Blenderart Mag-40 Eng

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ISSUE 40 | NOV 2012 | WWW.BLENDERART.ORG

Using the 3D print for the productsdesign and fine arts

3DPrinting!

100 hours of print time and what I have learned

How to learn learning

Pirate - by Ben Dansie

BLENDER LEARNING MADE EASY!

How to become a successful Blender Shapeways designer


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EDITOR- GauravNawani

MANAGER/EDITOR- SandraGilbert

WEBSITE- NamPham

DESIGN- GauravNawani

PROOFERSCharlie Shene

Fade Shayol *

Scott Hill

Brian C. Treacy

Bruce Westfall

Daniel Hand

Daniel Mate

Henril Veldtmann

Joshua Leung

Joshua Scotton

Kevin Braun

Mark Warren *

Noah Summers

Phillip RyalRonan Posnic

Wade Bick *

WRITERS

Richard Borrett

Dreamsgate

Metalnat Hayes

Joris Verbeken and Virginie Peeters

Dolf Veenvliet

Chris Yonge

Krzysztof Bozalek

Ben Dansie

Shigeto Maeda

Orest BHakkRza Kk

COVERART

The Trip - by Anurag

DISCLAIMER

Blenderart.org does not take any responsibility either ex-pressed or implied for the material and its nature or ac-curacy of the information which is published in this PDFmagazine. All the materials presented in this PDFmagazine have been produced with the expressed per-mission of their respective authors/owners. Blender-art.org and the contributors disclaim all warranties,expressed or implied, including, but not limited to impliedwarranties of merchantability or fitness for a particularpurpose. All images and materials present in this docu-ment are printed/re-printed with expressed permissionfrom the authors and or writers. The contents responsib-ility lies completely with the contributing writer or the au-thor of the article.

This PDF magazine is archived and available from theblenderart.org website. The blenderart magazine is madeavailable under Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs2.5license.

COPYRIGHT 2005-2012 Blenderart Magazine, blender-artand Blenderart logo are copyright of Gaurav Nawani.Izzyand Izzy logoare copyright Sandra Gilbert. Allproducts and company names featured in the publicationare trademark or registered trademarks of their respect-ive owners.

B a c k w h e n I g o t i n t o 3 D I

t h o u g h t i t w a s t h e c o o l e s t t h i n g

i n t h e w o r l d t o s t a r t w i t h a

b l a n k s c r e e n a n d c r e a t e a

" s o m e t h i n g " . A n d t h e c o o l p a r t

w a s t h a t I c o u l d t u r n i t a n d v i e w

i t f r o m a n y a n g l e . I w a s n o

l o n g e r l i m i t e d t o j u s t o n e v i e w

a n d I d i d n ' t h a v e t o " d r a w /

p a i n t " m u l t i p l e a n g l e s . I c o u l d

j u s t m o v e t h e c a m e r a a n d " t a

d a h " , n e w i m a g e . S e r i o u s l y

a w e s o m e .

W e l l n o w t h a t a w e s o m e n e s s h a s

g r o w n t o a w h o l e n e w l e v e l .

T e c h n o l o g y h a s a d v a n c e d t o t h e

p o i n t w h e r e y o u c a n p r i n t o u t

y o u r " s o m e t h i n g " . Y e s , t h a t ' s

r i g h t , p r i n t i t o u t a n d a c t u a l l y

h o l d i t . T h a t j u s t m a k e s m e

w a n t t o " h a p p y d a n c e " a l l o v e r

t h e o f f i c e . : )

T h e r e a r e s e v e r a l c o m p a n i e s t h a t

o f f e r 3 D p r i n t i n g s e r v i c e s a s w e l l

a s a n u m b e r o f a f f o r d a b l e 3 D

p r i n t e r s f o r t h o s e o f u s t h a t

s i m p l y c a n ' t l i v e w i t h o u t o n e .

S o w h y w o u l d y o u w a n t t o p r i n t

o u t y o u r 3 D m o d e l s ? W e l l ,

b e y o n d t h e o b v i o u s " c o o l n e s s "

o f s i m p l y b e i n g a b l e t o p r i n t i t

o u t a n d p l a y w i t h i t ?

T h e r e a r e u n l i m i t e d u s e s . Y o u

c o u l d p r o t o t y p e n e w p r o d u c t s a s

w e l l a s p r i n t a n d s e l l a c t u a l

p r o d u c t s i n a g r o w i n g n u m b e r o f

m a t e r i a l s . E v e r y t h i n g f r o m

j e w e l r y t o s m a r t p h o n e c a s e s

a n d q u i t e a f e w u n u s u a l a n d

u n i q u e i t e m s a s w e l l .

I f y o u c a n c r e a t e / m o d e l i t , y o u

c a n p r i n t i t o u t a s l o n g a s y o u

t a k e i n t o c o n s i d e r a t i o n t h e

p r i n t i n g s p e c i f i c a t i o n s f o r y o u r

c h o s e n m a t e r i a l .

B u t w h e r e a n d h o w d o y o u g e t

s t a r t e d ? W e l l t h a t i s e x a c t l y w h a t

w e w i l l b e l o o k i n g a t i n t h i s

i s s u e . S o g a t h e r c l o s e a s w e

d e l v e i n t o t h e e x c i t i n g w o r l d o f

" 3 D P r i n t i n g " .

.

Technology has advanced to

the point w here you can

print out your "somet hing".

