Sprout Your Imagination & Go Make Things!

HP Sprout received.

I love new technology and that’s why I am excited about the HP Sprout. For those who don’t know what the HP Sprout is, I like to describe is as a unit that will redefine how artists and designers do their work.

Using RealSense Technology from Intel in the illuminator of the Sprout allows you to capture images, manipulate them in just about any way you can imagine and reuse them in just about any function you want. You are able to capture and alter the pictures with a 2nd screen on the Sprout.

This 2nd screen is a mat that goes on the desktop and gives you full touch functionality, you are able to take your images and turn, spin, cut, and do just about anything you want to them on the mat. It is like drawing and altering with your finger! It is tough to explain, so this quick video makes it easier to explain.

The total spectrum of the Sprout allows you to take an object or picture, tweak it, add to it, spin it, and make any 2D image you would like. If you want to step it up a notch, you can also scan images and objects into the Sprout in 3D, change it up how you like, add to it or subtract from it and even print it out with a 3D printer.

We were given some time to use the Sprout and I found it very easy and fun to make customized invitations, cards, and party flyers. I also see how it could be used for menus and tons of advertising ways. I customized my Sprout project to our ongoing desires and plans to remodel our kitchen. To get the necessary images for my project, I had to take picture of my existing kitchen. Then went to a couple of box stores to get some images of completed kitchens, I also used the scanner to take some pictures for kitchens in catalogs and lastly, I used a couple of pics from the internet to use for inspiration. Here is what our “ugly” kitchen looks like, it is small, old and many other unflattering adjectives.

I used the Punchout Tool option of the Sprout to choose which parts to place in my final picture, it was pretty easy to use your finger or the included pen to select areas to keep and remove. Once you do this, you can easily resize and spin your images and select what images go on top or bottom. After a brief learning curve, it is very easy and very fun.

You can find yourself losing track of time very easily as you try to make it perfect. However, for my project it is more for getting a general idea of how different types of cabinets, flooring and countertops will look in our soon to be remodeled kitchen. Here is the Punchout Tool in action

Here are some of my results, I did a couple of them in split screen, with the old on one half and the new in the other half. I also changed the flooring, I need to get some additional flooring samples to scan in, it was very easy to change the flooring, and I would have had more fun with it, except I only uploaded the one type of flooring – mainly because I think it looks cool. The Sprout definitely can be used in home design in addition to the other things I mentioned earlier. The only thing I wish I could have done differently with my kitchen project was that I wish I could have had mini 3D models of cabinets so I could have scanned them in. This would have been fun and given me another excuse to use the 3D Capture Stage too. Here is the 3D Capture in action.

<Anyway, I wanted you to see how the 3D Capture Stage works, so here it is in action. With this 3D capturing ability you can make just about anything you want when you combine it with a 3D printer. There are a million things you can do with the HP Sprout, here is another example below. Tell me how you would use yours.