80,000 views

In celebration of reaching 80,000 page views, here is a brand new sculpture I created to print on my new 3D printer. I started from this photo found on Pinterest. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to identify the model or the photographer. If anyone has any information, please let me know.

I use Daz Studio 4.9 to create a pose using the Olympia 7 model and Sally G3 hair. Here is the model in the Daz Studio interface.

After exporting the model from Daz Studio I used Project Miller to reskin the model and Blender to shrink-wrap the hair. I did a considerable amount of work using the sculpt tools in Blender to improve the look and shape of the hair whilst keeping it as printable as possible. Here is a screen grab of the final STL file.

I recently upgraded to a BigBox3D from E3Donline and here is the model printed using grey Edge filament.

A nice addition to the collection!

Yoga interrupted

My third and final sculpture this week is a mashup of two more photos I found on Belladonna's Tumblr blog. I wanted to use the top half of this photo ...

... and the bottom half of this painting by Giuseppe Gigli ...

... combined in a single pose.

Getting the feet into position was the most difficult part.

I am already a total convert to the idea of 'micro-layering - printing the external skin at 0.1 mm layer height but the support and infill at 0.3 mm layer height, so infill is only laid down every third layer. One of the new features I have been experimenting with is 'infill zoning'.

• Starting at the bottom, Zone 1 uses 25% infill.
• The top surfaces of the calves, thighs and feet are in Zone 2 and use 40% infill.
• The trunk, arms and head in Zone 3 revert to 25% infill.
• The top of the head uses 50% infill.

You can just about see the four zones in this reverse cross-section view (click to enlarge).

This uses less infill material where it is not needed, saving time and money, but increases the level of internal support where important top surfaces need to be laid down smoothly. 

The support material generated by Simplify3D worked reasonably well but left the undersides of the elbows and calves a little rougher than I would have liked.

Loopback

Another new pose inspired by this photo I found on Pinterest. The original photograph was taken by Mikhail Nekrasov.

(UPDATE - see Mikhail's comment below)

Character posing software really seems to struggle with extreme shoulder positions and this one was no exception.

I wanted to use Simplify3D again to make use of the excellent support material it generates. However, importing the finished model processed in Blender seemed to show artefacts generated by the eyes and mouth. Cura's Fix Horrible option still does a better job than Simplify 3D in this regard but unfortunately there is no function to export a 'fixed' file.

My standard solution in the past would have been to use Project Miller, the great experimental tool from Autodesk Labs, but it expired and ceased to work on 1st April 2014. Not funny!

Just on the off-chance, I reset my PC's clock to Feb 2014 and started the program up again. Bingo! It works perfectly. I fixed the model, exported a new STL file and loaded it up into Simplify3D. The new gcode looks clean as a whistle. Ready to start printing.

After a 12 hour printing run the print quality is already looking great.

This black ABS plastic always looks nice after smoothing with acetone vapour. Some of the horizontal banding caused by the print layers can become a bit more prominent though, so after breaking away all the support material I decided to try something new and gave the whole model a light sanding with a fine grit sandpaper first.

For models like this, I recommend doing the acetone vapour treatment in two halves. Holding the upper half of the model, I gently lowered the legs into the vapour for about 20 seconds and then set it aside to harden on a ceramic tile. Once the surface was hard to the touch several minutes later, I held the model upside down in the vapour and treated the head and body the same way.
This method gives a nice even smoothing without risking melting the lowest parts into a puddle of sludge.

  

And here's the original again.  How did I do?

Contact

How about this amazing pose in another photo I found on Pinterest? 
It appears to have come from the Raw Moves collection by photographer, James Houston.

I love the point of contact of the feet, which reminds me of some of the abstract works of Henry Moore or Jean Arp.

I think it will print OK. I'm just not sure how well it would translate into a female pose. 

What do you think?

Well, I had to give it a go, didn't I! As it turned out, getting the pose right was the easy part. I increased the muscle tone a bit and shaped the breasts into a position that suggest they are hanging in the correct direction.
Finding a way to actually print the model proved much more challenging.

Here is a view of the model in MeshLab.

The biggest problem was the contact point of the two big toes - I just knew that the tiny point of contact would be incapable of supporting the weight of the top leg growing upwards above it without breaking. After experimenting with several different ideas and some abortive prints, I decided to cut the model across the middle and print it in two halves. Finding the best place to make the cut took several attempts but the final solution turned out to be the obvious one - cut exactly between the two big toes at the contact point.

Here is the model in Cura, ready for slicing. I used MeshMixer to generate the support structures because it allowed me to place them exactly where I needed them.

And here is the same view in Repetier Host, showing the Gcode file ready for printing.

