Andreas Raab wrote:

Avi Bryant wrote:

...

From what I can tell it's a 3d modeling tool for kids based on the Teddy 3d sketching stuff (http://yap.jp.land.to/yas/pukiwiki.php?%5B% 5BPapers%2FTeddy%5D%5D). Am I close? :)

Close, but no cigar ;-) Plopp is a product based on the 3D painting system that's also in Croquet which is quite a bit different from Teddy. In Teddy, you draw an outline first and then you paint on the surface of the 3D extrusion. In Plopp you paint the entire object at once. This idea originated in the masters thesis of Jana Hintze at the games group in Magdeburg (see http://isgwww.cs.uni-magdeburg.de/games/projekte/kindervorlesung/jive.html).

Both of these approaches are very easy to use, so they appeal to me :) And the method of "inflation" is very similar between the two.

In the Croquet version of this system, there are frequently errors when the painted object doesn't have a strong continuous outline, and the Teddy flavor, which is still in Squeak 3.8 Wonderland, is fun, but not as easy to manipulate as I would like and has no export function.

At the moment, I am using an external modeler (Art of Illusion) to create 3D models, but I would like to find an open-source 3D paint program similar to Tattoo ( http://www.terabit.nildram.co.uk/tattoo/ ) to complement this. One of the projects on my "someday" list is to make a specialized version of the Squeak Wonderland Pooh-painting that is easier to interact with and has better import/export capability. Or maybe develop a whole new version of this, similar to Takeo Igarashi's old Chameleon, only with Java and OpenGL for platform independence.

As long as I'm daydreaming, it would be really nice to have cleaned up, usable versions of Takeo Igarashi's SmoothTeddy and Squirrel, which includes creating a model, painting it, and animating it, only maybe rewritten in Croquet ...