

Dreamforge (YC S12): Make your own superhero - nemild
http://toys.dreamforge.me/

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cesarsalazar12
I was sad to discover there was no way to create a female superhero. The
editorial in the newspaper page (homepage) mentions a female but she is only
the ex-girlfriend and a _fashion_ blogger. Disappointing.

~~~
nemild
Thanks for the note. We're definitely adding her soon. We had to start
somewhere, but she's coming next.

~~~
marquis
I was also hoping for a female superhero to make one with my niece. Looking
forward to that announcement.

~~~
nemild
marquis, please drop us a note at contact@dreamforge.me and we'll definitely
send you an email when we have the female superhero added

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ChuckMcM
Interesting.

So for those of you who know of Figureprints [1] its like that except only one
guy. Clearly the market here is for over sexualized super-heroines but
stepping back from that moral abyss for a moment, I like the integration of
webgl as the 'design stage.'

One of things I keep thinking we could do with 3D printers (of the ABS
variety) is to create a service whereby an owner can 'register' their printer
with the service and take on 'jobs' on occasion where a web API effectively
selects from the list and throws and STL file at it. Creating a spot market
for printing services. This is how I imagine it might work:

Person who owns a printer registers it with the service.

To complete registration service sends a test STL file and a shipping label
PDF.

The user gets activated once the printed test case is received and verified.

Now when a print request goes out the service flings it your way, with a
shipping label. As soon as the shipping label shows up 'in-transit' by the
shipping service your account is credited with your print commission. Ideally
enough to cover the cost of materials and scaled for complexity/time to print.

In practice person says "Oh I need 500 of these (insert STL file)" which gets
distributed to 500 printers and then the mailman shows up with 500 boxes of
widgets.

Entirely unclear if that is 'practical' but it is certainly disruptive...

[1] <http://figureprints.com/>

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nemild
Sign us up - we'd actually love to send orders your way, if you can set this
up. Quality control is just super important for this to work, but we'd be
happy to be a pilot customer.

We're small right now (2 people) with ambitions that do surpass our size.

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patdennis
FYI, I hit this glitch: <http://imgur.com/QxQT0>

In retrospect, I should've ordered it...

~~~
46Bit
Sorry about that. We noticed a few bugs like this during development that seem
to be due to the 3D renderer rather than the code to resize the superhero, but
we'd love it if you could save the superhero if you encounter this again and
pop us an email (to contact@dreamforge.me) linking to it.

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laserDinosaur
Am I missing something or is the only thing you can make a generic looking man
in different colours?

~~~
nemild
Thanks for the comment. For our first product, we have a standard looking
superhero which you can morph musculature, change colors, and pose. More
different figurines to follow.

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chao-
Neat. Very similar to something we're working on for a client
(<http://www.actionfigurelabs.com>).

There's probably no chance I live near you (Houston here), but if I did I'd
REALLY love to grab a beer and chit chat about some of the battles we're both
fighting with WebGL, and the different choices we made as a result.

And for anyone who plays with it, please forgive some functionality on Action
Figure Labs at the moment. It's not meant to take web orders for another few
days, as we built up the tech to show off at some local comicbook cons and
take orders there.

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bockris
<http://www.myrobotnation.com/> is similar and it has a much larger set of
styles/parts/colors.

~~~
chao-
Huge props to My Robot Nation. Especially on their 3D tech. In some ways they
have it easier doing robots instead of human shapes (e.g. performs better on
hardware that can't render as many polys), but in many other ways, they really
knocked the ball out of the park. Especially some of the drag-and-drop
stickers and little add-ons like gears and what-have-you.

Don't know if they are leveraging three.js (the way action figure labs and
dreamforge are), but it seemed like they have their own custom rendering.
Props indeed.

~~~
mirsadm
Wow they are doing an amazing job. I feel like Dreamforge is launching a bit
too early. Every design looks very generic at the moment.

