3D-print a Norwegian fjord from your browser

http://terrafab.bengler.no/

by wilhelm • 13 years ago

84 38 13 years ago

terrafab.bengler.no

kristofferj• 13 years ago

Wow!

marincounty• 13 years ago

physibles

diziet• 13 years ago

I love the fact that they generate the mesh for users that have their own 3d printers for free.

thomax• 13 years ago

Sweet! The number of places I want to visit just increased!

thenomad• 13 years ago

Not, I'm assuming, life-sized.

erre• 13 years ago

So, how can I get the one with Slartibartfast's signature?

TimGremalm• 13 years ago

Are all the models signed by Slartibartfast? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slartibartfast

mkl• 13 years ago

"genuine gypsum heirloom mantelpiece display replica"

3D printing is only going to get cheaper and more accessible - I think pretty soon that "heirloom" is going to look like a dollar-store trinket.

Still, aside from the hyperbole this is a pretty neat idea, and New Zealand certainly has some landscapes worth this treatment too (including fjords, even). Australia has some impressive cliff forms that would work; seems like thousands of areas worldwide.

BerislavLopac• 13 years ago

Reminds me of the old aluminium cutlery...

maaaats• 13 years ago

Heh, it says "removing trolls" when generating the preview (after clicking get it printed)

I walked Besseggen last summer [1] and the model [2] for that looks pretty accurate with the huge drop on both sides down to two different waters.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Walking_on_Besseggen.jpg [2] http://terrafab.bengler.no/preview?box=164077.08468046575,68...

jacquesm2• 13 years ago

Not equatorial enough.

jacquesm2• 13 years ago

Downvoter: hand in your nerd card.

hnha• 13 years ago

Your comment added nothing to the discussion so no. Such cheap jokes are really not interesting.

andreer• 13 years ago

Very neat. I'm ordering a print of my home town. Then we can add pins to show where our house, where grandparents live, etc. I'm sure the kids will enjoy it.

r0h1n2• 13 years ago

Very interesting. But why restrict this to just landscapes? What's to prevent someone from allowing 3D printing of any landmark in the world like the Taj Mahal, Machu Picchu, Eiffel Tower or London Eye?

Sigh, copyright I suppose.

wilhelm• 13 years ago

The dataset they use is the just-released public Norwegian map data. There are few man-made landmarks in the local topography. (c:

r0h1n2• 13 years ago

Oh, okay. But assuming we get there, in terms of the dataset, do you reckon it would be legal for a service to offer 3D printing of famous landmarks?

arethuza2• 13 years ago

Google's 3D building data for some cities (e.g. here in Edinburgh) is incredible - I'd tempted to get a 3D printer and work out ways of printing interesting parts of town.

Maybe my favourite mountains as well from OS data...

sambeau• 13 years ago

I'd love to see this for Scotland. I'd be tempted to buy my favourite Hebrides.

arethuza2• 13 years ago

What would be really cool (at least for me) is to be able to print landscape models with geological data included as well....

[e.g. the Black and Red Cuillins of Skye]

zokier• 13 years ago

Huh, one nice and actually useful application of WebGL for once.

jimmytidey• 13 years ago

Presumably landscapes with gentle gradients and fewer overhangs are going to be significantly easier to print than architecture.

mhb• 13 years ago

Why? Perhaps the one advantage of these expensive, "heirloom" trinkets is that most traditional molding limitations are no longer issues.

DougWebb• 13 years ago

That depends on the 3D printing technology. Some are perfectly fine with overhangs because the medium is self-supporting, and most can handle small overhangs at each vertical step without much trouble.

DanBC• 13 years ago

It'd be ace if I could 3d print the moon at some sensible scale. Or Mars.

Filligree• 13 years ago

1:1 would be good. Now, where could I find a model like that..

T-hawk• 13 years ago

They wouldn't be that interesting. Planetary sized bodies are really spherical (oblate of course.) Even Olympus Mons at 22 km height is only 0.3% of Mars's diameter of 6700 km. If your Mars model was a meter wide, the biggest mountain would protrude for all of 3 mm worth of relief on the surface.

kawsper2• 13 years ago

This is really nice, I wanted to get a version of Nordkapp for my father, but I feel that $100 is a bit to pricey for a 10cmx10cm version.

Nice project, and very nice with their partnership with Shapeways.

Exporting their model, and uploading it on Shapeways gives me a price of 42.65 EUR ($57.59) including shipping.

evenwestvang2• 13 years ago

We pin the price to $100 and vary our markup depending on volume. The most dramatic landscape in Norway, Trollveggen – the image we shown on the site, gives us a markup of exactly zero. We're running this off a small cluster of colocated boxes with SSDs to handle the IO for the elevation models. So it's mostly to keep the lights on.

That said, we hadn't tested it on flatter landscapes and the models we tested with only gave us a markup of a few dollars. The markup we put on your model seems slightly greedy. We're lowering it now to a maximum of $20.

evenwestvang2• 13 years ago

We've deployed a fix for the pricing model capping markup at $20. Does that feel about right?

kawsper2• 13 years ago

Yeah, that seems more right, thanks for answering so fast.

rileyteige• 13 years ago

I, for one, was expecting a horse.

joeframbach• 13 years ago

Arthur Dent: Are you telling me you originally made the Earth?

Slartibartfast: Oh, yes. Did you ever go to a place - I think it was called Norway?

Arthur Dent: No. No, I didn't.

Slartibartfast: Pity. That was one of mine. Won an award, you know. Lovely crinkly edges.

cgore• 13 years ago

I like backpacking, and often spend money on topographic maps because of this (typically from mytopo.com). I do like this site's idea. It obviously wouldn't work as a map, but it might be nice to integrate a lot of standard topographic map features into the models themselves. Especially if you can do it on really small-scale areas, architects might really want it.

bdickason• 13 years ago

Thanks for posting this! Very, very cool app :) I helped create the Shapeways API and just shared it with our dev team.

People are blown away, this is by far the best app we've seen using our API!!

Perusing your Github repo right now :D

icefox• 13 years ago

It would have been really cool if trolltunga had shown up

http://terrafab.bengler.no/?box=41148.01808864827,6694070.28...

adamsch• 13 years ago

just saw the print in real life in the Bengler office, looks awesome

3D-print a Norwegian fjord from your browser

Related Stories