I’ve been meaning to start one of these threads for a while. Been meaning to do a few things actually, but that’s what buying a 3d printer does to you I suppose.
To kick it off, a 3d printable file I’ve been working on. Blender and Zbrush. Plenty more to tweak as always, but calling it a day to get on with other projects.
The file is printable on a home FDM style printer such as my Printrbot Jr, as well as other fancier printers at Shapeways and the like. I am releasing this one as Public Domain, so feel free to do what you like with it. Just be sure to let me know, for the sake of my own curiosity.
If printing on an FDM printer, it is worth noting that this model is specifically designed to be printable without support material! The following isn’t my best quality print, but the extruder was having clogging issues all last week, so it’s the best one I’ve got at the moment.
The beauty of helping out at a Fab Lab in an arts building is that I’ve already had one of these printed in PLA plastic then cast in Bronze by someone else at the Lab. A test print, so the sculpt wasn’t quite finished, but the casting process turned out great. More details on Blender model to Bronze cast as the experiments continue.
So anyway I hope to fill this thread with further antics - 3d printed or not. Too many commercial jobs and stuff I can’t share lately. Keen to get some more stuff out there for the fun of it.
the bronze-ish finish looks good. i think however, it would have been better fitting to sand away the horizontal stripes due to the printing process (or filing to create a surfacetexture suitable for a “bronze” statuette). the model is great. how much was actually modeled in blender? (asking because the brush quality of the strokes in the sculpt looks much more zbrush than what blender creates with the default brushes) … anyway, really nice work!
Thanks doris. Truth be told, this is more of a Zbrush model in terms of the modelling, but the rough base mesh was Blender and the 3d print toolkit helps a lot for checking overhang angles, wall thickness etc for printing. I have more Blender based work to post, just not yet.
As for the banding on the model - the 3d print that was cast from was only meant to be a test print. The plan was (and still is) to get a better quality print done in the PLA plastic, sand and smooth that back, then cast it. Way quicker than cleaning up the bronze. But half finished experiments are what these sketchbooks are about I guess. As a proof of concept - Blender (or Zbrush) file through to cast bronze locally works though.
oh, bendansie, i just asked about the app, since i was curious if i did recognise it correctly. to me all what counts is the result, the model. i dont care in which app you did it, or which combination. app is just a tool. …ah, thanks for clearify, i missed the point that it was meant as a testprint … looking forward to more of your sculptural work!!
@doris - No worries. Just seems safe to clarify that sort of thing around here.
@Steve S - Thanks for the link, but I know there are other places that can do higher quality and more expensive prints. The point of this model was to stress test my 3d printer that I have at home.
Modelling in Blender, printing the positive by Shapeways and then food safe silicon mould done as a negative. I didn’t actually do the mould part, had some help there. I think they came out quite nice for a first attempt at the process.
