After officially launching as a 3D design platform at this past year’s NYC 3DPRINTSHOW, 3DShook has been working to release ‘Appz’, a free set of online tools made to help create 3D designs quickly and reliably. 3DShook’s online toolset seems to be geared towards beginners within the 3D design community, offering users the ability to drag-and-drop images that are then transformed into 3D printable objects within the Appz platform. 3DShook is offering a subscription-based plan to gain access to their plethora of 3D printable products, and have just released their ‘Appz’ to ensure that their design and printing platform is as convenient as can be.
3DShook has developed Appz as a small, helpful cog within their entire ecosystem of online tools, allowing users to locally handle .stl files, convert images into 3D objects with a 2D-2-3D tool, implement image and text wrapping, and much more. From customized iPhone cases to lithophane lamps, Appz helps to curate the design for you in a matter of minutes, making it a great online tool for those with little to no experience with 3D design.
“We want our users to have fun while making great objects that work, and we’re constantly developing technologies to allow it,” said 3DShook CTO Nadav Brill. “I believe makers and designers on all levels can enjoy these tools, not just beginners.”
As convenient and easy-to-use as the Appz platform may be for beginning-level designers, Brill could be assuming a bit much that expert designers could find the same excitement with this simplified design space. But 3DShook has made sure to develop a helpful plug-in for the more vetted users of Autodesk Maya, also releasing the 3DShook Printing Exporter as a free plug-in on the Autodesk App Store. The Printing Exporter plug-in will allow designers to not only scale and position 3D models within Maya, but will also offer estimated print prices from various external printing services, such as 3D Hubs, giving designers instant access to the 3D printing service providers.
3DShook may stand out a bit by charging for subscriptions within an industry that mostly prides itself on being open-source and as free as possible, but what makes 3DShook appear to be more then just a company trying to profit off of 3D printable designs is certainly their online toolset, which could help even the most novice-level 3D printing enthusiast feel like a true maker.
“These first 6 months were intensive and extremely productive for us. Soon after our launch, we were dubbed the Netflix of 3D printing,” said 3DShook COO Hector Berrebi. “We work hard to stand up to it, and will be releasing some pretty exciting stuff in the coming months. This is just the beginning…”
