Another try: 3D-print of Imperium Spec Lancer

Yo ... I am still on with 3D-printing RL models of EU items. Years ago me and Kawa (suhrkamp) had some attempts:
https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/forums/showthread.php?63114-Fan-ART-OPALO-3d-Printing
https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/...194343-Making-a-RL-3D-model-of-a-Valkyrie-Mk1

Really low success so far :-(
Now it's summertime again and I sit at my loggia still with my old ThinkPad. But with more knowledge. I love Cyrene's Imperium Spec Lancer soooo much! Well, it's hard to spawn it at rough ground. But it's kinda convertible, isn't it? It's worth to fly with it. Pure fun!

Probably one or two of you will be interested in following the story. Let's name it a blog. I would like to tell you a story. And we may talk and joke about it as we did at my old Valkyrie tread. My hope is to finish it with a real good model this time. I will talk to Cyrene's staff soon. Because they should give me the permission to do it ... either for private purpose or for offering such models to the community.

First of all I will show you what we deal with.

This is the original design:



At least we got this one:

Some basic thoughts.

What scale would be good for such a model? How much will it cost to let it print at Shapeways?
Well, little sister Kristin made a 3D-grab. We both are tall ~2 meters. Let's say this 2 meters shall be 4 cm at the model. This assumed the model of the Lancer would be kinda 13 cm long (~5 inch). That sounds good to me. That would be scale of 1:50.

I can make either a model according to the current appeareance or to the original design. I think a mixture will do it best. Since the modelers are limited to use as little faces as possible they made kinda poor models for good performance. According to my try for a RL 3D-print I don't need to care for that.

Any suggestions?
What my sister got so far is a polygon net:



shaded ...



That's in Rhino 3D wich is great for handling 3D files.

Jamira said:

Some basic thoughts.

What scale would be good for such a model? How much will it cost to let it print at Shapeways?
Well, little sister Kristin made a 3D-grab. We both are tall ~2 meters. Let's say this 2 meters shall be 4 cm at the model. This assumed the model of the Lancer would be kinda 13 cm long (~5 inch). That sounds good to me. That would be scale of 1:50.

I can make either a model according to the current appeareance or to the original design. I think a mixture will do it best. Since the modelers are limited to use as little faces as possible they made kinda poor models for good performance. According to my try for a RL 3D-print I don't need to care for that.

Any suggestions?

Click to expand...

1:50 is good. I would like to see the original design over the current.

Btw, loved the valk when you did it so I'm eager to see this one. Any thoughts on prices?

Nor Alien said:

1:50 is good. I would like to see the original design over the current.

Btw, loved the valk when you did it so I'm eager to see this one. Any thoughts on prices?

Click to expand...

Yo ... I will go for it a bit more serious this time ... got some experiances with Shapeways meanwhile during atempts with a partly model of a Pitbull

Original design looks so much better IMO
Have fun with digitizing.

I tend to the original as well ...

But the seat at the current model is a bit higher ... just to enable the pilot to see where he is flying to ;-)
A mix should be first choice!

I just thought id say this kicks ass, keep it up.

Well, the process will take some time. I appreciate every comment and suggestion.

Basic thoughts part 2:

Textures and bump maps replace details at basic geometry in a game. That makes a major different to a RL model. All details have to be modeled seperately for a RL model.

We won't get colours / textures from the printed model. We must paint it.

Since we have to pay for printed volume, it'll be an assambly of several single parts wich have to be connect by glue and painted seperately before. Greetings from Revell ;-) I have to make parts hollow.

I will work mainly in SolidWorks and Rhino 3D wich will allow me to work with legal software. SolidWorks offers the ability to hand out amazing 3D-models via it's inbuild eDrawing module. That means I can export the models as an exe-file. Everyone can use it without installing any software. At the other hand it'll be an exe-file. So everyone who trust me can enjoy a full rotatable model, zoom in and out and look for details. It's your decision.

I will fill this thred with sceenshots as well. Some preparations have been done already. We can go serious now.

Very interesting thanks for making the thread and goodluck with it all. Will definitely keep an eye on this to follow how you progress.

Great project and good luck and have fun with it!

I'm very interested in how to do a 3-D grab with open source software. I'd love to be able to send an obj, or whatever file is standard now, to shapeways of an avatar and have it printed....

Some basic aspects before we continue ...

skeezer said:

Great project and good luck and have fun with it!

