Student Designer Recognized by Autodesk ReMake Product Team
Christoph Unbescheidt is a prolific product design student with a whimsical side. His creations span BMX bike helmets to funky fridges, futuristic jet skis to mushroom lights for smartphones. Unbescheidt's design approach stunned the audience at the Global Education Supplies & Solutions (GESS) conference in Dubai with his presentation of a beautiful, complex 3D model of a cabbage leaf pendant inspired by his mother’s home cooking.
His innovation and passion to generously share his knowledge of technology with others has led to Unbescheidt to be recognized as a student visionary by the Autodesk ReMake team. He will be awarded a $500 gift card in appreciation of his work and collaborative ethic.
Here is what Christoph - Autodesk Expert Elite, Fusion360 Champion, and founder of CUD - says about creativity and the tools that fuel it. (Interview has been translated from the original German.)
Tell me about the famous cabbage leaf pendant. What inspired you to create this piece?
The project started with an idea to give someone a unique present. Despite its simple and well known basic shape, a leaf’s high complexity has always fascinated me. One day, I was watching my mom in the kitchen while she was cooking a typical cabbage soup, and I was again reminded of the leaf and wanted to capture its beauty. From earlier experiments with organic surfaces I had concluded that ReMake (at the time Memento), amazingly, could not only capture this complexity but even augment it.
So, I took bunch of photos from different angles and developed for myself a surprisingly fast and accurate workflow. Moving forward, the subject of mass customization will only grow in importance and ReMake is perfect for designers like me who prefer to spend time focusing on design, rather than re-creating objects.
Previously, I had built complex models from various materials (such as plaster and wires) in the local Museum of Natural History. I found that the gold materials from Fusion360 that I applied to the models were very effective and appropriate for the GESS 2016 in Dubai - and they indeed resonated with the visitors.
Only later I realized that this project reminds of the first efforts of famous American inventors (including Benjamin Franklin) to use leaf imprints in paper banknotes to prevent the counterfeiting of money.
How were you introduced to ReMake?
I used 123D Catch previously, both on my smartphone and (desktop), and found the possibilities quite impressive. About a year ago, I started using Memento Beta and it opened opportunities for my workflow. Memento then became ReMake and I started testing the 30 day version.
Why do you like ReMake and how do you use it?
ReMake is very intuitive to use and provides good results, and I can work quite quickly with them in my product design workflows.
I mainly use ReMake to save time. It is often much easier to capture and work with digital replicas of complex objects from real life, rather than to build them in CAD.
What are the advantages of using ReMake and Fusion 360 in your work?
When I want to design a product or tailor something exactly for someone’s body, ReMake is indispensable for me. Previously, I used a lot of images on different layers and scaled them correctly to then design a 3D model from 2D surfaces.
Depending on the use case, this would often take hours or even days. ReMake helps me in this workflow in that I can export the OBJ models to Fusion and can rebuild a 3D model in Fusion really fast. The OBJ Quad export is super powerful for direct free form modeling in Fusion 360!
Where do you see opportunities with ReMake and Fusion 360?
The possibilities that ReMake opens are huge and will grow from the greater community. Many interesting projects that will be loaded in the ReMake Gallery will be an inspiration for other new projects. For me, it’s only a natural progression - after painting, sculpture and photography - to capture objects in 3D, as our world is three-dimensional.
Currently we explore these 3D models on a flat screen but all that will be (or has already) changed with the increased use of virtual reality.
If it would be possible to also export the wonderful pixel-textures during the OBJ export of the models, one could use the model for lot more use cases. This export could be named OBJ.pixel and the textures could be printed on a RGB 3D printer like the one from Disney.
Also, a live scanning function could be helpful to recognize errors on objects in real time.
Overall, with today’s capabilities, personalizing designed items seems to be the most meaningful use case.
What are you working on now? What’s next?
At the moment I am working on a few different projects. One of them is creating living organisms for the human body that augment humans’ abilities and senses:
Mask - enables you to see in the darkness
Pulse - organic living device for electro-communication. Brain to brain interface will follow.
Aroma – a living device to produce, store and release different aromas designed for the year 2084.
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Autodesk ReMake is available for both Mac and Windows. Download a free trial at www.remake.autodesk.com. Learn more about Autodesk Fusion 360 here.