An impossible thing we might have seen one day

Primantiss, I tried your suggestion and it worked for me.

Now I just need to find out how to re-map the textures that are pulled from the model and how to work the Material information.

For those looking to Figure Print, it'd be worth it, I imagine, to export the character in the busted T pose, seam it back together, create a skeleton, and create any desired you pose you'd like.

Printing 3D models w/ textures

Yup, gotta love them spatula hands! lol

Durrrrh, forgot about /suppressCloseFxDist

That's really cool. Yes, capes offer interesting challenges. When you try to make solid shapes out of them, they often end up with lots of holes. Also, capes are two capes back to back: inside and outside, which can be confusing at first glace as well.

That looks practically good enough to Figure Print, if they supported this game of course.

Incidentally, Figure Prints is the company that inspired me to look at this in the first place. I saw a video on them once: how they work is you give them your character details, they look it up in the WoW online character database, and use their own tools to basically rip the geometry right off the site with a DX ripper. Then they have special software that recognizes all (or almost all) of the Warcraft primitives, so they can use scripts to autoreplace those with ones they have already made print-ready by hand.

If you think about it, our character bodies are basically all the same except for some scaling, so someone could make three generic models that match the CoH ones and reproduce what their scalers do. Then they could take all the costume parts one by one and export them, touch them up by hand so they are more print-ready, and make a database of them. Then whenever someone asks to print a character, we could take just the costume file and convert that into geometry from the library, and then print that. Posing would require a separate translation library of skeletal positions.

That was my ultimate dream. Someone gives you a costume file, and a program turned that into a model and then printed it. You wouldn't even need to log the character in, all you would need was a costume file or an excerpt from a demorecord.

There would be a lot of front-loaded work, but if Paragon went for it their own 3D modelers could help with generating more print-ready geometry, or alternatively feeding them into special blending scripts that would soften them into more print-ready shapes.

What I mean by "print-ready" is certain things wouldn't print well. Floating geometry, for example, or things that are too thin. Some models would literally fall apart because they aren't actually fully connected. That could be fixed with small alterations that made the model have sufficient structural integrity.

My guess was that if we could get the price point down to around $100 or so depending on size and complexity, they would have sold like hotcakes. Once we had volume, we could think about making smaller and simpler models more affordable.

That would be for something like a fused deposition figurine. If Paragon popped for a couple of Replicators and used extrusion printing, we might have been able to eventually get the price down to about $40-$60. The big problem would be making them fast enough to meet demand at that price.

Also, cloth materials - capes, skirts, dare I say: hair - could be baked to adjust to the position the figure is posed in.

VFX/GFX like powers could also be worked in, possibly, since some of Blenders Particle Systems do work like solid objects; like fluids for instance.

After you mentioned the double cape effect I found eliminating the interior one helped with the issues I was having.

As someone that knows zilch on 3D rendering, I'm becoming insanely jealous. If I could turn some of my favorite characters into figures, I'd be all over it. Is there a "simple" (for dummies) tutorial someone could make? Recommended programs?

Of course, I don't own a 3D printer, but perhaps I could find someone who does...

I wonder if something like this could have generated enough revenue to make NCSoft reconsider. I can only imagine the number of people who'd jump all over this.

[edit] Just found some information on demorecording on the Wikia page, and browsing Shapeways (after seeing Voodoo's post). Mouth is watering... oh yeah, I'm suppose to be working!

Printing my main from Shapeways, after smoothing, would cost me between $39 - $700 depending on the mayerials and finished. Those are the prices after uploading a copy.

I understand all the words you guys are using, but I have zero idea what you're saying.

Just wanted to say I've been looking forward to making 3D prints of my toons since day one, and if anyone figures it out, post it up on DeviantArt or someplace.

Getting a root canal atm, but when i grt home i will try to work ip A dummies guide

Ill be fine. I uave root canals befor and thry nevrr bothersx. Just aiting for the drilling to stop
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You know, after all these years of reading your posts Arcanaville, I thought I had a pretty good estimate of how awesome you are. Now I find out that I was off by an entire order of magnitude. Wow.

I was just going to say the same thing. I have saved this thread off-line up to this point, but if the folks involved can't continue the discovery/exploration discussion, a huge potential would be lost.

Well, if we can manage to port out each costume piece (in the T-Pose.) build a new skeleton system, work on poses/etc. - it may be possible. We'd need a (python?) script that could read costume file information and swap in the appropriate costume piece geometry.

What'd go on from that point would be the artistry aspect. The models, once made more hi-res, can be sculpted on a case by case basis. I.e. more detailed faces, costume pieces, bases for the statues etc.

Oh, I'm home from the dentist now.

Copied and pasted Arcana's posts and Primantiss' posts on the Titan Networks forums as a back-up

I've been spending as much time here as possible, because honestly its entirely possible we could lose forum access before Nov 30. But I've saved the entire thread, pics and all, and do so regularly. Regardless of what happens my intent was always to continue this discussion on the Titan and/or Unleashed forums as long as people were interested in the topic.

Arcana, are you knowledgeable with Python Scripting?