An impossible thing we might have seen one day
That looks amazing, Nick. I love that it's only 5 bucks... plus the four thousand for the printer.
The Alt Alphabet ~ OPC: Other People's Characters ~ Terrific Screenshots of Cool ~ Superhero Fiction
Speaking of 3D printing, here's something I stumbled across today that makes the entire industry worth it: Beauty and the Beak.
The Alt Alphabet ~ OPC: Other People's Characters ~ Terrific Screenshots of Cool ~ Superhero Fiction
![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/A2nVKOaCAAAJA9B.png:large)
You've captured the hero peeing in his tights perfectly.
The Alt Alphabet ~ OPC: Other People's Characters ~ Terrific Screenshots of Cool ~ Superhero Fiction
Glad to make you moist.
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.
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Also, this is where the "impossible" in the title comes from. When this subject actually came up on the forums we were told it was basically impossible because the 3D models were not solid models conducive to printing. Which they are not, but the amount of effort to correct that problem is small enough that I believe calling it impossible was not a reasonable exaggeration. Its very possible to fix the geometry holes, two-dimensional surfaces, and other hinky problems with only a relatively small amount of effort.
Also, that model looks pretty darn cool.
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! |
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Alternatively, there are ways in CAD tools to "extrude" or otherwise increase the thickness of what are essentially two-dimensional constructs.
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I did use Rhino to convert the model to NURBS surfaces, trouble is that converts every mesh element into an individual surface... CoX meshes are pretty low detail so might just be on the edge of what I could sensibly work on without seriously damaging my sanity, but it's a pretty nasty hack.
Union 50s:
Crimson Cannon: NRG/NRG/Force
Tara Thorn: Archery/NRG/Elec
Damatria: BS/SD/Body
Defend the Earth from Aliens in my MA Arc: ID:57186
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.
@Rien
I am Lord Omi. Now and forever. They can take our City, but they can't take me.
I am looking at Shapeways as a printing option since you can upload Obj or Collada files.
The Alt Alphabet ~ OPC: Other People's Characters ~ Terrific Screenshots of Cool ~ Superhero Fiction
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.
@Rien
I am Lord Omi. Now and forever. They can take our City, but they can't take me.
I'm certain that's the reason: what I haven't investigated is how to put them there correctly.
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Also, there is a very large blender support forum at
Blender Artists Community
Who can help answer a lot of these questions. I'm there, same handle as here.
ETA:
I'm not seeing the key posts about how you all have a chieved this so far. Could someone point me at them?>
*.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.
ETA:
I'm not seeing the key posts about how you all have a chieved this so far. Could someone point me at them?> |
If you're primarily looking for pointers to the highlights, there's the OP where I describe my basic process: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...50&postcount=1
This post has the specifics of how OGLE works and a link to the actual files: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...5&postcount=27
And this post is where I remember to tell everyone to use the -useTexEnvCombine switch or their client with either not capture right or crash and burn: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...8&postcount=59
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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
So a couple years ago the subject of City of Heroes figurines came up. The problem was, apparently, that the models used for CoH were not conducive to making figurines: they aren't actually solid models, and don't form solid structures. So it was basically impossible to make figurines from the models we use in the game. So we were told.
Well, I didn't think it was impossible. I happen to have a Makerbot, and I did experiments last year to see what was possible in terms of extracting 3D information from the game, and then printing it. Honestly, the results were rather rough: ![]() But over time, I refined both the model clean up process and the printing process, and I now believe it would have been possible with a slightly better printer (the Cupcake I have wasn't quite precise enough in my opinion) and a slightly better Blender jockey (I know the math inside and out, but I'm not a 3D modeler). It was getting much better: ![]() That's *almost* good enough in my opinion. I think it would have been possible to make professional grade City of Heroes figurines of our characters. However, real life intruded and I had to temporary shelve my Makerbot. I was planning on revisiting this idea with a more advanced printer next year. I may still do that eventually, but with the game shut down the impetus to do so may fade. In either case, whether I figure out the best way to do this, there won't be a Paragon Studios to pitch the idea to anymore. But I thought I would share anyway. If anyone wants to know how I got the models, I used OGLE. It should be searchable through google, and what it does is extract 3D models from OpenGL software. This isn't a pigg-dive, those two models were basically ripped from the OpenGL driver as the game ran. It ain't that simple. You end up with your character, and all the geometry surrounding them, and you'd be surprised what invisible geometry is floating around. But sift through it, and you'll see your character there. Probably microscopically small because of the strange scaling that the game does to things. Scale it up, and you have the two models shown above. I stuck them into Blender, fixed them up a bit, and specifically used some Blender filters to make the cape "thicker" so it would print (the thing is essentially two-dimensional in the game). Ditto the skirt, which is actually a real skirt in that print: its not solid it actually wraps around the legs. Then its just STL convert and send to the 3-D printer of your choice. And spend a month calibrating the best possible print. But yeah, if we had survived through 2013, I would probably be bugging Paragon to figure out a way to offer these. That second model took maybe two bucks of ABS to print. Factoring in the cost of my time, and it only cost about twelve thousand dollars to make. |
![Big Grin](images/smilies/biggrin.gif)
Raid Leader of Task Force Vendetta "Steel 70", who defeated the first nine Drop Ships in the Second Rikti War.
70 Heroes, 9 Drop Ships, 7 Minutes. The Aliens never knew what hit them.
Now soloing: GM-Class enemy Adamaster, with a Tanker!
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:
![](https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-ul_Taowkehk/UFDNB6v90WI/AAAAAAAAASM/hwwVinVakZ4/s400/P1000906.JPG)
![](https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-LpwJ5RMP-B8/UFDPn5bKDfI/AAAAAAAAASk/Ve5mp3H2v_U/s400/screenshot_120831-23-26-58.jpg)
![Smile](images/smilies/smile.gif)
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!
Union 50s:
Crimson Cannon: NRG/NRG/Force
Tara Thorn: Archery/NRG/Elec
Damatria: BS/SD/Body
Defend the Earth from Aliens in my MA Arc: ID:57186