3D Print Lab

[Zhall]

Hey everyone,

I just started a new 3D printing series on youtube, and I figured I would share it here.

Here is the first 3 episodes.







I'll add more posts as I make more videos

[curious aardvark]

Very cool.

Kinda light on the actual details, but pretty neat anwyay :-)
Had no idea you could extract printable models from game files.

[truly_bent]

I like the fact that you're covering an area not usually seen in tutorials and i found them very interesting. However, i think you're making the assumption that your audience is as familiar with the tools as you are. What is your goal here? Is it to teach or something else? At those speeds it would be next to impossible for someone trying to learn to follow your breakneck pace.

On the upside, they're definitely not boring. Maybe should be labelled, "For advanced users only".

[Zhall]

Very cool.

Kinda light on the actual details, but pretty neat anwyay :-)
Had no idea you could extract printable models from game files.

Thanks, is there any suggestion you have for making it more dynamic?

I like the fact that you're covering an area not usually seen in tutorials and i found them very interesting. However, i think you're making the assumption that your audience is as familiar with the tools as you are. What is your goal here? Is it to teach or something else? At those speeds it would be next to impossible for someone trying to learn to follow your breakneck pace.

On the upside, they're definitely not boring. Maybe should be labelled, "For advanced users only".

This is more just showing the process that I go through, these are not really tutorials. I could make tutorial videos in the future, and yes, the pace would be much much slower.

[Zhall]

Next episode, Runescape gold!

[Wolfie]

Very cool.

Kinda light on the actual details, but pretty neat anwyay :-)
Had no idea you could extract printable models from game files.

It depends on the game. Many games to have extractable resources that are usable for a great many things, 3D printing is just one new use. I have extracted resources from games like Sub Hunter, Morrowind, Oblivion, Portal, etc. for use in Poser and other 3D applications mainly to render them as graphics. I have also created a few game assets for mods as well. However, with my recent dive into 3D printers, I have dug up my old archives of OBJ files with an eye to 3D printing.

Not all, or should I say, not many games will have assets suitable to print. For the most part, the models are simplified shells that are augmented in the game using textures with bump, specular, displacement and normal mapping to give the illusion of a much larger mesh. Other games, like WOW, are myopically simplistic in their models and rely on transparent textures to fill in the details (octogon trees for example). Other games, Guild Wars for example, have much higher levels of detail in the mesh itself.

You can generate meshes with a higher detail by applying the same techniques the game does by applying the displacement maps and the baking the mesh with the new detail. I don't know if Blender can do this. I know Modo can as its what I own and use, but its far from free ($1000).

If human models are something you are interested in, have a look at this...
http://www.daz3d.com/technology/

You can download DazStudio FREE. It comes with the base male and female models and a few accessories (clothes). You can freely pose and morph the figures to your liking. You can then export to OBJ and from there into blender for tweaking and conversion to STL. Daz even has 3D print files that remove inner portions of the meshes (mouth, teeth, eyeballs, etc) for the express purpose of 3D printing. And once you have DazStudio, there are large numbers of FREE models to use with it. I recently printed a female torso that I extracted from Poser 2014 (a paid but similar piece of software to DS). Can't show it here as I am sure the mods would have issues with the nudity aspect.

So, Thingiverse is not the only resource for good models. Sometimes you just need to look outside your comfort zone.

[Zhall]

That's an excellent synopsis.

Indeed a lot of models contain planes and other unprintable geometry.

And yes, thingiverse isn't the only source

[Zhall]

Just printed some Towers from Empire Earth 2, everything from ancient to future.

[Zhall]

Just printed the Gallente Titan from Eve.