as we built up the tech to show off at some local comicbook cons and take orders there.

bockris• 14 years ago

http://www.myrobotnation.com/ is similar and it has a much larger set of styles/parts/colors.

chao-2• 14 years ago

Huge props to My Robot Nation. Especially on their 3D tech. In some ways they have it easier doing robots instead of human shapes (e.g. performs better on hardware that can't render as many polys), but in many other ways, they really knocked the ball out of the park. Especially some of the drag-and-drop stickers and little add-ons like gears and what-have-you.

Don't know if they are leveraging three.js (the way action figure labs and dreamforge are), but it seemed like they have their own custom rendering. Props indeed.

mirsadm• 14 years ago

Wow they are doing an amazing job. I feel like Dreamforge is launching a bit too early. Every design looks very generic at the moment.

ThomPete• 14 years ago

Are you going handle ordering and shipping for other companies? Like a cafepress model?

dchichkov• 14 years ago

Interestingly I see different sites in different browsers. I don't see pages http://toys.dreamforge.me/users/sign_up and http://toys.dreamforge.me/assemblies in Firefox for instance...

46Bit4• 14 years ago

Thanks for the heads up - could you email us some more details (contact@dreamforge.me)? It seems to work fine in Firefox for us so we'd really like to get to the bottom of this for you.

cesarsalazar12• 14 years ago

I was sad to discover there was no way to create a female superhero. The editorial in the newspaper page (homepage) mentions a female but she is only the ex-girlfriend and a fashion blogger. Disappointing.

nemild8• 14 years ago

Thanks for the note. We're definitely adding her soon. We had to start somewhere, but she's coming next.

marquis• 14 years ago

I was also hoping for a female superhero to make one with my niece. Looking forward to that announcement.

ThomasQue• 14 years ago

Do you plan on making it possible to use custom images for clothes etc ? A customized costume with a Kid's name on it would certainly help me find ideas for birthdays.

nemild8• 14 years ago

Absolutely - it's really high on our priority list

slantyyz• 14 years ago

This is really cool. Does anyone know if there's something like this for making Bobbleheads? Most of the Bobblehead services I know require you to send them photos, etc.

ChuckMcM• 14 years ago

Interesting.

So for those of you who know of Figureprints [1] its like that except only one guy. Clearly the market here is for over sexualized super-heroines but stepping back from that moral abyss for a moment, I like the integration of webgl as the 'design stage.'

One of things I keep thinking we could do with 3D printers (of the ABS variety) is to create a service whereby an owner can 'register' their printer with the service and take on 'jobs' on occasion where a web API effectively selects from the list and throws and STL file at it. Creating a spot market for printing services. This is how I imagine it might work:

Person who owns a printer registers it with the service.

To complete registration service sends a test STL file and a shipping label PDF.

The user gets activated once the printed test case is received and verified.

Now when a print request goes out the service flings it your way, with a shipping label. As soon as the shipping label shows up 'in-transit' by the shipping service your account is credited with your print commission. Ideally enough to cover the cost of materials and scaled for complexity/time to print.

In practice person says "Oh I need 500 of these (insert STL file)" which gets distributed to 500 printers and then the mailman shows up with 500 boxes of widgets.

Entirely unclear if that is 'practical' but it is certainly disruptive...

[1] http://figureprints.com/

nemild8• 14 years ago

Sign us up - we'd actually love to send orders your way, if you can set this up. Quality control is just super important for this to work, but we'd be happy to be a pilot customer.

We're small right now (2 people) with ambitions that do surpass our size.

nopassrecover• 14 years ago

I wonder if there will be copyright issues to worry about. E.g. Can we expect Marvel to "DMCA" the design of physical goods (or even the goods themselves)?

nemild8• 14 years ago

Thanks for your comment. It's an interesting question and quite a bit of of certainty. Here's a bit of an overview: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-05/31/3d-printing-c...

nickpinkston• 14 years ago

nemild, I was the founder of CloudFab - we did 3DP sourcing and mass customization interfaces. Would be happy to help connect you guys if needed.

Dreamforge (YC S12): Make your own superhero

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