Shapeways 3d printing

[RKapuaala]

I've been reading through the descriptions of material on the shapeways site this evening trying to make some decissions about what to use and what to expect. I have this figure that I am working on.

When I finish putting clothes and shoes on him in sculptris I am going to give Meshmixer a shot and see if I can't create a void in him so as to save a little on materials. I also want to use the bolean function to create some buttons and fix a few leaks that made in another 3d program.

 

[pokrad]

Do not forget to scale it ! Do not know how to it in other tools, I did it using Blender.
Basicaly, i resize completed mesh to desired number of "Blender units", then on upload page I state that "one blender unit is one mm", so I can get exactly size I want...
When You upload model, You can once more check if dimensions are right as they are writen below the picture of your sculpt on "My models" page...

BTW: nice progress on the "old man"

 

[RKapuaala]

Thanks Darko. I use accutrans to port to other scales and file types. It is also a free tool and it will convert to vrml97 and 2 as well as about 40 other 3d file types. You can also do some minor work, but it is really not very intuitive nor is it very stable when you are working with large files and vertices. While I appreciate the metric system, I use the royal measurments inches, feet yards for my work. I have them memorized so I don't have to think too much when scaling.

 

[meshmixer]

Using the meshmixer Transform Faces tool (select some faces and then go into Edits menu) you can incrementally build a void from the outside in (so there is always a way for the material to get out). It will be a lot easier if you use the transparency shader. And you can get a nice clean boundary on the void by doing a Smooth Boundary before you start the transforms.

(To get to the shaders, click on the little sphere above the parts list on the left. Then drag the transparent sphere with the bunny inside it onto your model)

 

[RKapuaala]

Thanks MeshM, I actually installed and used your app to fix some of the leaks in my meshes. Wow,,,, just that alone made it worth the time and effort. I finished up two of my figures and uploaded them to Shapeways,,,, not from the Meshmixer, I'll try that next time. Just logged into my account and did it. Both figures are 1:20.32 scale and are about 2.625 inches high.

This is a likeness of conductor named Cy Crumely, I made him skinner than he is, but then I made him look drunker than he probably ever was. This is about 992,000 polygons. I wasn't keeping careful count the first time I tried to upload him so I got the error message about not exceeding 1,000,000. He was 1.2 million polygons. I am currious to see how he turns out compared to this one.

She's only 332,999 polygons. She's really just a work in progress, but I figure I am far enough along that for a couple of bucks I can see if the polycount effects the detail. So I ordered 2 of her and 3 of Cy. I was tempted to order the earth marble, but I kept my head and did not. My products are suppose to arrive March 28th. I can't wait

 

[RKapuaala]

I used Meshmixer yesterday to repair a figure I already started with another tool that was much less robust than Sculptris. Sculptris would not take the object file I created of this figure, because it had to many connections to a vertice. Meshmixer did a good job of inspecting it then fixing it, but it took me a while to figure out how to fix it with out loosing some key elements of the sculpt,,, or at least how to keep them together.
Afterwards, I tried the upload to Shapeways tool, just to see how it looked. I liked the fact that it had a scaling utility and allowed me write a product description and tags right before uploading. These are key features that shapeways site lacks, but the tool never could upload the file. I let it run for hours and it just kept cycling. It may have been uploading, I do not know, the only status is an animated series of blue bars that just move from one end of its square boundary to other without indicating just what its doing or where in the process it is at like (20% complete or can't log in etc....) I hope if Ryan is reading this, it is a feature he will include on his next release.

 

[meshmixer]

Hi Richard, cool models! Sorry you are having trouble with the uploader. I have not tested it since last year...Shapeways may have changed their API. Also it may just have been still uploading - it can be slow if you have a large model.

I will have a look at it, but probably you are better off using the Shapeways website uploader for now.

 

[RKapuaala]

Ryan, very cool app even without the uploader. I've been using it to nurse some of the old meshes I did in Lightwave 5.0 back into use. I also really like being able to cut up meshes into separate parts since I like detail and Shapeways has a 1 million poly limit.

