It's quite a striking photo which inspired me to try and reproduce the pose which I have decided to call 'Bridge'.
With its minimal points of contact and absolute requirement for support material, it was clear that I would need to start with a raft and, ideally, print in ABS. Whilst photos can only be seen from the specific angle selected by the photographer, sculptures can be viewed from any angle chosen by the viewer. Unusually for me, I decided that this particular model deserved a leotard to protect her modesty. I'll see how the print turns out and decide whether to do a fully nude version later.
The model in this photo has her hair in a simple bun which works well for this image. I tried making a bun but I didn't like the look of it. I also tried short and long hair styles but they didn't really work with this heads-down position. At the moment the model doesn't have hair but, again, I may decide to review this after the first test print.
Daz3D and Poser are both very good programs, the first of these currently being available free. There has been some interesting discussion on their forum about licensed use of the software for 3D printing and real model manufacture. Their position is that anything other than 2D renderings is not covered by the EULA. The issue seems to be that the designers of the meshes are concerned that uploading a 3D file to a 3D printing service bureau would pose an increased risk of piracy. By using a home printer to print low resolution facsimiles of digital models there absolutely no risk of any digital files going astray. The other facet to this is that Daz are considering selling 3D printing licences to extend the current EULA. If these were reasonably priced and meant that I would be allowed to sell any models that I printed then I would seriously consider buying one. Of course, if they priced it in the same league as the current computer game character licence then it would be way beyond the finances of most home 3D printer owners. Personally, I think that the main sticking point is that the software and associated models are not adapted for 3D printing which means that aspiring sculptors would need additional mesh editing skills to fix all the problems that make prints fail. Consequently, until the software is substantially modified for 3D printing use, the volume of sales of licences would be too low to make them worth bothering with.
ReplyDeleteSo in the meantime I'm afraid I can't recommend or condone the use of these programs for making real models. What you choose to do with them is entirely up to you, of course.
Entiresia,
ReplyDeletemay I suggest http://www.makehuman.org/ as an alternative and in case you don't know about it.
Note that have never tried it so I don't khow how good or bad it is.