122 replies to this topic

[Rubidiy]

Sentinel373
Hi! It's me again. I'm really happy that I've decided to work in 3D max. Now I've got no problem with questions like "how do I do this?".

So I've started working on my own geometry which will be added or will replace some parts of Centurion model. I'm making sure every object is closed, but I'm kinda worrying about the level of detail I'm going to create.

this barrel is going to be like 30mm (~1,2 inch) length. Is it ok to continue adding details on the barrel or they just won't be printable?

Second main question is: Are you making 3D empty holes inside your models so they would weight and cost less? You mentioned thickness of walls. Can you explain that a bit? For example, what's the height of your ordered models, and how thick their walls are?

Edited by Rubidiy, 18 April 2013 - 10:44 AM.

[Sentinel373]

to awnser your first question; you can add as many details as you want, but it really depends on the printer thats being used. for example i use a printer that can make details up to 0.3mm. but most commonly i see printers with detail levels around 1mm. you'd have to ask the print shop what their requirements are. also if you make details that are smaller than what most printers can put out it will come out looking like a blob or it wont be printed at all.

my models are table top game size. (1.5 inch) although i am working on a much larger version of the raven and catapult. so if i made my tt models hollow they would be very weak and you could easily crush them at that size, so those models arent very hollow. what i mean by wall thickness is, if you make your model hollow the outer wall must have a certain thickness or else the printer will get confused and will often see the wall as none existent. each printer has a minimum wall thickness that it can print. this you must also ask the print shop.
the wall thickness of some of my other printed models (non battletech related) were usualy around 1mm thick.

[Rubidiy]

Sentinel373
What game files are you importing to Maya?
I'm importing centurion_scale.cgf. Is it right? I'm kinda puzzled now how to change mech's stance. How did you do that? I imported this file seemingly preserving all animation properties, but I see no active animation options and no skeleton in 3D max.

Edited by Rubidiy, 21 April 2013 - 06:20 AM.

[Sentinel373]

I imported all the pieces seperately into maya. and then cleaned all those pieces by hand and then assembled them using the _scale file as reference. once that was done i deleted the _scale model and created a simple animation skeleton that would allow me to pose it very easily.

here's what my rigged model looks like in maya


the layers tab on the right side is what contains all the individual components for the weapons and variants.
the highlanders has about 30 seperate weapon hardpoints on the model. so i can make variants that the game doesnt allow. same with the catapult and the raven.

[Rubidiy]

Sentinel373
yeah, this sounds like a better idea than trying to animate Centurion from _scale.cgf file. I've spent whole sunday learning how to do and then applying skeleton to my file. It turned out to be so complicated (for centurion has a lot of complex geometry at bending areas) that manually moving and rotating every vertex of entire model would have been an easier job. I had a lot of trouble unbinding unwanted vertexes from different parts of the skeleton. By now only one foot is moving as intended.

anyway Ive managed to prepare a model for printing by using MeshLab. This cool application closes gaps and creates walls of desired thickness, so I can actually order any model from the game as it is. Thus I'm stuck now with animation (which I'm going to do manualy) and creating different parts for my model.
I downloaded trial *.stl file which basicly had general geometry and online calculator showed me something like 150-200$ for my 13cm high centurion.

Edited by Rubidiy, 21 April 2013 - 12:44 PM.

[Sentinel373]

my first set which i'll be ordering this afternoon

[Rubidiy]

Nice! So what's their size and wall thickness?

Edited by Rubidiy, 23 April 2013 - 11:14 AM.

[Tennex]

Sentinel373, on 22 April 2013 - 02:22 AM, said:

my first set which i'll be ordering this afternoon

are these to scale?

any plans to print them to scale?

[Rubidiy]

That's my 10cm Stalker ready for 3D printing.

Edited by Rubidiy, 23 April 2013 - 12:41 PM.

[Sentinel373]

Tennex, on 23 April 2013 - 11:15 AM, said:

are these to scale?

any plans to print them to scale?

These are table top size. The base is 1.25 inches wide based on that i made the models as big as i could on them without their feet going to far over the edge. I used the catapult as the base scale and scaled all the mechs (save the raven) to the catapult. the highlander is 4.5 cm tall including the base. so they are to scale with eachother. but i dont know what the real scale value is.

The raven is 20% bigger than what it is suposed to be compared to the other mechs because his legs would have been 1mm thick and thats simply too thin to hold it up.

I have plans to print a bigger version of some but i need to spend some time with these larger models to make them affordable. i'm not willing to spend 200 euro's for a single figure.

Rubidiy, on 23 April 2013 - 12:34 PM, said:

That's my 10cm Stalker ready for 3D printing.

Nice pose. although might i suggest you remove the antennae, cause they are going to break off garuanteed or they will turn out all mangled. once printed.

