Shapeways has a new development we are considering that would allow you to embed your shop (or part of it) using a HTML snippet into almost any page such as a on your own website, blog, forum post and possibly sites such as Facebook or MySpace.

This would work in much the same way as you can embed an Etsy Store, a YouTube video, a Kickstarter Project or a Facebook badge.

Before we go down the development path we would like some input form the Shapeways community.

Is this something you would be interested in using?

What features would you like to see implemented within it?

Where would you use the application and how?

Any suggestions what we should call it?

Any other suggestions you may have along these lines we would be very interested to hear from you..

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE: As of April, 2013, Shapeways no longer offers this high polygon workaround. If your model has over a million polygons, use this handy tutorial to reduce them so you can upload your model in the normal way. Thank you for your understanding!

Ok Zbrush users, organic algorithm artists and character modelers, Shapeways have developed a workaround so that your models can now exceed the 1,000,000 polygon limit currently in place. 

It is not elegant, and takes some negotiating, but if we get enough demand we will try and automate the process to make it easier for everyone.  Let us know what you think, is this something you would like to see as standard? 

The tide is definitely turning when a design consultancy that specializes in product hacks gets invited to be a TED Global fellow....

The CADspan engine uses your geometry to perform a virtual 'shrink-wrap' and outputs an entirely new STL file that describes the exterior of your CAD file. This new STL file is a single, solid object, ready to 3D print. This may of course lead to very expensive models, but it may just work perfectly in some instances, I would love to hear of anyones experiences with it.

Check out this first of a 6 part tutorial on the ZBrush YouTube page by character artist Jeff Feligno takes you through the steps needed for creating a model in ZBrush and preparing it for 3D printing.

Any ZBrush users please let us know if this tutorial is helpful to you? 

Big thanks to Jeff Feligno for putting these online and to @wusashi for pointing this out on twitter.

James White from our previous post has been generous enough to share some of his vast expertise with a tutorial for LightWave 3D. For the purpose of the blog post I have included all of the text but reduced some of the screenshots to thumbnails.  For the tutorial and full size images visit the tutorial page.

By James White aka Smart Art Studios

I am going to go over how to create a basic object and prep it for 3D printing using LightWave 3D. For this tutorial I am creating an animated style penguin. The majority of the object will be made using the drag, smooth shift and stretch tools. You may want to take a few minutes familiarizing yourself with these tools if you are new to LightWave 3D.