Tag Archives: tennis racquet

AI-generated Hìtëkw Tennis Racquet – YD x KeyShot Inspiration Hub Design of the Month #2

Posted on by

The second-ever YD x KeyShot Inspiration Hub Design of the Month goes to the Hìtëkw, a rather interesting-looking tennis racquet with an even more interesting back story. Designed using a combination of AI-based tools as well as generative design, the Hìtëkw boasts of a futuristic visual aesthetic that’s never been seen before… and that isn’t all. The redesigned racquet is lighter and stronger too, as a result of this AI-powered makeover!

Designer: All Design Lab

Click Here to view all designs on the YD x Keyshot Inspiration Hub website!

All Design Lab experimented with using OpenAI’s Dall·E2 to generate concept directions for the racquet’s design, only to realize that almost the AI could only work on a dataset of existing images; and nobody had ever made a racquet like the Hìtëkw before, which made it difficult for the AI to really think outside the box. This became the starting point for All Design Lab’s creative brief, which was to completely redesign the racquet’s silhouette itself.

To create new racquet archetypes, the All Design Lab team relied on new CAD tools. The designers created their rough form in Gravity Sketch, a VR-based 3D program that lets you sketch and sculpt in virtual reality, before taking the product to a generative algorithm to optimize the racquet’s unique frame for strength and reliability. The result was the Hìtëkw, a racquet that’s stronger and lighter than its competitors, with a distinct visual edge thanks to its organic, 3D-printed generative metal design.

“Rackets have become more lightweight and durable through new materials and advanced manufacturing techniques”, the All Design Lab team mentions. “Yet the potential is still there to envision an even lighter and stronger racket that takes advantage of new design techniques, specifically, advanced CAD processes such as generative design tools.”

If you don’t know what the YD x KeyShot Inspiration Hub is, it’s best to think of it as the ultimate destination to find the most inspirational design work, as well as to have your own work featured so that it can be seen by a global audience of thousands of designers and creatives… an ever-expanding encyclopedia of good design and great rendering, if you will.

The hub helps fulfill YD and KeyShot’s broad goal of recognizing exemplary work from a distance and helping amplify it without having to rely on an algorithm, unlike with portfolio sites and social media. It relies on YD’s two-decade-long year history of curating great ideas, concepts, and case studies and ties it to KeyShot’s powerful position as the design industry’s most powerful and preferred rendering software.

The Inspiration Hub’s jury panel will hand-pick and highlight an outstanding design each week, also awarding a ‘Design of the Week’ and ‘Design of the Year’, featuring them at the top of the hub’s page while giving winning designs a permanent badge and entering them into the Inspiration Hub’s ‘Hall of Fame’. Hall-of-Famers will also be featured on Yanko Design’s Instagram page and will win exciting prizes from KeyShot. If you think your design has a chance to get featured on the hub and win, submit your design with us here.

Learn more about how to participate by visiting the hub, and also get your hands on a free trial of KeyShot 11.

Click Here to view all designs on the YD x Keyshot Inspiration Hub website!

The post AI-generated Hìtëkw Tennis Racquet – YD x KeyShot Inspiration Hub Design of the Month #2 first appeared on Yanko Design.

Futuristic tennis racquet was designed by Artificial Intelligence to be lighter, stronger, and better looking

Posted on by

Using a combination of DALL.E/Midjourney along with generative algorithms, the team at All Design Lab created the Hìtëkw – a modern take on the classic tennis racquet. Except this modern take isn’t just some aesthetic overhaul… the redesigned racquet is lighter yet stronger, and is infinitely better looking!

“From the start of the project, we wanted to explore new opportunities. We wanted to create something exciting to tell a new story within this sport”, mentioned the folks at All Design Lab. The recent rise of AI programs such as DALL·E and Midjourney proved to be an interesting starting point. Rather than plotting a user experience, browsing Pinterest, and building moodboards, the designers decided to simply ask AI text-to-image chatbots to reimagine tennis racquets in their own unique ways. This fundamentally different approach took the designers down a completely new path, introducing them to ideas and paths that would otherwise remain unexplored.

Designer: All Design Lab

A look at the tennis racquet inspiration images DALL.E and Midjourney helped generate.

Interestingly enough, for All Design Lab, the images had one commonality – they were all pretty identifiable as racquets. ” What we learned from this was that while these programs are extremely powerful, they are only as powerful as the source material they have to sample. And with tennis rackets, the form doesn’t really change all that much from its inception.” The AI made them realize a strong area of intervention – redesigning the racquet’s silhouette itself.

Suffice to say, Hìtëkw isn’t quite like any racquet you’ve ever seen. Its top and bottom are fairly standard, although what connects them at the middle feels almost like an alien-like organic series of branches/webs. It’s an interesting deviation from the Y-frame seen on most racquets, but what sets it apart isn’t just its unique aesthetic – it’s also its functionality.

“Rackets have become more lightweight and durable through new materials and advanced manufacturing techniques”, the designers mention. “Yet the potential is still there to envision an even lighter and stronger racket that takes advantage of new design techniques, specifically, advanced CAD processes such as generative design tools.”

This generative approach resulted in a frame that was stronger while requiring lesser material, making it lighter in the process. It took the team multiple iterations to arrive at a form that was equal parts aesthetic and functional. They used DALL.E as a starting point, but moved to 3D iterations to create the generative branch-like structure you see here. The only caveat is that while most racquets are made using metal casting/molding techniques, the only way to really make a Hìtëkw racquet is through metal 3D printing. The reward of this laborious process, however, is an increase in performance because of the racquet’s stronger/lighter design. “Potentially, in practice and real-life physical testing, a racket similar to Hìtëkw could introduce a new level of performance to players.”

You can follow All Design Lab’s experiments with Hìtëkw on their Instagram page.

The post Futuristic tennis racquet was designed by Artificial Intelligence to be lighter, stronger, and better looking first appeared on Yanko Design.