Buckminster Fuller's 4D House as a paper model.

A new web site highlights kid-made domes. Log onto domebook.com to see some of their creations. The students start by constructing paper models (download models of two domes from the "Domes" page of the site), then construct the dome using cardboard or wooden dowels and plastic sheeting.

Three tear drop car designs: Left: Fuller's (1934) Center: J. R. Jones (1934) Right: Highway Aircraft Corp. (1970's)

Ben Discoe, founder and creator of the Virtual Terrain Project (VTP), also has an insatiable fascination with Fuller's Dymaxion Car. He may have put together the most comprehensive and current online documentation on the subject! His 3d model project is still a work in progress.
"Since i will probably never see one in real life, and certainly never drive one, i would really like to do the next best thing: model it in 3D and simulate driving it. A biographer said "Bucky [...] took the idea of demonstrating what you are talking about very seriously. He said if you can't make a model of it, don't talk about it. There are scattered bits of information about the car, in print and on the web, but i haven't found a complete history, so i attempt to compile one below."
Many Many Thanks Ben!!

» Visit Ben's incredible online Resource

DOME is an open source utility for generating the coordinates of a geodesic dome or sphere develpoed by Rick Bono. Versions are available for 32-bit Windows platforms, Linux/Unix and MacOS. Full source code is available per the GNU General Public License.



Click here to find out more

A free, cross platform spherical subdivision utility with a Geodesic module that can be used to calculate geodesic domes created by Nicholas Shea in England.

» Click here to find out more


TesselSphere
by Nicholas Shea

The initial inspiration for TesselSphere came from radiolaria, pollen and virus forms.Obviously some of these organsims are harder to model than others. The reticulum of Actinomma Gigantea (image above: left) presents the biggest problem; the cortical and medulla shells are distorted; the bars and spicules (spines) have an 'glue' like property. The other two, although not trivial, look easy in comparison.

George Hart's artificial radiolaria inspired me to try. My goal was to generate vertices for specific species. Output could then be manipulated in modelling programs to build the required form.

If you've never heard of radiolaria (holoplanktonic protozoa), you can find out more here. These creatures are most beautifil when their silica skeleton is viewed through polarized light...

This GEODOME is a ray traced image with POV-Ray created by Andy Wardley.
Geodesic dome out of black metal pipes and joints and a blue metallic sphere
with some lighting arcing around.

GEODOME is a ray traced image traced with POV-Ray Version 2.2. I used a utility that I wrote myself, uninspiringly called GEODOME (V1.1), to create a geodesic dome out of black metal pipes and joints. Inside this, there is a blue metallic sphere with some interesting lightning arcing around it.

The lanscape consists of stone blocks, walkways and ramps and looks very aztec-like in appearance. There is a green mist crawling across the ground. The sky I'm particulary pleased with. A clever bit of tom-texturey on my part has produced one of the best looking sky and cloud effects I've seen yet from POV-Ray. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Overall, I've been working on the image for about 3 months (no, not solidly, but a lot of time went into it). The final render took 167 hours to trace on an IBM PC, 486DX 50MHz with 16 Meg RAM, running MS-DOS 5.0. The official Intel Code Builder version of POV-Ray 2.2 was used.

The complexity of the geodome certainly contributed to the length of time to trace, but the main factor was the big fat area light I used (appreciate the smooth shadows) coupled with the complexity of the ground and fog
textures (lots of transparent, bumpy and layered bits).

» Click here to find out more