Hello, I am trying to help my student upload this project to shapeways in order to print. So far I've tried the Meshlab, and Netfabb suggestions for repairing and preparing for upload. I've done whatever I could and understand and still they won't except my file??? It does say that I have 6 shells? Is that too much for a solid file? And if so how can I make it so it's one shell? Attached is the file, please let me know if you know a solution for me. My student needs to order this week in order to hand it in for his 8th grade project. You can see his blog here: http://jonascreations.wordpress.com Thanks!!
Whilst any number of shells should be ok, the way the shells interact with each other and how the likes of Shapeways Mesh Medic and NetFabb Cloud Service can cause confusion for the software. I'm pretty sure the issue lays with how the parts of the head are put together - see the image below - I've used NetFabb Basic to slice the model in half, the eyes, ears, horns & mouth are all intersecting meshes, but somewhere along the line something has got muddled - I'm guessing the problem areas are the mouth and maybe the ears (the green areas in the red areas should not be there). At the moment, I have the model in MeshLab which is trying to start a filter that removes self intersecting faces - this would usually sort out the issue, but not in this case. (MeshLab gave up) What software was used to create the model? Paul [hr]stop4stuff Modeller for hireShapeways Shop - Controller PendantTwitterYouTube[hr]
Hey Paul, Thanks for responding... My student was using Sculptris to create the model. He found a model that was already created for a basic human form, than modified it to add muscles and features he wanted. He did add new Shapes (Horns, Mouth, Eyes) in Sculptris and then Subdivided them to bring them together. Is there not an easy way for them to combine as a solid object, and then if we need to hollow it out after? I honestly have no clue what to do! Thanks!
Ok, the issue most probably lays with the ears if they were part of the original model - what it looks like has happened is that in making the creases behind the ears, Sculptris has blown the mesh inside out to create the shapes needed, but that leaves the 'bobbles', green in my previous image, which is effectively a self intersecting face. The cure would be to start with just the base model (before adding horns etc) and then use MeshLab to remove the self intersecting faces, followed by loading the model into NetFabb to repair the holes left by removing the faces, then add in the horns etc, then go through the NetFabb Cloud service to boolean all the parts together before uploading. Paul
Is there not a way to solidify the whole sculpture as one mesh, then hollow it out so the outer most regions are all one mesh with no intersecting faces? My student doesn't work extremely fast in the program, so if I was to have him redo the process it would take some time...
The problem was in the hooves. See attached. During sculpting a rat nest of about 35 thousand polygons formed in each hoof. I removed those polygons and then proceeded in the normal way. What could have been done is to use the decimation brush along with the smoothing brush on each hoof to remove the errant polygons and then converted to a STL for doing the booleans via the Netfabb Cloud Service. The way you proceeded would have worked if it were not for the barely noticeable polygon conglomerations in the hooves. Tell him I said, NICE SCULPT!