I'm very interested in how to do a 3-D grab with open source software. I'd love to be able to send an obj, or whatever file is standard now, to shapeways of an avatar and have it printed....

Click to expand...

1. That is the tricky part! All my attempts to make a model of Jamira for the desktop of my RL avatar at planet Earth failed. (See the thread of suhrkamp mentioned above). The geometry is too rough. A cross section of my thigh will show you a dodecagon. CryEngine (as well as 3D Studio max) is smoothing the edges during the rendering. My legs ingame still look sexy while the 3D print shows each single edge without mercy. 3D Studio offers a very good smoothing tool. But it's a shit load of work to do this with a complete avatar model. Not to speak about hair!!!

2. I use 3D Ripper DX for grabbing geometry from 3D applications. (There are several other tools of this kind I think). It offers import plugins for 3D Studio max and Maya. You may work on that imported models a bit and should export them as STL-file (Stereolithography). You must have waterproof models for the 3D printing process. You may use Netfabb for repair small errors and gaps. (See Shapeways' homepage. They offer repair service as well if I remember right.)

3. Copyright and use of 3rd party software. When I started my first project - years ago - I asked MA if I am allowed to do so. I told them about 3D Ripper DX and they answered, that I am allowed to use it for private purpose. Keep in mind that our little universe has been build by MA and PP staff wich consumed time and money. The copyrights are under control of MA and PP. Even if you have bought an item ingame you didn't buy the copyright of the design. So be careful with grabbing and 3D printing. If it comes to the point that you send a 3D model to Shapeways or elsewhere put at least the logo of the designer on it. Better you ask them directly for permission before you do such things. Shapeways will ask you explicit for such permissions if you send a model there.

4. I do this in a different way. I build my own 3D model with software MA and PP don't use as far as I know. This model will be optimized for 3D printing not optimized for good performance in an online roleplay game. I've learned a lot about this during the last years. As long as my model looks like a model from Cyrene (grabbed or built by myself) I will ask the designer if I am allowed to use it. (Hopefully I'll reach the point this time!) This is an important part of the process. Don't laugh about this aspect!

5. Everybody who is interested in doing such things may follow this thread. I will tell a lot of details here about how to do it and will answer to questions as well. At other hand I will appreciate help from other folks who know more or other methods/software/tricks etc. about this issue than I do.

Let's go!

Here we go!

I decided to start with the propeller. The current part looks like this:



This edged appeareance is nothing, one would be happy with for the RL model. Compare it to the elegant appeareance of the original design! But since I want to find out a good middle ground between both I used this geometry to grab the raw dimensions. The picture has been taken from the perspective view in Rhino.

Now lets switch to SolidWorks:



This is a nice example to explain some details. I've checked Shapeways' homepage today again. They offer a pretty good "choose your material section": Price, Detail Level, Strength and Smoothness. My choose was: nothing, high, med and high. That lead me to only one material "Detail Plastic". As mentioned above I made a try in the past with parts of a Pitbull - same scale 1:50 if I remember right. This material offers low accuracy, the surface is rough and it's plain white. The price is 2,99 Euro / cubic centimeter. That's moderate.

Maximum dimension for one part is 250x250x200 mm. That's an important information. It will enable me to let it print as complete model. No need to separate it into smaller parts. That helps a lot. But at other hand I have to keep in mind the final coloring and appeareance. I have to make seperations and bumbs wich are done by bump mapping and texturing at the ingame model.

Another important information is the minimum wall thickness. It is 1 mm for Detail plastic. Since I set the scale to 1:50 it means that all parts thinner than 50 mm may vanish or cause problems. The rotor blades at the original are at 0.8 mm. This is a value I have to change to 1.0. That's no major problem with the Spec Lancer. But we will have to deal with it when it comes to model Jamira's (separated) fingers, her hair and such.

As you can see at the SW screenshot: The propeller blades are stick in the ring. That woudn't work in RL. But it's good for the 3D model. It will stabilize the blades a bit.

I will continue to post pictures of the original ingame model and the "progress pictures" from within SolidWorks. When I am at a serious stage of the model I will post a link to an eDrawing as well.

Thank you for the detailed answer and information Jamira.

Looking forward to seeing the progress and the result.

RL-avatar at planet Earth was a bit busy today with his silly RL-thingies ***roll eyes***
I couldn't do much in this evening. But I added the chassis to the model at least or whatever it shall be (cooler?).

