Curtis Rogers, University of Texas Permian Basin Senior Learning Technology Analyst, has created a way for people using Minecraft and a 3-D Printer to create an object.
Rogers said he’s had the devices for a long time, but finally decided to put it all together so it can be shared with other people and schools. Chris Stanley, UTPB Associate Professor and Art asked Rogers if he had any knowledge about assistive technology that can help quadriplegics make things.
He discovered that Minecraft could be used to create 3-D applications. Doug Young, Senior Lecturer in Computer Science, developed it.
“It turned out (in) the education version of Minecraft … there’s a special block in it that allows you export 3-D models in a file type that’s compatible with the printer. That was the next part of the puzzle was that we had the ability now to take and have the model built in Minecraft and export it in like a vegetable-based filament, which would then allow you to invest it and do bronze casting,” Rogers said.
He said that at the time, the only 3-D printer available to the university was one that would print regular filaments.
“We now have clay printing and some other things available to us,” Rogers said. “So that was the second iteration. So now we know what 3-D modeling application we can use because it’s quite simple. There are lots of resources and the instructions are simple. At the end of the day, all we’re really doing is dropping blocks down. This Minecraft world allows blocks to only be built in areas where there are these small brown boxes. This is the box that you can see. It is the maximum size that the 3-D printing machine will print. It’s the maximum size actually that this will output.”
Rogers claimed that he was a music technology teacher for several years at a New Mexico college.
“I got to thinking music is one thing that’s really interesting because you have voice commands. We’re used to that in computing. You can tell the computer what to do. But one thing that voice commands don’t do a very good job of is they don’t have any duration. Music, however, has duration. So if I hold a note … I can continuously give commands just as though if I hold down this W key I can continuously instruct my character to move because it’s the equivalent as if I were to just keep pressing down,” he added.
“I was thinking, … what if we were to take a music tuner and make it where you hit a certain note, it sends a certain command to the computer. Chris liked the idea and it seemed like it would be a viable idea because that’s one thing you can do. I could have no motor control, but my singing voice was the only control. I could basically sing any object to existence. … I use the keyboard to do it, but I can use my voice, too. …,” Rogers said.
This will give a student a chance to build something they can bring home that maybe they haven’t been able to do before.
He said that music majors could also use it to improve their pitches.
“They can sing into this thing as well and build objects that way,” Rogers said.
He also mentioned that there is another interesting fact: you can take apart something and make it into music.
“I actually have the sheet music that built this mug. This mug was built with a voice,” Rogers said.
He explained that they are looking to share the Singing Potter Music Controlled 3D Modelling with the Bynum School as well as other educational institutions.
“I’m pretty excited about doing this. This definitely gives people a new, you know, a new avenue of approach on certain things,” Rogers said.
