Models and figurines have been an essential part of the spin-off product mix for nearly as long as kids have been playing video games and people have been watching movies. But now that 3D printing is becoming more accessible, shouldn’t people be able to make their own models – or at least to order exactly what they want? That’s the pitch of Whispering Gibbon, a small startup based in Newcastle, in North-East England.
For now, this isn’t really possible. Amazon, for example, has experimented with offering 3D printing from a small handful of video games, enabling people to customise their figures in the process. But no-one has yet developed a technology to make this a potentially mass market offer – Whispering Gibbon hopes, in time, to do exactly that.
The point about this sort of printing, explains Joe Stevens, the founder and chief executive of the company, is that what you see on screen is incomplete. “You’re looking at a game character, say, that purports to be 3D but with a virtual image much of the information about what actually makes up that 3D structure is missing – the game only needs enough data to produce an image on the screen.”
In which case, anyone who wants to print a 3D model of such a character needs to find a way to fill in the blanks. This can be done on a bespoke basis, each time someone wants to make a print, but Whispering Gibbon’s unique selling point is the “RenderFab” technology it has created.
As the company puts it: “RenderFab is a technology for converting objects optimised for visual display to models optimised for 3D printing - it is the only fully automated system to guarantee the structural and visual integrity of any model whilst minimising cost and material usage.”
In other words, Whispering Gibbon has been able to automate the process of filling in the blanks – to provide a means for people to make 3D prints of what they see on screen, even though the images themselves don’t include enough data to do that.
The technology’s application to a game such as Minecraft, where players build complex worlds from their imagination, is clear. But it could be equally popular with any game you care to mention where players are emotionally invested in particular characters.
“We’ve already begun trials with gaming and virtual reality companies,” Stevens says. “Plus we have a distribution deal with one of the world’s biggest 3D printing companies.”
Over time, however, the applications of the technology are very wide. In the entertainment space, Stevens has already begun looking into applications around video animations, but you can imagine the technology in use in many professional settings – for printing out architects’ models, for example, straight from an on-screen image.
Now Whispering Gibbon is getting ready to commercialise its technology. “We’re pre-revenue and we’re aware of the need to prove our business model,” Stevens says. “What we really want to do is to find the right first clients to make this work.”
Investors, however, get the pitch. Whispering Gibbon has won a series of grants and funding awards from backers of startups including the likes of
“We’re at a real crossroads as a business,” adds Stevens. “This is a company with so much potential to grow in so many different markets.”
