Reality, Blender, Video Clip, MeshLab, 3D Printer, Reality Agian

I just want to give an example of the doors that begin to open as we explore what it means to have 3D objects.  A while back I took a image of a Boy Scout patch

 and did a rendering of it in Blender (Open Source 3D tools, http://www.blender.org/)

This was animated as a opening to a video I did for the event.

 I realized that I should be able to export the model from Blender clean it up some and print it.
Here is the result of exporting the model and opening it in MeshLab (a free mesh editor, http://meshlab.sourceforge.net/)

I then took the .stl file the the lab and printed it using the Z-Corp printer and now have a real object again.

 

It is very cool to be able to take something real make it virtual (in this instance manually, but I am presently playing with scanners...) and then make it real again.  It won't be long before we have 3D copy machines.  You will have a compartment you place an object in and another compartment where the copy comes out...