OK, it's finished! I had to reprint the leg because the toes broke on the first try due to poorly positioned supports. After cleaning them up in Blender I had another go and it came out much better.
I printed in PLA and after cleaning up the support material I used superglue to join the two halves together.

Straight from the printer, supports still attached.

Front view, reproducing the original pose.

Viewed from the back.

 
There are some nasty blemishes left behind where the supports were removed and I've also noticed that I'm getting more Z-banding on the models than I used to see. Maybe time to think about tuning up the printer again.

Arch

Pinterest continues to be a great source of inspiration for my 3D printed nude figurines. The latest photo I found was this one, which, according to Google image search, was originally taken by L M Hughes.

It's a fantastic pose and a great challenge for a 3D printer.
I set up the pose using my favourite software and then went through the cleaning process, which is now getting quicker as the routine becomes more established. These are the steps I now go through:

• Export the model as an OBJ file keeping the body and hair as separate objects
• Import the model into Blender - the hair and body should be separately selectable 
• Hide the hair temporarily
• Select the body and go into point edit mode
• Pick any vertex and then use Ctrl-L to select all linked vertices. Now press H to hide these points. This is a really easy way to identify any internal components
• Select all of the eyelashes,teeth, gums and tongue and delete them
• Keep the front of the eyes but delete the iris, lens and non-visible parts.
• Use Alt-H to un-hide any hidden vertices
• From the side view, select all the points in the bottom 1-2 mm of the model and scale to zero on the Z axis - this makes a flat base for the model
• Now in object mode, hide the body and un-hide the hair
• Add a high density icosphere mesh so that it surrounds the hair
• Shrink-wrap the sphere around the hair target using the negative projection setting so that all the points move towards the centre until they meet the hair surface
• Now delete the hair object and keep the sphere which has taken on the shape of the hair, but in a single closed mesh
• Un-hide the body and save the body and hair together as an STL file
• Open the STL file in Cura
• In the Expert settings, use FixHorrible-Type B - this removes any internal holes and prints much more reliably
• Turn on the default support settings
• Use Z-lift on retract to stop the nozzle from catching on edges as it travels from area to area
• I printed at 0.15 mm resolution with some fairly aggressive cooling from a new fan mounted on the hot-end

Here is the printed model with the support structure still attached.

And here it is with the support removed.

Even the top of the foot came out well thanks to some fairly aggressive cooling.

Kayleigh

One of the most beautiful poses I've seen recently on Pinterest was this one.

It had been repinned many times, so clearly other people agreed with me, but wasn't being properly credited. I used Google image search to track down the original version and discovered that the model is Kayleigh Lush.

I used my favourite character modelling software to emulate the pose (not exactly right, but good enough to capture the spirit of the picture, I hope) and then exported an OBJ file. I then used Blender to correct the orientation and scale and to flatten the base and remove the eyelashes, before exporting an STL file.

Here is the screen capture of the 3D model in Blender.

This time I used Project Miller again to select the external surfaces of the model, then used Kisslicer to generate the gcode file with full support turned on and printed in white PLA from Faberdashery at 0.15 mm resolution. 

Another pretty successful print, in my view.

With hindsight, it might have been better to have sliced with Cura and used the expert setting called 'Fix Horrible' - type B, which closes all internal holes and deals much more nicely with limb overlaps. Maybe next time.

Marble mashup

At last, I feel inspired to start work on a new piece. I've continued to collect photos of interesting nude poses on my Pinterest page and recently found a couple of pictures that I think might work well together.

The first piece is a marble sculpture by Cicero D'Avila. The torso and legs will prove an interesting challenge to reproduce, but the hands are not ideally placed for 3D printing because of the way the fingers are pointing down.

The second picture was a recent find which I think I can use to create the arm pose for my new design. I couldn't find information about the photographer - if you know, please pass the details on and I'll credit them.

Creating the pose wasn't too difficult and took me only a couple of hours. Project Miller is a fantastic new tool in my toolkit which hugely simplifies the process of making a 3D object printable. It can automatically wrap the model in a single manifold mesh which eliminates all of the problems with hair, eyes, teeth and folded limbs, at a single stroke.

I then took the raw model into Blender and began the process of sculpting in some additional details in the hair. 

The next step was to find the best way of slicing and supporting the model ready for 3D printing. this time I decided to give Cura a try. Cura is an extremely fast slicer written by David Braam of Ultimaker. When I'm evaluating a sliced model that needs support, I look for the right amount of support material with an adequate gap between the support and the model so that it will break away with the minimum of effort.

My first attempt at printing this model, which I have named Cicero for convenience, used a light grey PLA and took over 8 hours to print. The lower half started well but sadly the head and arms are not as smooth and seem covered in a regular indentation. The pose looks great though and is definitely one I would consider using again.