Paul Krush

I had this idea for years and realized it’s not on the website. Just as you can write software to render frames of a computer animated movie, you can script out Rhino 3D to render people’s names into a name ring or name pendant for a post card. Say a jewelry store has 5000 people in their database. You could build a system that renders 5000 pictures for 5000 post cards each using the persons first name. You could render all sorts of address information into a post card. I think this would be eye catching as heck. Every year when Mother’s day gets near I flirt with this one.

Just to review each post card would be different. It would have a 3D computer rendering of jewelry designs that contain the persons name.

The scripted name pendants you see can also be rendered in a mass customized way like this. This is more of a highly specialized 2D font creation. You can script in a name and create all sorts of 2D rules on how swoops and hearts are applied. You can add 2D symbols till the cows come how in an automated fashion. After the 2D curve is extruded into the 3D model. You can also add 2 ½D art work into this. 2 ½D art work is neat because it can be represented by a grayscale image.

I had JewelryPostCards.com registered for a while, but I never wanted to jump into the jewelry marketing business, so I  dumped the name. Dell color laser printers are high quality and cheap enough to do stuff like this. You can buy software that helps you automated the address information, bulk rate info, and barcodes.

I think the money is just not in jewelry to do this sort of stuff. My prediction is these ideas will be fleshed out in Asia. They can market and ship directly to the western world. This has been going on with colored stones from Thailand and cell phone accessories out of Hong Kong for a long time now.

Here’s an interesting site:
http://genometri.com

http://genometri.com/pdf/case_risis.pdf

On the surface it just looks like they are just messing around with parametrics in CAD software. Their intentions are truly mass customization for the consumer. Genometri’s founder Sivam Krish is talking about releasing products in Second Life. That’s fun, but for me I just want more than Second life has to offer. I want the real Metaverse now!

Lately I’m not working on this stuff at all. Things don’t move that fast, so I am not worried. At this point I feel another 2-3 years will bring some of the core tech up to speed. Someone will write a Flash 3D CAD engine, and have it working smoothly. Better 3D worlds will come out. Computers and Internet speeds will get faster. Heck given enough time, servers will be fast enough to do the 3D modeling on the server. You can do that now, but it would be so much nicer to have the client’s machine do that. It’s not about tech; there is just no critical mass in 3D standards for the browser.

Here’s screen shot from their site:

What models people choose to download the most is pretty interesting. I should post it sometime. I would love to evolve the most downloaded models to see if we could create models that are even more popular. I doubt I would ever have time to do this, but it sure is interesting to me. There are sites that vote on pictures, such as KittenWar, but I don’t know of a site that evolves the results. Of course this happens naturally as people chose to refine the winners.

Did you know you can buy home, deck, and garden design software at Target?

Do people play with home design software before going to architect? If so, how has that changed custom home design? Do people rough out the house design, and let the architect detail it? This was one of the directions I was heading when I was working on that 3 stone trellis ring software in the end of 2003. I have not thought about it much lately until several people brought it up here in the forums.

One could write software that would let people rough out custom rings though a series of controls and parameters.

Having consumers rough out the ring first fits some rules I have for consumer design software to work in an independent retail store.

Those rules are; Will the consumer jewelry design software (or kiosks too):
1.) Keep the relationship?
2.) Build the local community?
3.) Be sustainable?

Would free consumer jewelry design software like this hurt an independent retail store? Sure I can think of many ways. One becomes defeatist when you go down this path. Pretty much you can argue that Gemvision cannot make its products better, because in doing so it will smother its current customer base. Every copy of Matrix they sell makes the rest of the copies less valuable though this thinking.

Does a $20 home design package cheapen the work of a professional architect? Of course not, this is mearly a better (maybe) way for the consumer to communicate to the architect. Some people might need to be educated on this.

Why do I keep coming back to consumer jewelry design software? This will be one of the ways jewelry will be designed in the future, and I want to be part of it. Good or bad it’s a compulsion I have.

These are some of the rings I did with a program I wrote 3 1/2 years ago. You enter in a bunch of parameters and it modeled the ring for you. I can do a much much better job at writing this software these days. I was just goofing off with some of these designs. It’s pretty fun using it.

I put a 166 free jewelry models out on my site.

I don’t need them any more. I want them to get used as we put a lot of effort in them. I have become far more interested in simpler models that can be created by consumers inside of a browser. For those of you who know me I am have been working on this stuff off and on for years. Manually designing models was more of a break while I was waiting for better software. Well the time has come. Adobe is releasing some very powerful tools that will let programmers design in 3D, in real time, right in browser. Basically think Matrix Builders in a pop up Flash advertisement that only requires a click to use and no user permission to install. Adobe Flash has a larger installed user base the Windows. I have been dreaming of this sense the summer 1996 sense seeing 3D with Java and VRML. The time has come for real time 3D in the browser!

Enjoy the models,

Paul Krush

You can hardy call this crowdsourcing. Just to get our feet wet with some real products I’m doing some name/mothers rings on eBay. I’m trying to keep it simple. I always get to complex with my offerings.
$9.90 is a steal for these. If I had a system set up and were doing thousands a month it would be profitable. I bet these can be done for under $2(still in silver) in China. This is going to kill us customer service wise. My CNC mill can make 60 a day. I think about 10 orders a day would be our limit.

So next I am going to add in that people can submit 2D curves to design the ring themselves.
Here is the auction text:
This auction is for a 5mm wide silver ring that we custom make for you. You can choose any names, words, or phrase that will fit.

Please email me at paul@paulkrush.com if you have any questions.

This is an example of raised text.

This is an example of sunken text.

I wore both of these rings in these pictures. Your ring will of course be new, and custom just for you.

You can choose:
Ring sizes 3-14 in whole and half sizes.
Raised or sunken text.
Any names, words, or phrase that fits on the ring.  

The font will be in like in the two pictures below.

The ring you ordered might be displayed on the Internet in future.

[Click to see a super-sized picture]

[Click to see a super-sized picture]

[Click to see a super-sized picture]

[Click to see a super-sized picture]

[Click to see a super-sized picture]

[Click to see a super-sized picture]

[Click to see a super-sized picture]

Payment is by Paypal only.

This auction is our first offering in this process. We will be having better auction descriptions, FAQ’s and pictures soon. For now please ask questions.

Shipping & Handling is $3.50 and free for any additional rings. We ship via USPS First Class Mail and to the US only for this auction.

Please email me at paul@paulkrush.com if you have any questions.

After walking into the book store and seeing 14 magazines on beading and craft like jewelry and no information in the coin magazines about custom coins it’s clear that I picked something not popular. I ran 13 auctions on eBay for the coins with no real interest. eBay is so great for testing markets. I also forgot about a rule that Tom Peters is pushing. 50+ year old woman are the market.

I originally planned on doing a simple charm and that somehow evolved into a larger coin. The trouble with a smaller charm is there is not much room for design. For some odd reason I always want to make things 100 times more complex then they need to be.

At this point I am thinking about starting with rings. Mothers/name rings are very common, and very simple. They can just be text, but can be more. They carry more meaning, and I think will be more viral. One down side to the rings is ring size.

A name pendant or small charm would be more simple and more popular, but I think there is more money in the rings. The rings can evolve into very expensive items. I have sold $2000+ simple platinum names rings. Even though it’s 2 1/2D there can be many designs for the rings from just a simple ring to signet rings, family crest seal rings and class rings. I think I can work with just the simple designs for the rest of the year.