Resources for making

Cricut Maker machine with lid open. White board with blue text in the background.

The Genesis Lab has a Cricut Maker smart cutting machine and heat press available for student use. We provide black and white heat transfer vinyl and an assortment of sticker vinyl. For more information please contact us.

How-To Guides

Cricut Stickers Tutorial
Making your own customized stickers is easy with the Cricut, and here’s how!
Cricut Layered Designs
Making layered designs, that is, designs with multiple colors, can be a bit difficult to get right on the Cricut. This tutorial will help you become a pro in no time!
Cricut Drawing and Lettering Tutorial
Are you doing a project that requires drawing something cool, but you’re not an artist? Have you ever wanted to do beautiful calligraphy but worried that your handwriting is too messy? The Cricut is here to help! This machine can draw or write anything that you design on your
computer.
Cricut + Heatpress Tutorial
Making your own customized shirts, tote bags, and other fabric accessories is easy with the
Cricut! If all of the PTA moms can do it, so can you, and here’s how!

3D models can add to a final project or presentation. 3D models help to convey details that are difficult to understand in 2D. An array of 3D modelling software is available for free online, and the Genesis Lab staff are available to advise on the best modeling software for a project, teach the basics of these programs, and answer any technical questions.

Check out more 3D modeling resources here.

Github

GitHub is a reliable and ubiquitous platform for storing any kind of software and collaborating with other people digitally. To get started, check out their Hello World tutorial. For further information, check out their entire catalog of tutorials.

There are many ways to use GitHub, and the full range of commands/actions is extremely large and therefore not worth learning preemptively. Because of the ubiquity of GitHub, rest assured that someone has run into a problem identical to (or at least very similar to yours)! If you
run into any problems or an unfamiliar situation, best practice is to Google your issue.

Stack Overflow

Stack Overflow houses a community of software engineers (and regular users!) who use GitHub and various programming languages on a frequent basis. It is a great resource if you run into any roadblocks. Why reinvent the wheel?

Stack Overflow contains a built-in forum where people can vote and comment on the validity of the answer, so you can easily see what answers are worth your time. If you really can’t find an answer to your question, make a post on the site yourself — it is active enough to make a response within a few hours.

Unity

Unity is a widely used game development platform. It is geared towards building video games, both for traditional platforms and Virtual Reality. However it can be harnessed to build almost any VR environment or manipulated to build a wide variety of 2D applications. Unity is free to download and use for students and all non-commercial projects.

Please note Unity performance and rendering may struggle on many laptops, especially when working with VR assets and environments.

Download Unity here.

UE4

Unreal Engine is a widely used game development platform. It can harness the full potential of 3D assets and Virtual Reality environments. It is free to download and use with a creators license.

Download UE4 here.