3D Print Update (10/16 - 10/20)

Just updating what I've been working on this week for 3D Print. I made a crate that we are printing today and I'll have screenshots of the physical object later tonight. I'm also working on a power point to talk about 3D print. Here are some basic things that can be helpful.

Know what you're printing and how much detail you want. FDM Printer VS. SLA Printer

SLA prints the highest level of detail at .025 microns(micrometers)

1 micron = 3.93701e-5 inches

FDM printer is better for bigger prototypes

We use the Form Labs Form 2 printers at UCF that are available to any students that are majoring in certain majors like Digital Media, Engineering(don't remember all the majors).

If you are printing small objects I would recommend that you don't hollow out the middle of the object, but you can if you want to. Its personal preference and if you do hollow out the model you will save time and cost of resin material.

The Form Labs Form 2 printer comes with its own software to check the model to make sure it is print ready. It accepts STL. and OBJ. file types. I'll have some images below of how I check the model.

Here is the Wooden Crate I made this week

Here is my process for checking my mesh in Zbrush to make sure it is print ready. I also want to say that I won't be going much into hollowing out the mesh in this post.

1. If I'm able to I try to dynamesh my mesh when I'm done with everything because that creates a water tight mesh and closes any holes that could be in the mesh and could cause issues later.

2.  Next, right before I'm about to export to Preform. In Zbrush I go to Geometry>MeshIntegrity> CheckMeshIntegrity(if  Mesh integrity test completed successfully skip step 3)

3. Click Fix Mesh integrity if the check failed in the last step(Image Below)

4. Now time to export the mesh. I believe that the best way to export the mesh is to export as a STL file because it doesn't store certain info that an OBJ stores. But, if you want to export as an OBJ then you have to remember to go to export in the Tool menu and uncheck Grp(Image Below)

5. If you export as STL go to Zplugin>3D Print Hub>Export to STL(Image Below)

6. You are now ready to bring your mesh into Preform if you are printing on the Form Labs Form 2 Printer.

7. This is Preform when you first open it. Preform asks you what resolution you want to print at and what type of resin are you going to be using. Certain resins do not print at higher resolutions, so keep that in mind when choosing which resin is best for you. We went with a black resin, because it prints at the highest resolution of 25 microns on the form printer.You can go to File> Open> and select .stl or .obj(there are more file types, but this is what I mostly used).

8. Preform when you first open it

 9. Once your model is in the program you want to generate some support structures so that your model isn't just being built on the build platform. If you don't have support structures, depending on what you make. It can mess up the print and waste time. Click the button in the image below to open the support structure menu and I usually just click generate all, but you can mess with the sliders to have thicker/thinner structs or to have more/less structs. Generate all works really good for us though.




10. After generating the structs, I would scroll through the layers of the mesh to make sure that I have no islands or things that could cause the print to fail. In the first image below, I left an example of an island which is basically a piece of the print that has no support struct to it and isn't connected to the whole print, so it can break off and end up ruinning the whole print. This is a no no. The second image shows how things should look if done correctly when scrolling through the layers which is the blue outlined scroll wheel thing on the right of the screen.





. After checking to make sure all of that is fine you are now ready to print. Click the button in he 11. After checking to make sure all of that is fine you are now ready to print. Click the button in the image below and it will bring up a print menu. Find the printer you want to send it to and then just click print.





12. Once you send it to the printer a little display will pop up on the actual form labs form 2 printer with your model and some info about it. It displays how long it will print, how many layers, how much resin is used and the resolution. Hit the Print Now button and it will print after how long it says on the machine.

13. Once the print is done. I would scoop it off of the build platform and then dump it into the isopropyl alcohol to get rid of any excess resin. Make sure to wear gloves and eyewear just to be safe.

14. After that I would place it in some water just to get any more excess resin that the alcohol didn't get and then I would put it into a uv chamber or sunlight for about 10 minutes. Sometimes longer or shorter. You will know to take it out of the sun when it is no longer sticky to the touch because the resin is cured. UV chamber image below.

15. Now time for some Pre-processing. Time to cut off those support structs that you added in the Preform software. You are going to have to sand down those support structs, because they leave little nibs on your model, and you don't want that. Also if there is an small issues with the mesh you can add some Plasticine to fill those holes and sculpt back over the model. You may have to sculpt back in some detail. Once you are happy with the model though you can now move forward and get ready to make a mold so that you can cast the mold and make copies.


16. This is what I used to make the mold. Basically it was two solutions that when poured together create a chemical reaction that then hardens. First image shows the stuff that I bought that makes the silicon mold. Second Image shows the box mold that I made, and the mixing of the two chemicals. Once you are done, wait about 30 minutes depending on how much you mix and your mold should be done. Remember to pour slowly to not make air bubbles and to always wear gloves and eye wear. Also make sure to never pour this stuff down a drain or anything like that. Throw away in the trash.

17. Once you are done, pull the original model out of the mold and you now have your mold ready to go. Now it is time to pour the cast into the mold. You have to pour this pretty fast, because it hardens really quickly, but pour it as slow as you can to not make air bubbles. The image below shows what I used to make the cast. It is similar to the mold stuff, because you mix one part to the other part and it makes a chemical reaction that then solidifies.

18. Now all you have to do is sand down your cast with some sand paper and you have some really nice models. In the image below, I've started to sand down some crates and barrels.

