Update 3D Printing Class

So, I'm finally getting around to updating my blog. I've been really busy balancing different projects and have been putting off posting, so I'm taking the time now to finally update my blog. Right now I'm working on two different projects. One has to do with 3D printing and the other is my personal project of a scifi scene. For the 3D printing, I had to do a tone of research on the different types of printers, quality of the printer, and what was accessible to our group. The goal of the 3D printing is to make environmental assets for table top games. This fills a niche market for table top games because they are usually focused on just making the characters and not so focused on environmental assets that would also be in the world. If someone wanted to have a caravan in a table top game, they would usually rip a piece of paper and place that on the board to symbolize a caravan. We are making these assets, so that now they will actually be physical objects instead of an object symbolizing something else. The first object I made was a simple barrel. I went through 3 iterations, one with only primary forms, one with primary and secondary forms, and one with primary, secondary, and tertiary forms. I ended up printing the tertiary forms one and that is the one that we are going to go ahead with in the project and start making molds so that we can have copies of the barrel for mass production instead of having to keep 3D printing barrels. There is so much more technical stuff I could go into about 3D printing, but I don't want to bore you anymore. Below I have screen shots of the barrel I made in Zbrush and it's 3D printed with black resin for the highest micron detail at .025 microns.





Zbrush Renders of the Barrel that we went with for 3D print

3D Printed Barrels
These barrels are for table top and are pretty small(under an inch). I left my finger in the photos to give a sense of scale.

So far I am really enjoying this project because its really awesome being able to hold a model that you created on a computer!!

I'm also working on making a mold straight in Zbrush so that we can just make the barrels from that instead of having to 3D print the barrels. Screen shots of that below.

Mold made in Zbrush
How this works is you would attach the left part of the mold to the right part of the mold with tape or something to hold them together. Then you would pour in the material in the top of the mold and it would fill the mold with the shape of the barrel. I also added air holes in certain spots for air to be released so that the mold would be able to be filled.

Thx again!!