What's New in 1.2

• Can now export to 3DMF/QuickDraw3D.
• Main window expands on larger monitors.
• Can now display the final "preview" in place of the camera view, for a constantly updated preview display.
• New "mirroring" commands for quickly making symmetrical objects.
• New gray window color scheme to match other modelers.
• Many more example blob files provided.
• Updated documentation.

News Blobs

• BlobSculpter hit the News section of MacWeek on August 14, 1997, and in print on August 17th!
• BlobSculpter has been chosen as the Cool product of the week August 17-23 by Quantum Creations

Last-Minute Blobs

• Ray Dream Designer/Studio Users! Blob Sculptor can export 3DMF files that are compatible with RDD/RDS, however, RDD/RDS wants the 3DMF Text file format, not the default 3DMF Binary format. Hold down the option key when exporting to 3DMF in Blob Sculptor. This will write a text 3DMF file that will be importable into RDD/RDS... this technique is also mentioned in the Read Me document.

Downloading Blobs

Blob Sculptor 1.2 Mac OS, January 1, 1998

OK, OK, so you want to download it before you even read what it is all about? You can download Blob Sculptor here. You can also use a HyperArchive search to find it on the info-mac internet mirrors. This archive contains documentation, examples, a Fat application (for PowerPC and 68K Macs), and a non-FPU 68K application for low-end Macs. The archive is about 380K Binhexed.

Introduction

Welcome to Blob Sculptor for the Mac OS, a simple freeware 3-D CAD application for quickly creating 3-D "blob" or metaball objects. What is a "blob", and why would anyone want to sculpt one? As a way to avoid a thousand words, here is a picture of a simple blob, designed with Blob Sculptor MacOS, and then exported and rendered with the freeware ray tracer, POV-Ray MacOS:

You can design blobs in Blob Sculptor's 3-D CAD-like environment:

...and even get a quick wireframe preview of how the blob components will melt together to make the final blobby object.

Finally, you can export your creation to any of several 3-D object file formats (DXF, 3DMF/QuickDraw3D, POV-Ray, PolyRay, RAW.) The BlobSculptor file format (".BLB" file) itself is 100% compatible with the MSDOS version of BlobSculptor, so you can read and edit existing ".BLB" files as well.

The original Blob Sculptor application is authored by Alfonso Hermida and Steve Anger on MSDOS, and this is a Mac OS conversion of their original work, with their permission of course.

System Requirements

Blob Sculptor is a "Fat" application, so it runs native on any PowerPC, as well as any 68020 or better with or without a floating point unit (FPU.) Note that BlobSculptor will work adequately on a non-FPU computer, but the preview display will be painfully slow. Blob Sculptor runs under MacOS 7 or 8. Neither QuickTime nor QuickDraw 3D are needed to run this software. However if you wish to export to 3DMF, you will need QuickDraw 3D running.