Curl

I decided to have a go at reproducing the pose in Jian Xu's picture shown at the bottom of my last post. Tricky parts included getting the fingers into the correct position, particularly since it seemed to push the right elbow into odd places, and dealing with the deep mesh overlap where calves met thighs and thighs met trunk.

I'm still struggling to get good quality solid hair and I don't always like the models looking bald! This time I used Sculptris to fashion a short hair style starting from a simple sphere. It's not great but it kind of works.

Here is the cleaned up version in Blender beside the reference picture.

Metamorphosis looked beautiful in the translucent blue but, being made of PLA, I couldn't use the acetone vapor bath to smooth the surface. PLA isn't soluble in acetone. I knew that I wanted to have a smooth surface on Curl, so I thought I would try printing a copy in black ABS.

My first attempt was sliced in Slic3r 0.98 but again I was disappointed with the way it generates support structures, so I abandoned that print and sliced again in Kisslicer. This version looked much more promising and I have learned that the initial raft is an indispensable feature for supporting this type of model.

Here is the model on the print bed and in close up, showing the support structures (under LED lighting).

Here is the bottom section of the support material after it was peeled away from the model. I am still impressed with how well the support separates from the model given that they are both made of the same material.

And here is the final version after processing in acetone vapor.

Computer Graphics Society

My latest search for ideas for a new sculpture led me to the CG Society website where I found some great art.
The first picture I found was by Edward McEvenue and looks like a 3D rendering but, as the artist's own website reveals, it is actually a painting derived from an original image here.

The second picture by Jian Xu was modelled in 3DSMax and once again I liked the unusual position of the limbs and the head presenting some beautiful curves which should prove quite challenging to reproduce.