Adric first steered me into the free AndAR augmented reality. Then I hired Jacob at FabLabAbq to convert one of my drawings into a 3D avatar. Now hopefully, anyone with an Android phone can project this avatar drawing onto the real world. All the necessary files and links to instructions are on my Posterous bloghttp://krrrl.posterous.com/010andarcustomfigure.

I can post more details, if anyone wants to suffer through making thier own custom image for AndAR.

This augmented reality is part of a bigger 3D projecthttp://krrrl.blogspot.com/2011/01/dennis-made-clay-relief-in-albuquerque.html.

--Krrrl

I bought an ASUS EEE Transformer to display my augmented reality figure, but AndAR would not work on that Android tablet. I'm not surprised, because AndAR is beta software.

Nevertheless, I was still looking for an easy program to make small custom OBJ images for AndAR, and may have backed into some free online programs last night, while looking for software for 3D printers.

HeatSync was getting me excited about the Ultimaker 3D printer, until I realized that I had no objects to print. Zbrush, and other 3D programs, are majorly expensive, not to mention a huge nosebleed to learn. Then they told me about 3D Tin (http://www.3dtin.com/) and Tinkercad (https://tinkercad.com/). Vistors have dropped into their hackerspace, used those free programs, and walked out with a 3D print inside of an hour. I'll bet we could use those programs to make custom AndAR augmented reality "sculptures."

3D printing and augmented reality should be two sides of the same coin. Moreover, I think the new hackerspace in Tucson -- Xerocraft -- needs an Ultimaker 3D printer.