I can use Meshlab to paint my model (albeit very frustratingly since I cannot find a way to switch between painting and rotating model easily) but when saving the model as a vrl file and uploading Shapeways gives me an error to the effect that it doesn't recognise the file. I think that Shapeways is expecting a zip file with the vrl file and a jpg of the painting texture but I cannot find a way of saving the texture separately in Meshlab. Has anyone else had any success or can offer some help? Glenn
I have been successful doing that, so I'm not sure what's wrong. Shapeways should accept the file (zipped or not) without a texture, then use the vertex colors instead. If you can post the file I'll take a look and try to figure it out. If you want to use texture painting instead of vertex painting, it is pretty painless in Sculptris. You can project the vertex colors to a texture, but that is really defeating the purpose of doing it that way. Choose one or the other based on your needs. The big plus for vertex coloring is that you don't have to bother creating UV coordinates, which can be a pain sometimes, but the automated algorithm in Sculptris is one of the more impressive ones I've seen.
Sorry for the REALLY late reply. I'm still having no luck getting colour models uploaded because I cannot create them. Trying to use ZBrush to export UV or texture files as well, with no luck. Getting back to Meshlab... I have attached a recent file with yet another attempt at this. I can colour a model in Meshlab, save it as a VRML and re-load to make sure the colour info stayed. I can even upload it to Shapeways and get it accepted (after making some scale changes). BUT the model in Shapeways viewer appears totally BLACK - no colour at all. Any help you can give would be appreciated. Glenn
Hi lensman, after scaling that file to a size that will upload, I indeed get the same problem that the color information does not show on the thumbnail. I looked at the printerfile and also there the color information is gone. I suspect it gets lost somewhere in the model process pipeline as the original does have color information. We will investigate this asap. Barry
Thanks, Barry. No rush for me but others might find a solution useful. Myself, I have started to explore other prog's to use and Blender has caught my attention after hating it for years. Glenn