My friend Michael Frumin is a researcher director at tech/art gallery Eyebeam's OpenLab.
His latest project is the OpenGLExtractor (OGLE), essentially a "screen
grab" application for 3D data. For example, Frumin used his software to
capture a World of Warcraft character from within the game and
physically rendered it using a 3D printer. He also mashed up characters
from SecondLife and Google Earth, and imported chunks of Google Earth
data into Maya. OGLE seems to be a pretty amazing tool for blurring the
virtual and real. From Mike's OGLE introduction:
The primary motivation for developing OGLE is to make
available for re-use the 3D forms we see and interact with in our
favorite 3D applications. Video gamers have a certain love affair with
characters from their favorite games; animators may wish to reuse
environments or objects from other applications or animations which
don't provide data-level access; architects could use this to bring 3D
forms into their proposals and renderings; and digital fabrication
technologies make it possible to automatically instantiate 3D objects
in the real world.
