It's a world where everyone can have the Mona Lisa on his or her desktop and taking a virtual tour of the Metropolitan Museum of Art can substitute for a trip to the Big Apple. Even the creation of art has gone virtual with graphic designers and high-end animation software. The sense of touch. At least, they were missing it, until now. Meet FreeForm technology.
Users manipulate the arm, which acts as a sculpting tool on the computer screen.
Software creates a sense of resistance, enabling the sculptor to feel as though he's working in a solid material. This sense, which lets users feel as though they're actually resisting an object, allows people to create more intuitively, without programming or using a mouse. You can't do that with marble. Although it's a new technology, some industries have already started to embrace FreeForm. Model makers and toy designers have used it to create action figures for the WWF wrestlers and collectable figurines for the film Chicken Run .