Hope it's OK to post this.

A few years ago I was following the development of an articulated desk-top mannequin which could be posed by hand.  The idea was to capture poses for an on-screen avatar.

It went on sale initially in Japan but I lost track of it.

Now I see the basic idea being used in a children's toy.  Perhaps it may interest parents here.  After all, Christmas is less than half a year away!

http://www.crayola.com/EasyAnimator
 

Wow! Poor man's Qumarion, and only 20 bucks!!!!!!

EDIT:

OK, it's a visual tracking system. Hence all the weird markings. Pose it, let your device photo it, and that is converted to a 3d pose. So not quite the accuracy, but looks pretty fun.

More Edit:

No one has hacked out the motion files yet.

Qumarion - that's the one.  It was promising but seems to have gone cold.

Sorry if I gave the impression that this might be similar - I had the same first impression as you but soon realized it had no wires.

Nevertheless, I don't think the programming will be too trivial and who knows whether something similar might appear as a general posing/input device.  I would buy one!

It is a great idea. I think making all the body parts 6-sided instead of 4-sided would be a nice improvement for better resolution.

I also like that idea! I noticed another (very flexible) system some time ago ...

The Tangible & Modular Input Device looks promising.
I also see that a Blender plug-in is in development and one for Maya planned.

• BlenderPlugin : Integration of the device into Blender (in development)

• MayaBridge : Integration of the device into Maya (to be added)

Jeff

Get my Plugin Manager and TaskNotes plugins for iClone.
Check out EZColors and Other products for CTA/CA. EZColors: the easy way to change Render Styled (RS) colors!
See my CTA Tutorials on the YouTube channel CTAStepByStep

Oh, and it is also all open source!
Rig Animation with a Tangible and Modular Input Device

Jeff


Get my Plugin Manager and TaskNotes plugins for iClone.
Check out EZColors and Other products for CTA/CA. EZColors: the easy way to change Render Styled (RS) colors!
See my CTA Tutorials on the YouTube channel CTAStepByStep

Thanks, JJJam & Jlittle for the fascinating links and for the information.
The innovations in the world of 3d are never-ending.