What the heck does "your model needs a bit more love" indicate?

I seem to be getting a rather generic error message:

Uh oh! Seems like your model needs a bit more love before our robots can work their magic.

The 3D model PrintTry3 you recently uploaded didn't pass all our automated checks, so it's not yet ready for 3D printing.


Can anyone translate that into what might actually be wrong? I used Blender to set the size to 16cmX16cmX2cm based on the tutorial video, though,it wasn't clear whether the result is in mm or meters, so I tried both. Also tried both STL and OBJ format files. I zipped them because they were pretty big, zipped they're between 10 & 15 MB. The mesh has about 800,000 faces, created with a combination of Zbrush, Sculptris & Polymender, then sized with Blender and saved as STL and OBJ.

How do I find out what test didn't pass?


--

Sync

Check out this tutorial for troubleshooting what could be wrong with your model. As for your scale, when exporting STL or OBJ units don't matter. One Blender unit will equal one unit of which you select when uploading your file.

Well, NetFabb seems to think it's fine except the number of triangles is about twice the number of faces (was probably in quads in Zbrush), so the size is 1.6M triangles. Will have to find something to reduce the resolution of the model I gather... Everything else came out OK.

Though I really have no need for Blender, and would prefer to work in OBJ up to the last moment and set the size in ZBrush or Meshlab or Netfabb or something else, what relationship does a "Blender Unit" have to the data in an OBJ?

Same deal as STL, it depends on the units you select at upload.

There's still something missing here. Suppose I want to upload something sized in millimeters. What do I have to do to an obj file so that,say, the X dimension of my object is 120mm long?

You make it 120 units in Blender, then when you upload to shapeways select mm. This will make it 120mm.

Yes, but I'm trying to eliminate Blender from the equation-- for two reasons, 1) I'm only using it for sizing, and nothing else, and 2) it's UI really sucks.

You can scale and dimension in Meshlab or Netfab if you want.

If you do use the scene panel to set unit scale, it does work exported as a .dae in blender uploaded to Shapeways which is wunnerful. . I am also curious are you placing the file in a folder, zipping the folder, uploading, or zipping the file, and uploading it. Big difference.

As was explained previously SW gives you two options for conversion factors for .obj and stl., mm or inches.
If you have a 12 x 5 10 model, and want it printed in cm just scale it by 10, result is cm 12 x 5 x 10, or mm 120 x 50 x 100.
Determining the scale factor is good knowledge. The Scale factor is basically the dimension you want divided by the same dimension of the model.
So you modeled a ring with a inner diameter of 16 units. Someone wants to buy the model, but her ring size inner diameter is 20 units. You just divide 20 by 16, scale model by that amount.
Your other question, if your models length was 12, regard it as 12 mm, scale the model by 10. When its printed with the default mm, length will print as 120mm or 12cm with the other dimensions scaled same amount.

I am using zip. And I've been able to figure out the scaling by trial and error now that I am able to get a model uploaded. My main problem in uploading was too many triangles-- model was produced in quads where subsequent triangularization blew it up to 1.6M triangles. I reduced it down to just under the limit and now I can get stuff uploaded.

But here's what I end up doing:

If I "unify" the model in ZBrush, I can then set export with a scale factor, but the units don't match, so instead, I just export the unified model and import it into NetFabb, where I can use its scale feature to scale it to the desired size in mm. With that approach I don't need to use either Blender or Meshlab.

I used that approach and got models uploaded to useful sizes and have just ordered an initial sample.

If you want to find out what tests dont pass, I use Rhino and use the checkmesh feature and that tells you exactly what is wrong with the model, but if you dont care to know whats wrong with it, theres a tab in zbrush called "MeshIntegrity" that makes everything simple. it gives you 2 options, check mesh and fix mesh. The ckeck mesh button check your mesh and tells you if there are any issues, and the fix mesh just fixes it for you. Its just that simple. I used to manually fix my meshes with rhino, point by point but zbrush offers the best option for fixing meshes. If you want I can check it for you, just PM me.

zBrush also allows you to measure in mm. Thats how I do it, then I double check the .stl file for accuracy and havent had any problems.
On top of the zbrush interface where it says, "file", "edit", "layer", "lights", and at the end there is one called "zplugin", click that and select "3d print exporter".
You can meassure the entire model, or use the cut tool to temporary eliminate anything you dont want to measure and measure it that way then click undo to bring back what the cut tool eliminated. This feature also lets you export as an .stl file.

Thanks for the tips, I've spent most of my time with ZBrush 3.1, and haven't figured out much of anything that's new in 4R4 yet...

4r4 is the one I'm using. You might want to learn Dynamesh. Best feature ever.