First a thanks to Natalia, it was a pleasant surprise to see my Spike Print in last week's Friday Finds.
I'd be very proud to see it featured more on Shapeways. With so much amazing feedback online, it showed this print is a great example of what full-color printing is capable of at Shapeways. Also, with 5 orders placed in the first week, it shows how serious 3D prints can be taken as a piece of art or collectable.
As a 3D artist, I enjoy modeling my favorite characters in 3D. Oddly, it can be very relaxing and I enjoy the puzzle like challenge of topology. I get lost in it, losing track of time. Though, just as I started years ago, my motivation slowly dwindled. After all the hard work, there wasn't much I can do with it. Then I discovered how far 3D printing has improved, full-color offered, and finally accessible thanks to services like Shapeways. This was very exciting and my motivation was back! These days when I start a new project, my goal is to usually create accurate sculptures of my favorite characters that have no equivalent option available. There have been a few set backs trying to push the most out of 3D printing, but I learned from my mistakes to better produce printable models.
Designing Spike was a great experience. In the past, I usually create simple figures that stand alone. For whatever reason, I decided take this one further by adding a base and props with a dynamic pose that interacted with them. When the first print arrived, I was amazed by the quality, colors and how it looked like a real maquette from a studio. The extra work was worth it. Now I look forward to completing more projects with similar scopes.
Preparing a print with so many elements did create new challenges. Recent updates to ZBrush offered great solutions to tackle this, but not without hair pulling moments after doing everything right. The end piece for 3D printing is one merged mesh (not intersecting), hollow, uses vertex colors instead of textured UVs, and decimated to around 375,000 polygons.
It was a happy moment when I received the ready to print email from Shapeways.
Item Page:
http://shpws.me/n98V
