Z Corporation, EA Partner For Spore 3D Sculpture Service

Z Corporation and Electronic Arts have announced that gamers will soon be able to create full-color, 3D "Spore Sculptures" of their Spore creatures, using a special technology called ZPrints at newly-launched website Spore Sculptor. Z Corporation already has an agreement with Harmonix to provide a fundamentally similar 3D sculpture service for Rock Band custom characters. It has updated the Spore Sculptor website with details and ordering information for the process, which uses special 3D sculpting machines to create figures (up to four inches tall) from Spore characters submitted by users. The creators note that creatures with long or thin extremities or large, poorly-supported appendages are not suitable for the ZPrints process, which will cost $49 per creature. "At its heart, Spore is a tool for creativity. Since launch, fans have made more than 40 million Spore creatures, vehicles and buildings," said Patrick Buechner, Vice President of Marketing at Maxis. He added: "We wanted to give players a way to extend their in-game creativity to the real world. The flexibility of the in-game creation tools allows an almost limitless variety of Spore Sculptures."