19. And then you can make a board or use a board and play with your pieces

20. Thanks for checking out my work

21. Some final thoughts about 3D printing this semester for me to look back on(in no logical order)

• Pre plan as much as you can especially if you are making a mold
• Pour everything slowly or you will have air bubbles and have to do it again(mold/cast)
• If you hollow out the mesh, make sure to always have a hole to release excess resin. Also, always have this hole facing the build platform to release excess heat that may try to form
• If you are making a big character or something that doesn't fit within the build volume of the printer then you will have to key it up with male and female keys

21.

alsdjl

My personal project progress

So I've blocked about 90 percent of my scene out in maya and I am now importing all of that into unreal before I start working on High Polys and texturing. Once I have everything blocked in in Unreal I will start doing a first pass on lighting because that will really sell my scene to look good. So far I'm enjoying the project, just a bunch of work between this and the 3D print class. Progress shots below in Unreal.

Unreal proxy blockout

I hope to get most of this blocked out in the next two weeks to start moving on in the pipeline


Thx

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!!

Sci-fi Environment Artist Personal Piece

Sci-fi Environment Artist Personal Piece

So, for this assignment I want to make a fully fleshed out sci-fi environment for my personal piece. This is something that I would honestly like to work on these next 3 months to make a really good piece. There are 3 concepts that I will be working with that all are in the same environment and I will start with one of the concepts and see how far I get with that and then I plan on doing the second concept and then the third concept.




First concept that I will be working on


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Second Concept if I have more time


Third Concept if I have more time after the first two


Right now I plan on the things that I can make modular so that if I do move on to the other two pieces then everything should fit together.


I went and talked to Nick and he said I should breakdown every asset and see what I can make modular and breakdown the whole scene. I went and color coded everything so that I new what I needed and didn't make anything twice.
Color Coded Breakdown

Breakdown of  Assets
If they are scratched out then they were modular for the second and third scene



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Research

Research

Marvelous Designer

                So for this semester I choose to use Marvelous Designer for my research project. I was originally making a caravan scene with different barrels and cloth and wood in the scene. I could have started out by sculpting my scene in zbrush, but I decided to use Marvelous Designer. So first I need to do research on the subject. I got tutorials that were really good from Lynda.com that was a basic start to marvelous designer and even an advanced course to teach you more advanced things. So there are two ways you can start in marvelous designer. One is to use a template of a human to start putting close on or you can import your own model into the scene and use that. Also, you could just start with an empty scene, but that doesn’t really help you at all. I started learn the program with the human scene which gives you two views. One with a 3d model that you can rotate around and pan and zoom just like in other 3d packages and the other scene is a 2d view with a grey filled in view of your asset in a orthographic view. I learned how to sow clothes. First you draw out a 2d plane of the clothe that you want to make on your character by using the rectangle tool and then you place it over your model in the 3d view and you sow the edges to make a sleeve. You need to make clothes just how you would make them in real life. So if you were making a t-shirt then the seams would go how they would go in real life. You can also look up how things should be sowed on the internet and actually find how they should be sowed. Once you know where the seams go you have to sow it together. You can use different buttons to sow stuff, but the one I know how to use is the segment sewing button. You basically click on one edge and then click on another edge and it will sow them together. You can also accidentally sow them the wrong way and it will kind of destroy your mesh, but this can be seen in the 3d view, so you will know if you are doing it wrong. From there you go to the 3d side of the screen which is on the left side of the screen while 2d is on the right and you click the Simulate Space button. This will allow you to see how the cloth falls on your model and also you can start pushing and pulling it and then you can make it look better. If you click on the cloth in the 2d view which is on the right a properties editor will also come up on the right and it has many settings that you can mess with to make your mesh better. You can mess with how may polys you want or also tris and you can mess with, elastic, thickness, pressure and a whole bunch of other settings. I messed with elastic on my caravan so that it gave a pulling effect to my cloth. I also messed with the thickness to give some thickness and some pressure to expand the canopy of the caravan to feel like there was wind going through it. I also had to use this feature called Tack on Avatar so that I could put a tack on the cloth and basically tack it onto the wood of the canopy. I also used the edit Tack to mess with any tacks I used that weren’t in the right spot of the mesh. This is how I tacked the canopy to the mesh and don’t forget to simulate and then left click on the cloth you make to pull it in the 3D view so that you can mess with the folds and stuff like that. That is pretty much all I did for my canopy. I’ll leave some images below of shots of things to better understand.

On the left side is the 3d view. Right side is the 2d view. Pan is middle mouse on both 3d and 2d view. Right click rotates in only 3d view. Scroll lets you scroll in and out in both the 3d and 2d view.

This is how you Import a model into the scene. Go to File Import and then whatever file type listed is what you can import.

The rectangle tool is what I used to make the rectangles you see in the images below. Also all the tools in the same palette as the rectangle tool only mess with the 2d view while the ones on the right of the screen mess with the 3d view.

Tack on avatar is the next tool I used and I tacked my fold of the mesh in the 3d view to the model also in the 3d view. Image below is of the tack on avatar feature.

If you highlight your 2d images in the right view it will bring up settings for you to use in the bottom right. The image below shows those settings.

From there it was just click on the 2d plane that you made in the 3d view and kind of just move it to the spot where you want to tack stuff and then start tacking it on to the mesh and then simulate and mess with the settings of elasticity and other things. Elasticity can be found in the image above and Simulate can be found in this image.

Once your done messing with the settings and you feel you are in a good spot. Export the mesh by going to file export. Also don’t forget to click a thickness when exporting or it will be an only one side mesh. And these are the settings that I had for exporting.

BladeShooter(Part 2)

BladeShooter(Part 2)

Original Concept by RockD

Wireframe Maya Render

Zbrush Sculpts

Substance Painter Bakes

Unreal Engine Renders

Notes for later