Btw you mentioned there is a meshlab feature that allows you to generate walls of a certain thickness. i've looked through this program but i havent found that feature, where can i find it. so far i've been making all my models hollow by hand.

Edited by Sentinel373, 23 April 2013 - 04:28 PM.

[Sean Lang]

Can you guys post pictures of the final 3d printed models? I want to see the quality!

[Sentinel373]

Sean Lang, on 23 April 2013 - 04:33 PM, said:

Can you guys post pictures of the final 3d printed models? I want to see the quality!

I intend to post them as soon as i receive them, which should be next week

[Rubidiy]

Sentinel373, on 23 April 2013 - 04:24 PM, said:

These are table top size. The base is 1.25 inches wide based on that i made the models as big as i could on them without their feet going to far over the edge. I used the catapult as the base scale and scaled all the mechs (save the raven) to the catapult. the highlander is 4.5 cm tall including the base. so they are to scale with eachother. but i dont know what the real scale value is.

The raven is 20% bigger than what it is suposed to be compared to the other mechs because his legs would have been 1mm thick and thats simply too thin to hold it up.

I have plans to print a bigger version of some but i need to spend some time with these larger models to make them affordable. i'm not willing to spend 200 euro's for a single figure.


Nice pose. although might i suggest you remove the antennae, cause they are going to break off garuanteed or they will turn out all mangled. once printed.

Btw you mentioned there is a meshlab feature that allows you to generate walls of a certain thickness. i've looked through this program but i havent found that feature, where can i find it. so far i've been making all my models hollow by hand.

antennae is going to be remodeled. I've completely forgotten about it. I'll make it thicker and shorter.

about meshlab. Here's a very useful tutorial about it. http://www.3dartisto...or-3d-printing/
This app. closes almost every gap in model (there are over 200 gaps in every mech), so when you export file From Meshlab and reopen it in Maya or 3DSmax, mech only has a couple of badly closed gaps which can be closed manually quite fast. Meshlab may open *.obj files exported from 3Dmax with an error, so you might still need to resave 'em as *.stl (by means of Noesis) and open in Meshlab. I don't know whether it goes to Maya too or not.
About walls: this app. does it's job allright, but currently i'm stuck with a problem of 3Dmax refusing to collapse so many objects into one mesh model.
What's your way of making a single mesh from all these parts?

Edited by Rubidiy, 24 April 2013 - 12:25 AM.

[Sentinel373]

The printer i use doesnt require he model to be a single mesh. But when i do merge it all into one part i use an option in maya called boolean> union. It merges two intersecting models into one

[DasFreshMaker]

Nice Stalker.

Edited by DasFreshMaker, 24 April 2013 - 09:32 AM.

[aniviron]

Just want to say that I love your poses Sentinel- amazing attention to detail, really adds a lot of character and life to them. Will be watching this to see how they come out!

[M E X]

DasFreshMaker, on 03 April 2013 - 11:53 AM, said:

Really ? So... If Odanan agreed to create a model for me and I reimburse him for the cost of his materials & shipping, then PGI would not have any complaints ?

But Topps may have complaints about it !

Adridos, on 03 April 2013 - 11:57 AM, said:

It's not the PGI that does the complaining. That is Topps, which owns exclusive rights to Btech miniature rights.

As the 3d-models are the property of PGI, this would allow us to SHARE the files with the data for printing the model on your own 3d-printer, or that of a friend ?

[Rubidiy]

Sentinel373, on 24 April 2013 - 01:29 AM, said:

The printer i use doesnt require he model to be a single mesh. But when i do merge it all into one part i use an option in maya called boolean> union. It merges two intersecting models into one

trouble is, that if you are going to make walls, you wanna make entire figure a single mesh, otherwise there won't be much space inside to become hollow. Boolean > union works as it seems only in case of very few and very simple objects. It means that you have to detach every single subobject from mech and fulfil a boolean union with it's neighbour and so on... If one of these objects consists at least of two sub objects, boolean will fail.
I also noticed that proboolean subtraction does not work with geometry created by Loft modifier (when you draw a planar object by closed bezier curve and then make it 3D by Loft ). Even further convertation into editable poly or mesh does not help.

Edited by Rubidiy, 25 April 2013 - 01:36 AM.

[Rubidiy]

a better view on my stalker (this is an old render. Antennae and other thin parts are thicker now.

Spoiler

BTW if anyone wanders about printing quality

Edited by Rubidiy, 25 April 2013 - 01:42 AM.

[Sentinel373]

A friend of mine was kind enoegh to print the catapult at a larger scale using his universities 3d printer. Here's. a pic with most of the support material still on. Its resting in an acid bath right now to remove that. I should have some new pics of it tommorow. Its about 3inches tall

Edited by Sentinel373, 25 April 2013 - 02:19 AM.