Today, with its collection of about 1,200 half models and 150 full-rigged models, the Model Room is a shrine to yacht design and sailboat racing, with a nearly complete display of America's Cup challengers and defenders dating to 1851.
"We said, 'Let's show the world you can have mathematically principled approaches.' " Mr. Grinspun's crucial idea was to throw out the jury-rigged models instead of trying to improve upon them, as Apple did with its operating system when it abandoned DOS and command prompts.
With SOMA, though, Basic is in the process of crating the "perfect avatar," a rigged simulation of herself that, once finished, could effectively be the most successful 3D model ever made.
Convenience content, such as already rigged character models, is available and is tuned to usage with the Rift.
For these segments, the series asked animator Ke Jiang for assistance; he single-handedly "modeled, rigged and animated" the sequence.
Other charming touches - seashell collages, knitted cushions, a model gaff-rigged yacht - enhance the house.
In my own case, I grew up in a doorman building on the Upper East Side, and I have fond memories of the sweet but dim Chris, whose dream it was to return to Greece and start a restaurant; Javier, the rabid Mets fan; way back, old Joe, who sailed a fully-rigged, five-foot-long model of a clipper ship at the boat pond.
The high-prowed, gaff-rigged Silolona is modeled on a traditional phinisi (an Indonesian spice-trading ship) but motorized and up to German Lloyds safety specifications.
If you see models that claim to have more explanatory power than this, it is because they are using additional data (like polling) besides economic variables, or because the model has been jury-rigged to maximize its "fit" on past data in ways that will contribute little to its true predictive accuracy.
Textures for Groot came from a number of sources, including inspiration from a botanical garden in London, and the character was modeled as individual branches, rigged individually, to simulate a muscle system for the character.