~~~
robryan
YC encourages this, they can grab a lot of feedback and iterate on what they
have with the attention they are getting from launching.

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keeran
Cool to see custom toys taking off, <http://makie.me> launched something
similar earlier in the year.

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dchichkov
Interestingly I see different sites in different browsers. I don't see pages
<http://toys.dreamforge.me/users/sign_up> and
<http://toys.dreamforge.me/assemblies> in Firefox for instance...

~~~
46Bit
Thanks for the heads up - could you email us some more details
(contact@dreamforge.me)? It seems to work fine in Firefox for us so we'd
really like to get to the bottom of this for you.

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zio99
Just ordered my very own 3D printed superhero! First YC S12 company to get my
money!

~~~
46Bit
Super! Really happy you like it - we'll be in touch about the delivery.

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slantyyz
This is really cool. Does anyone know if there's something like this for
making Bobbleheads? Most of the Bobblehead services I know require you to send
them photos, etc.

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ThomasQue
Do you plan on making it possible to use custom images for clothes etc ? A
customized costume with a Kid's name on it would certainly help me find ideas
for birthdays.

~~~
nemild
Absolutely - it's really high on our priority list

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brackin
Great stuff! Very cool, wish I had this when I was little.

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nopassrecover
I wonder if there will be copyright issues to worry about. E.g. Can we expect
Marvel to "DMCA" the design of physical goods (or even the goods themselves)?

~~~
nemild
Thanks for your comment. It's an interesting question and quite a bit of of
certainty. Here's a bit of an overview:
[http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-05/31/3d-printing-c...](http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-05/31/3d-printing-
copyright)

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bjustin
The site told me how to enable webGL in my browser (Safari) which is helpful,
but I wonder how many Safari users will actually follow said instructions.

~~~
diiq
It told me how to engage webGL in Safari, but I was using Chrome. And
apparently it recommends Chrome to anyone using firefox... fancy a game of
three-browser monte?

An image of what we luddites are missing out on would improve the no-webGL
error message, and make me more likely to take the time to turn webGL on.
(Yes, I hunted down the gallery, but no, that's not the same.)

~~~
will_work4tears
Weird, I got the error in Chrome but it worked fine in FF.

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stevewilhelm
How big is the ceramic figurine market?

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ThomPete
Are you going handle ordering and shipping for other companies? Like a
cafepress model?

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zio99
Very cool! But does he have to stand like that? Or can we change it?

~~~
nemild
Thanks for checking it out! That's right, you can change his poses in our
product. We're adding some crazier poses in the days ahead - drop me a note if
there's a particular pose you're envisioning and we'll add it in.

~~~
zio99
Thanks nemild, just ordered one. Took a few tries, but once I got it, I made
sure to pin it, tweet it, facebook it! Good job guys!

~~~
daformat
That is awesome, can't wait to deliver it to you :)

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zio99
Btw, are you using WebGL?

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46Bit
Hi! Yep, the viewer is WebGL. We're using the Three.js library
(<http://mrdoob.github.com/three.js/>) to handle the actual rendering for us,
and there's lot of programming magic behind the scenes to customise the meshes
and textures on the fly.

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sadga
Read landing page, <insert gender-alienation lecture here>

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nickpinkston
nemild, I was the founder of CloudFab - we did 3DP sourcing and mass
customization interfaces. Would be happy to help connect you guys if needed.

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guscost
I want a good 3D Printer!!!

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aurora72
In my Firefox 14.0.1 it says " Sorry, WebGL is required Your browser doesn't
support the technology we use to help you design superheros. Please consider
upgrading to a better browser" linking to the Chrome. Are they paid
advertisers of Chrome, or do they really think the only browser in the world
which supports WebGL is only the Chrome?

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sliverstorm
Typically they just recommend whatever browser the guy who wrote the error is
fond of. I wouldn't take it as anything more than that.

~~~
nemild
You're spot on. No slight meant to Firefox, and we'll change the wording.