The original geometry:



... and the part added to the model:


Not much to say at it. Except three points:

• The original model of this part has way to many faces ... sluttish modelling. I can explain this later or in another thread, not here.
• Neither the designer of the (very nice!) original sketch nor the modeller have any clue of mechanical engineering ;-)
• Who the hell cares as long as we got pretty nice flying machines in game

Well, next part will be the body of the machine. That's a very special job. I am too lazy to start with it this evening. Probably it'll take the whole weekend ... dunno. Stay tuned!

Okay, since it'll take some time I provide you a sneak preview using the ingame polygon net with my solid model:



Additional it is good to show the difference between the edged model from within the game and the solid model for 3D-printing.

Compare the rough polygon net to the screenshot above of the ingame appeareance. Ingame it looks way better. But that's all done by texture, opacity and bump maps, smoothing and lighting effects. That's a major issue if you want to own a pretty nice model of your ingame items.

Nice work, Jamira! I like what you do.
Not easy to make the 3D models ready for print.

if you once will buy a cheap 3D Printer, maybe that link helps : http://www.pearl.ch/ch-a-PV8611-1040.shtml

trance said:

Nice work, Jamira! I like what you do.
Not easy to make the 3D models ready for print.

if you ever will buy a cheap 3D Printer, maybe that link helps : http://www.pearl.ch/ch-a-PV8611-1040.shtml

Click to expand...

Hehe ... you already know that I ask providers of services instead of doing it by myself, don't you?
Wait ... how much is 1499 sFr? Have to check the german Pearl site

Jamira said:

Hehe ... you already know that I ask providers of services instead of doing it by myself, don't you?

Click to expand...

I just remembered at that link, if I saw this Thread. So i was think you maybe be interested to see it.

Holly shit! 900 Euro only??? That's a good trend.
Well, it's still too expensive. But it'll change during the next two years. I am pretty sure about this.

Keep in mind you need to buy printing material, accuracy and surface quality. But I will have an eye on it and compare it to what shapeways is offering. I will keep you update in this thread.

Thank you very much for the link, Trance!

I'm sure it will get cheaper within the next 1-3 years. But cheap in price, say noting about the quality...

about the print material, just look at the link, they also have glowing plastic for UV light.

I remember well good(?) old times when me and suhrkamp and malasuerte asked for making advertising or even merchandising with RL-models. Probably I should ask Cyrene staff?

Okay, I am faster than expected! I found kinda first attempt of the vehicle body. Doesn't look bad. I think I will use it.


The back part isn't okay. I will cut it and build it new. All in all this finding saves a lot of time - lol.

So far I keep the single parts separatly. The reason is: Later I will make some of them hollow. Simply to save money since the price at Shapeways results from costs per cubic centimeter. That may cause that I have to divide some parts. Just to be able to extract the not used material ... sounds like a "Farewell" to the One-Piece-Model ...

lol Alien!

I've checked Trance's suggestions regarding this PEARL 3D-printer as well today. In fact the plain printer is offered for 800 Euro! They've set some traps for laypersons like "professional software" = 900 Euro and a "Scan function" = 1100 Euro. Beware to buy that additional features. They are completely crap!

My thoughts regarding this PEARL advance are: If we are lucky they'll open a door. Others will follow and we'll see lower and lower prices during one year. Man! I can buy an ink pisser for 50 Euro!

I've compared the printing accuracy to the offer from Shapeways. PEARL's printer offers a coat thickness of 0.14 to 0.4 mm. That's good! But it'll produce visible steps. Shapeways' printings are more accurate. I will not buy that PEARL 3D-printer. I will sit and wait

Side note ... I coudn't make an account at Cyrene Forum yesterday. I think I will ask Lykke ;-)

Suuuuper!
I woke up in the morning and coudn't use my right hand anymore! It is called "Drop hand" or "parkbench palsy". I cannot type with it on my keyboard and cannot use my mouse. What a pitty! I use computers all the day - at work and at home.
They say it'll take one week up to three months until it's over! At the moment I type with my left hand using a pen on my tablet.

It looks like I am at vacation for a while now - lol

FYI

www.reichelt.de now has a 3D printer for 700E


keep up the good work

Mr-Joey said:

FYI

www.reichelt.de now has a 3D printer for 700E


keep up the good work

Click to expand...

Thank you Joey. But this is just another construction kit only and the accuracy is worse than the Pearl printer's accuracy (0,2 mm).

But it may help as well to let prices drop.