Design for 3D Printing on the Web or in Virtual Reality with Leopoly’s Creative Suite

Design for 3D printing is hard. You can go buy the MakerBot Digitizer for $1,400, or you can use some free software like Autodesk 123D Catch. But what if you want to design something creative, from scratch?

Leopoly may be your answer to the fastest and easiest way to make a novel design in minutes.

Leopoly is a web-based product that lets you sculpt in 3D. You literally start with a digital ball of clay, and push it and pull it until you have something you like. It was created by Leonar3Do International, a 3D tech startup company, founded in 2010 and based in Budapest, Hungary. The company has become a pioneer and award-winning provider of 3D solutions aimed at the educational, healthcare, gaming industry and general business market.

Here is a sophisticated design of an alien bust, created in Leopoly and ready to be 3D printed.

Leopoly has a key innovation: crowd-sculpting

“The idea behind the software is to give the easiest 3D sculpting tool and a community-based game experience to the makers of the 21st century,” said Daniel Andrassy from Leopoly. “This new way of virtual sculpting is but a part of evolutionary modeling, where all users can share creative designs and further shape ones pieces of art.”

To put this simply, you can start with a ball of clay, or you can start with someone else’s design and extend it. Community is at the heart of the online service.

“With Leopoly we break down boundaries. Leopoly narrows the gap between hardly reachable level of proficiency and novice enthusiasts in 3D design and printing” said Roland Mányai, Director of Sales and Marketing. “Our goal was to make this project on a web based platform, to open doors to anyone and make it reachable literally anywhere for a wider community of makers and to make 3D modeling fun.”

And here is a Shrek design that might need a few more iterations in the crowd.

Here is a video demo of the Leopoly web tool.

3D modeling in virtual reality

(Photo: The Verge’s Ellis Hamburger trying out the Bird in January 2013)

Leonar3Do also sells software with a 3D immersive mode that pairs with the Leonar3Do VR Hardware Kit. This lets users break out of the 2D approach and work in virtual space using head tracked goggles and the Bird, a 3D mouse which sells for $500 alone or $2000 bundled with software.

Watch the video below for a demo.

3D Printing Your Design

Leopoly doesn’t have it’s own 3D printing service, but you can directly 3D print the objects you create through Sculpteo‘s cloud 3D printing service.

Sculpteo will import your design, give you a choice of materials, and provide a cost and shipping estimate. Sculpteo announced this partnership on their blog last month, saying “All you need to do is to click on 3D print, and you’ll be able to order a print from Sculpteo. With Leopoly, 3D printing is just one click away.”

We gave this whole process a test drive. We were able to create a relatively complex model in just a few minutes on Leopoly, and then send it over to Sculpteo where we could choose from an array of materials. We chose white plastic for $10.57, shipping in 3 days.

If you’d like to learn more about Leopoly or Leonar3Do, visit www.leopoly.com and www.Leonar3Do.com