Terminator T-800

Hey guys! First time posting here. I have been working the last couple of weeks on a Terminator. I recently found out about this website and I would like to give it a try and see what happens. I have lots of questions, tho.

First things first:



This is a Z-Brush render. The following is a screen capture from 3dsmax:



As you can see, I have read the instructions and made all the meshes consistent and without any holes. The mesh of the head you see in 3dsmax is not the final one. The final one has over 2million poligons.... yes... a lot, that's why I have some questions regarding the printing process limitations.

I tried converting my mesh to a DAE file with accutrans3D, but it fails at doing so, because it is not able to allocate enough memory. I have found a workaround tho, and I was able to convert an FBX file to DAE. The end result is a 500MB file. Does this cause any problem further in the process? I don't really know how these printers work. Maybe they run out of memory with such big files too. Do they have a polycount limitation of any kind? Or can I just through at them everything I want?

Oh! Almost forgot! Are triangles allowed? I hope so, cause otherwise I'm screwed. :laughing:

Anyway, hope you like it! And thanks in advance!

Hi Norman,

Cool model!

With regard to printing & file sizes we only support models with up to 500k triangles. And our file upload is limited to 64MB.
Based on the 500MB filesize I guess that your model has a bit more triangles than 500k. Would it be an option for you to lower the number of triangles?

And yes we support triangles. Actually that is the only polygon-type we can print. Other polygon-types are converted along the way to triangles.

Best regards,

Robert

Thanks for the quick reply! I'm gonna try to pass the model through polygon cruncher. See what happens, I'll report back as soon as I get any results.

Thanks again!

One Kudos and Two Suggestions

1) MeshLab.
Open Source free and able to simplify a 2 million tri mesh. Eventually use a less verbose file format. Directly export from 3dsmax into binary stl.

2) Probably you can make your model a lot thinner (saving a lot of money if you want to print it at the scale that your careful details deserve...

If you encounter problems with MeshLab feel free to contact me through PM.
I would be happy to help you.
cheers
p.

hey! Thanks a lot!
I did try Meshlabs, but i ran into a similiar problem. Alocating memory. It's odd though, as I'm running Windows XP 64bit and a 8GB Ram rig. I guess the application isn't 64bit native. Any way, I'm still working on it. Polycrounch seems to work great! I'm still tweaking it a bit. But the results are promising.
The original printing size i had in mind, was around 10cm tall, a little bit more. For those who don't know: In 3dsmax under Utilites you have a tool called Measure. You can see how much volume (in cm) your model is using. Very helpful to calculate the price.

finally! It's done!



As you can see I have changed it slightly. It now consists of only two pieces. The polycount is 500 000 triangles. It is 51,1 cubic cm.

I'm gonna upload both pieces now!

EDIT: just realized that polycrunch for some reason created lots of open edges. Anyway, back to work

Allright guys, jut letting you know that it's all fixed and uploaded. Should arrive in a couple of days.
I'll post some photos when it gets here.

Again, thanks for your help!

Cheers

Any news

Check out Norman's "It arrived!" post. Pretty sweet.
T-800 arrived!