A small buisiness week article on Spore has come to my attention.

The really interesting bits are as follows:

…
When you’re satisfied with your creature’s physical appearance (and there are plenty of decorative fins, horns, and stalks with which to adorn it), it is time to color and texture it. Maxis developed a special intelligent texturing tool, which recognizes different body parts and essentially lets you airbrush your creature with your chosen color scheme, and you can add overlays, such as stripes running down its back. When your creature is done, the game generates stats for speed, attacking abilities and so on, which becomes its Sporepedia card (Spore is likely to come with an accompanying card game).

It may not be there in the same form in the final game, but you could also hit a menu item and send your creature to Maxis’ 3D printer, which automatically creates a model of it. It is likely that a model-making service (which will probably require payment) will be available when the game appears. And before you send your creature into the wild, you can put it into a testing ground – in which you can click a button and see what its babies will look like and, for example, hear what noise it will make (which is dictated by the type of mouth you chose). Taking your creature into the wild…

The accompanying card game, and the model service is a VERY cool idea added onto an already very cool game.

Business Week