Asteroids and minor planets

The third and fourth weeks have largely been spent working in the CAD suite and looking more closely at creating objects in programmes such as Studio 3d Max. 3D Studio Max is part of the Autodesk suite of programmes (also comprising AutoCad, Maya, BIM and Inventor). Handily, Autodesk programmes can be downloaded with a free, 3-year educational license if you are part of an educational establishment.

Most of the programmes work across Mac and PC programmes, except, 3ds Max – this is unfortunate as I am a Mac owner and I had definitely found this interface easiest to work with so far. 3d modelling software seems to be more geared towards PCs and it’s seriously made me consider switching over. In any case, for now I have settled on Maya to edit the asteroid meshes.

There are a plethora of programmes out there which can be confusing – and coming to this first time, requires a bit of time to play around and work out what software works best for your needs/project. I have made a small list below with links.

3d Modeling Programmes

3ds Max 
Free 3 year educational license – PC only.
Powerful 3d modeling toolset. Animation. Easy to use interface. Standard part of all of Autodesk’s industry collections for Architecture, Engineering & Construction; Product Design & Manufacturing; and Media & Entertainment. Course recommendation.

Maya 
Free 3 year educational license – Mac/PC
Modeling with more features for animation. More complex interface.

Mudbox
Free 3 year educational license – Mac/PC
More intuitive interface/toolset for 3d modeling (as with Sculptris below). Better with higher resolution meshes. Not for animation.

Meshlab
Free – Mac/PC
Open source system for processing and editing 3D triangular meshes. Set of tools for editing, cleaning, healing, inspecting, rendering, texturing and converting meshes. More for inspecting and repairing mesh files ready for a 3d printer.

Sculptris 
Free – Mac/PC
Artistic/intuitive interface and tools for modeling. Easy to use with potential to progress to more complex operations.

Rhino
License required. 70 day free trial. Educational discount available – Mac/PC
CAD, CAM, rapid prototyping, 3D printing and reverse engineering software. Used in industries including architecture, industrial design, product design as well as for multimedia and graphics. Plugins required for exporting .obj and .stl file formats. Easy to learn.

Materialise Magics 
Trial on request
A 3D print suite that pitches itself as the software backbone for all businesses and industries that need professional 3D Printing. Allows you to convert files to STL, repair errors, edit your design and prepare your build platform. Course recommendation but not easily obtainable.

Blender
Free – Mac/PC
Professional, free and open-source 3D computer graphics software toolset used for creating animated films, visual effects, art, 3D printedmodels, interactive 3D applications and video games. More complex interface and tools for both modeling and animation such as phython coding. Tools such as soldify modifier allow you to easily make a model hollow inside. 3d Printing Toolbox Addon for analysing meshes to check printability.

I wanted to share a few images from the exhibition Meterorites: From Sky to Earth that I caught at the Grande Galerie de l’Évolution (Gallery of Evolution) in Paris, back in March and was a great source of research. The exhibition covered everything from the strange and incredible circumstances of their creation to their significance to past civilisations such as the Mayans who thought meteorites were the excrement of the Gods. It’s quite easy to see how these bronzed lumps of nickel and iron could be likened to space pooh.

The exhibition included over 350 meteorites from the Muséum collection and an immersive video experience that took the viewer on a journey from deep inside the molecular clouds where the solar system first formed through to the meteroite falling to Earth. The narrative explained the current understanding of the Solar System’s origins and how the history of these rocks is intrinsically bound to our own. There was also a poetic audio piece that adopted the point of view of the meteorite falling to Earth which I felt had similarities to some of my own written works. Interwoven with these were contemporary artworks, but the real stars were the meteorites of course!

The exhibition contained many historical accounts of meteorites falling to Earth, such as the picture above of the Leonid meteor storm as seen over North America on the night of November 12–13, 1833, painted by Edmund Weiß ( in Bilderatlas der Sternenwelt) through to more contemporary accounts of the more recent Chelyabinsk meteor than fell in Russia in 2013, injuring hundreds.

The exhibition concluded with a documentary film about meteorite hunters in the Atacama Desert who talked about the search for these precious stones as a poetic act.