An impossible thing we might have seen one day

Hi all, long time lurker here, have been intrigued by this thread, and just so happen to have the keys to a 3D printer at my work, so, today I made this:



which I think is not a bad likeness to my main, Crimson Cannon:



The print is about 11cm tall, made of PLA (Polylactic acid, a cornstarch based plastic), took about 18 hours to print (the model comes out of the printer encased in about its own mass in support structures which have to be broken off and really pushes up the print time). The material used would cost about £3.

The printer used was a Bits from Bytes 3dTouch

As first attempt I'm pretty pleased. I used the tools as described in this thread to export the model (from the costume editor), scratched my head for half hour trying use blender to delete the UI, gave up and took the .obj to work and used a CAD program called Rhinoceros to delete the UI and power FX and to export the model as an .stl which I then just imported into the front-end package for BFB printers and hit build.

Some of the model parts didn't print due to being too thin - the armour backplate basicly isn't there at all. I'm hoping to get round that by printing a bigger copy (about 20cm tall) which should hopefully bring the thickness within the printer's resolution.

Longer term I need to learn how to edit meshes, then I should be able to print capes and suchlike. Also once I figure out how to cut the models up into suitable chunks I can print them as a kit of parts without too much in the way of support structure. That's a stretch goal though, I spend enough time messing with CAD models at work

Woah, that turned into an essay... Massive thanks to Arcanaville for hosting the tools and writing the guide and letting CC escape from his dying world!

That looks amazing, Nick. I love that it's only 5 bucks... plus the four thousand for the printer.

Speaking of 3D printing, here's something I stumbled across today that makes the entire industry worth it: Beauty and the Beak.

You've captured the hero peeing in his tights perfectly.

Glad to make you moist.

Well, turns out the 3D printer I had was taken by its owner to a different state.

Long shot: Would anyone be willing to print Omi? I have an .obj of him ready to go... I'd pay for the materials, plus some extra, and you would put it in a box and mail it to me.

:P It's worth a shot.

I am looking at Shapeways as a printing option since you can upload Obj or Collada files.

I know a lot about red neckinizin' it y'all

Well, I got Omi to render.



Now I just need a printer. Again, if anyone has one and would be willing to mail me a copy of Omi, I will literally mail you a box of money.

*.obj files can carry texture/material/UV information. They carry the UV mapping information AFAIK in the file and the paths to where the Textures/Materials are stored on the harddrive.

For the more artistic/sculpty types, here's some blank bodies:
1/6 scale, Kghobby, Male & female
Monkey Depot, Male & female
Blankx, Male only

For customization, I suggest Cernit polymer clay for beginners and Aves Apoxie sculpt for more experienced sculptors. The 1/6 scale figures would be easier to make clothes and items for.
A visit to your local Michaels, Joans, and even the occassional dollar store can yield materials for armor and accessories.
I've made a custom Erik Lensherr (aka Magneto) in civilian clothing for my friend for under $30.

Oh, Arcana - I finally figured out what the ***** texture image is - it's a texture file for a male hair piece. Forgot the name of it - one of the original ones, parted in the middle, jaw length.

I haven't spent a lot of time on it yet but the first thing I noticed about the ogle .obj exports (thanks Arcanaville!) is they vertices are messed up due to how costume parts overlap.

These need to be merged at the polygon vertice level if you want a 3D printable file.

The best way I know of to do this is to cut the model in half and just start from the inside out.

When it's all cleaned up you just mirror the geometry in the modeling application and weld it together.



Notice it looks good from the outside, everything looks like a 3 sided polygon but... if you look inside the entire mesh you will find that isn't the case.

Also I noticed that the face normals were wacky as well. You will need to normalize and probably go over each polygon step by step just to make sure they (the normals) are all facing outward.

Think of the model like a balloon, if it isn't air tight it would leak air, and if the polygon vertices (which are all the points where the polygons meet) aren't welded/sealed/whatever the model won't be solid which the printers need.

Here is an example of the bad geometry that will mess up printing and make texturing the model a pain.



Some of the geometry isn't a polygon so that has to be fixed as well. Some of the tools will do it automatically for you in whichever application you use. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. Anyway it all has to be clean and seamless on the inside for it to be 3D printable as far as I know anyway.

Nothing should be overlapping and so on.

Anyway if you manage to fix all that and get a texture you could probably make your Hero/Villain into any game model you wanted if the skeleton rigs worked with it! They would work good in half life engine games probably

surprisingly though from some of the 3D prints in this thread, it appears the printers are capable of printing overlapping polygons and non-uniform geometries. I would imagine that is one of the reason it is taking them so long to print though. I would bet a clean model would print much faster, also why that shapeways company charges so much because they do fixes for people.

They explain the same thing I was talking about here
http://www.shapeways.com/tutorials/t...o-keep-in-mind