Tuesday 8 March 2011
What I Have Learnt
Overall I am very happy with how this project went. I learnt a lot especially about modelling, UV mapping and texturing. This project also showed me that I need to learn more about and practice rigging. This is something that I am definitely going to do over the next project and in my own time. Another thing that I need to improve was my time management, I found it difficult because I was juggling between two projects at the same time. However I thought that I adapted very well and am very happy with how the project worked out. I will definitely take the knowledge and skills that this project gave me and improve them via future projects and lots of practise in my own time.
My Modelled Characters 3D Print Out
After finishing my character model I then got it printed out. The first thing I did was meet up with Jake who works in prototyping and deals with all model prints. He gave me some pointers as to what I needed to do to get my model to a printing standard.
I firstly discovered that it was an unrealistic hope to have my model printed with its props, as the props were not properly attached to the actual mesh of my character. So the best thing to do was to get the character printed without its props such as the helmet, bayonet walking stick and the ammunition tin. Jake then took a look at just the mesh of my character and pointed out that the arms, hands, legs and feet were way too thin and wouldn't survive the printing process. Another problem was that the eyes of my model were not correctly sewn to my characters mesh, this was a problem because in order for the print to work the model has to be a hollow water tight shell with no faces competing with each other.
So with these changes in mind I spent a lot of time tweaking the model in order to get it printed. Firstly i scaled the arms, hands, legs and feet to the maximum they would go, if i scaled them too much then the mesh would break and go crazy. I then used the sphere's that I used for my characters eyes and used booleans to cut holes into the mesh of my characters head. After this I sewed my characters eyes to the mesh of my character making it an all in one mesh. With these improvements made i exported my character as an obj file and sent it to Jake. He emailed me back telling me that their were still problems and my mesh was still not quite printable. For some reason there was now a hole in my model in the obj file but in maya this hole did not exist.
So I meet up with Jake again and he went through it with me, he told me to download some free software that's helped to get my model to a printing standard. This software was called netfabb, meshlab, and multitool. Jake showed me the software Netfabb which shows you the problems with your mesh and fixes them for you. I then opened up my model in meshlab which just doubled checked my model to make sure it was ready to print. My model was now ready! I then sent my stl file of my model to Jake for it to be printed. I then paid for my model and when Jake received the receipt he got my print underway.
So I waited a few days and went to check to see if my model was printed and too my surprise not only was it printed but it was not bad if I may say so myself. There was only one main problem and that was that my character's left hand had broken off. It was quite obvious as to why this had happened as you could see that the hands were still extremely thin and feeble as were the feet and ankles so i quickly took some photos. Below are the images of my printed model.
I firstly discovered that it was an unrealistic hope to have my model printed with its props, as the props were not properly attached to the actual mesh of my character. So the best thing to do was to get the character printed without its props such as the helmet, bayonet walking stick and the ammunition tin. Jake then took a look at just the mesh of my character and pointed out that the arms, hands, legs and feet were way too thin and wouldn't survive the printing process. Another problem was that the eyes of my model were not correctly sewn to my characters mesh, this was a problem because in order for the print to work the model has to be a hollow water tight shell with no faces competing with each other.
So with these changes in mind I spent a lot of time tweaking the model in order to get it printed. Firstly i scaled the arms, hands, legs and feet to the maximum they would go, if i scaled them too much then the mesh would break and go crazy. I then used the sphere's that I used for my characters eyes and used booleans to cut holes into the mesh of my characters head. After this I sewed my characters eyes to the mesh of my character making it an all in one mesh. With these improvements made i exported my character as an obj file and sent it to Jake. He emailed me back telling me that their were still problems and my mesh was still not quite printable. For some reason there was now a hole in my model in the obj file but in maya this hole did not exist.
So I meet up with Jake again and he went through it with me, he told me to download some free software that's helped to get my model to a printing standard. This software was called netfabb, meshlab, and multitool. Jake showed me the software Netfabb which shows you the problems with your mesh and fixes them for you. I then opened up my model in meshlab which just doubled checked my model to make sure it was ready to print. My model was now ready! I then sent my stl file of my model to Jake for it to be printed. I then paid for my model and when Jake received the receipt he got my print underway.
So I waited a few days and went to check to see if my model was printed and too my surprise not only was it printed but it was not bad if I may say so myself. There was only one main problem and that was that my character's left hand had broken off. It was quite obvious as to why this had happened as you could see that the hands were still extremely thin and feeble as were the feet and ankles so i quickly took some photos. Below are the images of my printed model.
Front View
Back Left View
Front Left View
Back View
Birdseye Front View
Front Right View
Birdseye Front View
Top View
Front View
Overall I was extremely happy with how my printed model turned out. This was mainly due to the fact that I did not expect it to all be in one piece as I had lots of problems and tweaking to do in order to get it to a printing standard.
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