Forme It is a new — and somewhat different — start up website built around digital models for 3D printing.
‘What’s so different?’ you may ask, well, a number of things actually. I met and spent some time chatting with John Barlow, a co-founder of Forme It, along with his business partner Vanessa Barlow, at the iMakr opening on Tuesday evening in London. In terms of what makes this 3D content site different to the growing number of other sites selling/offering 3D models, John reckons they have three key USPs.
First, the content itself — inspired greatly by nature, the guys behind Forme It are content producers not aggregators, ahead of the launch today, they have designed 120 models which are on the site and they are planning on adding another 20–30 per month in areas that people want. As John commented: “We’re very open to suggestions.” Current designs include scans of plants, animals and minerals, as well as a range of tableware.
Second, licensing — almost all of Forme It’s models come with a commercial licence, whereby they want people to take them, incorporate them in to their own designs and then sell their designs on. To get a better idea of exactly what this means the video below gives detailed insight into how 3D modeller Weelian, took one of Forme It’s designs of tree bark and transformed it.
And finally — detail. “Even though I say it myself,” said John, “our model detail is pretty amazing.” He’s not wrong, as I saw, when he flipped through some examples for me on his mobile device. And if you don’t believe me and the images in this article do not fully convince you, I suggest you peruse the Forme It website at your leisure via the source link.
“You’re not buying a poorly modelled version of the original, you’re getting an exact copy to within microns of detail,” John imparted. Furthermore, the Forme It designs offer the potential for constant customisation in that people are buying a design rather than a product and can change the design as much and as often as they want — the purchase license lasts for their lifetime.
Source: Forme It