 

[RKapuaala]

Got an email from Shapeways today. They rejected the female figure because the wall size was less than .7mm which I find odd because they are printing the male who is exactly the same size ht wise. The problem area they identified was in the fingers. I am assuming that the male figures fingers must be larger than the females, but only by chance since there is no way I know of to measure the figures apendages before shipping.
This is also perplexing because Darko's figure was 1:24 scale and his fingers seem to have not been rejected.

 

[pokrad]

Fingers on my figure are definitelly less than 0.7mm, beside that for FUD minimal thickness should be 0.3 ???
Fingers were not hollowed I suppose ?

 

[RKapuaala]

Darko, I was using the default strong white for these. I used FUD on the len figure. Unfortunately I sent these in before you got yours back

 

[pokrad]

For "white strong & flexible" minimal wall thickness is 0.7mm, and for "white detail" is 1mm. My was "white detail, so I'm now even more confused

But that's not big loss, isn't it ? We already concluded that nether one of those materials are good enough for miniatures, now you have opportunity to order it in FUD without canceling the old order

 

[RKapuaala]

Yes, that is a good point Darko. I'm wondering though if had anything to do with polygon count too. The male is almost a million polygons while the female is 1/3 of that. Its too bad the male didn't also fail, I could have gotten my money back on all of them and waited to see how Len turned out. He'll be the real bench mark because he is closer to the size of your female figure than he is to either of these.

 

[pokrad]

Now, this could be a good news, check out this 28mm miniature printed in FUD, and paint directly applied without sanding. To me it looks good enough:

http://www.shapeways.com/forum/index.php?t=msg&th=8746&start=0&

Any news about your FUD prints ?

 

[RKapuaala]

Wow, that is nice. Hard to believe it is 28mm. I can't wait to see the ones I had printed in FUD

 

[RKapuaala]

He just arrived from shapeways. While the detail is not very good (as expected) I was relieved to find that all the fingers are on and that there are no deep groves like in Darko's figure. I'm wondering if the polycount had anything to do with the striations in Darkos figure. This figure had almost 1 million polygons. I think in view of how well he turned out, and the examples Darko provide a link to, I am not going to have any trouble ordering him in FUD. In fact, I am going to paint this one up since it turned out much better than I thought it would.

 

[RKapuaala]

Well at long last I have an example of FUD material. However, it is in 1:2032 scale because the figure that is closer in size to 1:24 scale is still not here, so a comparison to Darkos figure is a little unfair. They broke a part of it after printing and had to reprint. If it actually takes 10 days to print a single figure then I'm at a loss as to how they are making money off this.

When they said semi opaque, I was picturing a milky sort of color that you could see light through but this is almost transparent so it is very hard to make out the detail in this pic, but I am happy to say that the buttons, and shoe laces are visible with a strong pair of glasses. You can even make out some of the viens in his arm. Without the glasses you can see the belt buckle, the belt loops and seams in his trousers. A strange frostedness appears on the back in a small patch but does not seem to cause any issues. The real test is the painting. I don't usually prime figures this small, but I do not have a choice in this case. Try viewing this image in your browser. I intentionally did not resize it so that you see more of the detail.

This is a 7/8ths scale figure in White Strong material (the cheap stuff). The material almost looks like bisque ceramics. He is holding a 1/35 scale figure printed by a friend of mine.

Here is a group shot, 7/8ths, 1:20.32 and 1/35 scale. Not how transparent the FUD figure is.

 

[pokrad]

This looks great, faaaaar better than mine !!! If you have airbrush put a thin layer of primer so we could see better (but I think I can say that this is good enough to become master for molding !!!)

 

[bagelman1952]

Now that looks impressive

Ken

 

[RKapuaala]

Darko, you are correct on that. It would make a great master. One thing is disturbing. I have those 3 small Len figures printed int he various materials they were suppose to ship on the 3rd, then they said they broke one cleaning it and they needed to print it over again. That was 9 days ago and I still haven't gotten the figures. Makes me wonder about reliability. I'm not going to complain though, the price is right.
Thanks Ken