Russ 3D Hybrids

Yet again I forgot to take a picture before I started putting the textures on, so below is an image of the car with primer and the top texture. Just imagine that this is a photo of the car with just primer on it.

The next step was to prepare the textures for printing. To do this I rendered the car from the front, back and left (the left can be flipped to make the right) with an orthographic projection view to remove any perspective. I measured the real life model to get the measurements correct. Below is the texture template I created.

The final step was to apply the textures to the model. To do this I used the rest of the papier mache glue from before. However the water in the glue made the ink run a little bit so it became a bit messy. Also my measurements didn’t line up particularly well, but it looks pretty cool. Below is the final result compared to the digital original.

There you have it, virtually indistinguishable. Above is the original digital model and below is the finished 3D print out (or is it the other way round?). And it only took me four days!

Due to the high cost of the 3d printing services at places such as inition.co.uk, I have decided to create a 3d printout of a model the old fashioned way. The model I’m using is a commonly found free model of a 57′ Chevy that I have edited and adjusted.

Above is a render I created of the model using 3D Studio Max. The wheels, Vray render settings and all the materials are my own, but I didn’t make the main body of the car.

The first thing I did was measure the thickness of the cardboard I was going to stick the templates to. It came out as 5 mm and after deciding 40 segments would be appropriate, the width of the car at the widest point would need to be printed out at 73 mm to keep the correct ratio.

Next I scaled the car to 20 Max units (a generic unit that 3d studio max uses) for easy maths. I then created a box that was 0.5 Max units to represent the slices of cardboard and copied it 40 times across the length of the car. Then all I had to do was create a boolean intersection of the car with each box and take a screen-shot of each intersection from the front to create the templates. Below is one page of templates showing the first nine intersections of the car.

After printing out all the templates I used pritt stick (£3.85!! for one pritt stick, what a rip off) to stick the templates to the cardboard. I then proceeded to cut out all the shapes, realising that corrugated cardboard is probably the worst material to use for something like this. However I’d spent a good few hours cutting out the pieces so i decided to continue with the cardboard.

Next I started applying papier mache to the car to smooth out the surface a little. Above is a shot of the underneath of the car (unfortunately I had covered half the car before I realised I hadn’t taken a picture of the finished cardboard phase, but you can imagine what it looked like with the little bit uncovered in the photo).

It does look better in real life than in the photos. It’s difficult to see the details because of the confusing newspaper pattern. But if you’re thinking this isn’t a very good way to prototype your 3D models, you’d be right. Corrugated cardboard isn’t the right material to use.

The next step will be to paint the car with primer, then I will print out my textures from the 3D Max model and apply them to my real life model. Check back later…

I think I was a tad hasty in saying that most widely used 3D applications don’t export directly to STL format (stereo lithograph). 3D Studio Max, the application i use most often has a STL checker and exporter built in and they seem to work really well.

I’m not sure if Maya comes with this functionality but here is a link to an STL export plug-in:
Maya STL export plugin

Although a checker is essential it seems, as I just tested the famous teapot model in the Max STL checker, something I would assume to be fine, and it came up with 128 errors that needed to be fixed!

Inition.co.uk provide a service for 3D printing, among other related services. Printing costs will be anywhere between £100 and £1000 depending on the size, complexity, quality and any other optional extras you choose to include.

They seem to use 3D Systems machines for their services. Here are some examples of models they produce:

STL is the standard format for Rapid Prototyping models. I think most major 3D applications do not export directly to this format, so another app will have to be used in between. I found a useful list of STL software and services for preparing your models:

STL links, services and software

Although it would be fantastic to print out some of my own 3D models, I think it is just out of my budget range for this course. Anything over £100 is not feasible. I think the idea I have for my double project (3d sets for projection of character animation) would need to be fairly large, pretty complex and I would need to spend around £400 for something decent.

This is something I am very interested in as I create a fair bit of 3d animation. It would be really cool to be able to print out some of the sets I have made in 3D to use for my Double Project (where i intend to project 2D animation into a scale model of the sets involved in the story).

I first heard of the availability of the desktop ‘Personal Model Maker’ on a graphics news site I frequent, www.cgsociety.org.

Here is the news article:
Personal Model Maker

For $9,900 (approx £5,000) you can buy the ‘V-flash’ machine, created by 3D Systems, which will let you print out your models with dimensions up to 7 x 9 x 8 inches.

The Official V-Flash site
The Offical 3D Systems site