My First 3D Print
A looooooong time ago, in a galaxy far far away….. well… actually it was a long time ago, but not too far from where I live….
So I’m working on a REALLY cool project for my friend Ben. He’s designed his own Star Trek ship …. a long time ago ….(he REALLY loves Star Trek BTW!) and we both thought it would be cool to make a 3D model of it. Actually Ben had made it in clay once…. but it melted…. at least that’s how it looks.
Anyway, so I started working on the ship in Blender and it’s going well so far (more pictures to come on this later), and then I discovered…. SHAPEWAYS.COM!!!!
I kid you not this is the single most exciting thing I’ve encountered since ZBrush and Blender!!!
Imagine not just creating your models, but actually having a plastic version of them sat on your desk!!
Now I know 3D printing has been around forever, but it’s never been cheap! Well, Shapeways.com seems to be working hard to bring the costs down as much as possible for its customers.
So we want to make Ben’s 3D ship become a real thing you can hold by actually 3D printing it into a plastic 3D model!! Cool!
We had to make a few tests first, so I uploaded my DG Mascot model (the one you see in the background of this site) and requested a print to see how detailed it is.
Check this out:
Click to view
How cool is that!! As you can see the detailing is actually VERY good! So good you can still see some of the edges on the polygons, though that’s mostly down to me rushing the model for the 3D print and is something I will avoid in future.
So we learnt a few lessons and are really happy with the print.
BTW, this model is 6cm high and hollow (hollowing out drops the price dramatically BTW). It cost just under $27, which exchanged to around £15 for me in the UK. Cool!
So, I now have Dusty sat on my desk, looking at me! Bless!
Durian