Sandra Gilbert

Manager/Editor

EDITORIAL

CONTENTS

BLENDERART- ISSUE40|NOV2012

2

Printed Pirates

CombiningCNC

milling and3D

projection

mapping

3d printingwith

Blender

Using the3Dprintforthe products

designand fine

arts

MakersFactory

100hoursof print

timeandwhat I

havelearned

6

14

21

12

18

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A clueless wonder's guide to 3D printing. Andwhen I started this project I was definitelyclueless. I mean I did have a general workingunderstanding of what was needed. Design a model,send it to a 3D print service like Shapeways and waitfor it to arrive in the mail.

A rather simplistic understanding of course, but itwas enough of a start to get me going.

PLANNINGSTAGE:

Any project requires at least a bit of planning. First

you need to decide exactly what you are going tomodel and print. That in itself can be a real showstopper. For my first 3D printing project I modeledour BAM logo.

Now, you may have noticed the BAM logo is ratherlong and rectangular and really not that complicated.But it is mostly text, something I am not overly fondof modeling. Luckily for me, I have an SVG of our logowhich took most of the pain out of modeling it. Onceimported into Blender, there was a bit of clean upinvolved, but fairly quickly I had a simple 3D version

of the BAM logo. It was simple, clean and frankly, notoverly inspired. So it was time to stop and do a bit ofthat planning thing.

After giving it some thought, I decided our logo wasjust too long and unwieldy. Then I remembered thatwe have an alternate logo that we use on ourFacebook page. That might make a better starting

point. After tossing a few ideas around, I hitupon trying to make it look like it had beencarved out of a large stone. I Googled abunch of images of carved stone signs for

reference and a concept started taking shape.

Since I had already modeled the original BAM logo, itwas a simple matter of grabbing the B and A andstarting from there. I decided to delete the magpart of the logo (I didn't think it would show up well

since it is so small compared to the rest of the logo).A couple of hours later I had a reasonable lookingcarved stone logo. It probably would have takenconsiderably less time if I hadn't spent so longplaying in sculpt mode. Sculpting is seriouslyaddictive fun!

UPLOADSTAGE:

This probably should have been done before themodeling, but now I decided to go look at the specsfor the material I was going to use, in this case Full

Colored Sandstone. The part that stuck out the mostwas the sandcastle rule. If this structure was madeof wet sand, would it break?

Hmmm, does that mean it needs to be solid? A quickemail to Bart answered that question. Not at all. Itcan be hollowed out but the walls must be thickenough to support it, in this case the walls wouldneed to be at least 3mm thick.

Well, that meant it was time to go back to Blender,because I currently have a solid object. Not ideal,

since the pricing is done on volume. So a quickextrusion up into the model from the bottom shoulddo it. Yeah, kind of.

Bart did suggest using MeshLab to check my modelbefore uploading, so I downloaded the program,exported my amazing creation and opened it inMeshLab and had absolutely no idea what to do from

IZZYSPEAKSthe truth andnothing but the truth

3

BLENDERART- ISSUE40|NOV2012

3D PRINTING OF BAM LOGO

IZZYSPEAKS


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there. Cluelessness strikes again. A bit of pokingaround did let me see mymodel from all angles andsee the size and thickness of it, but that is all I couldfigure out. I am sure that MeshLab is a greatprogram, but I would need to spend a fair amount oftime trying to figure it out. So I went back to Blenderwhere I am most comfortable to check wallthickness, size and if I had any non-manifold issues.Naturally there were issues that I needed to addressbefore I uploaded my model. Did you really expect

there wouldn't be?

Non-manifold issues were revealed by pressingCTRL+ALT+M. Luckily there were only a few which Ifixed up. Next was sizing. When I actually checkedhow big my model was I was seriously surprised. Ihadn't given any real thought to size while modelingso it was HUGE! In fact big enough to be a smallornament in my garden. Serious re-scaling down to amore manageable size was required. I think I settledfor about 4-5 inches high.

Okay time to upload it to Shapeways. First you needan account, which is very easy to set up, then uploadyour model. The dialog for uploading is very simpleto use. Then you wait and get an email that states:

Hi ,

We just received the successful upload of your product

'BAM_3D _print .x3D '.W e will now run some automat ed checks

to see if your product can be printed.

When your product is fine you can find it in your 'My

Shapeways' secti on and you will be notif ied that your product is

printable.

When your product can not be print ed you will receive an e-mail

with t heerror we found.

We will get back asap to you with the results of the checks.

Now honestly I have no idea how long it took forthem to check my model because I wandered off for

a cup of coffee and completed a few householdtasks. Next time I checked my email, there was a newemail letting me know that my model was nowavailable in the My Models section of my account.

Yay, time to check it out and look at prices.Whoopsie, I may have wanted to size that model abit smaller. Full color sandstone was going to costover $300.00.

Now is a good time to discuss sizing and pricing.Models are priced on volume not size, so any modelthat is pretty solid and fairly big it is going to costmore than if it was either smaller or less solid.

Since my model was a fairly solid object, I opted forthinning the walls and reducing the size to about 2inches, which actually will fit on my over crowdeddesk much better anyhow. :P


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BLENDERART- ISSUE40|NOV2012 IZZYSPEAKS


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After uploading and waiting for it to be ready forviewing/ordering, I now had a model that would only

cost a little over $17.00. Reducing the size andvolume made a big difference in price. So I wentahead and placed my order. Now all I had to do iswait for it to arrive.

About two weeks later my model arrived in the mail.I was super excited to see how it turned out. It wasTOTALLY AWESOME. I love the way Full ColorSandstone looks and feels. And the material reallywent well with my model. It gave it added dimensionas a carved stone. In fact I am highly consideringmodeling a bunch more stones and small ornamentsand creating a desk top zen garden. I think it wouldlook amazing.

All said and done, I have decided there is nothingcooler than actually holding something you modeled

in your hands and getting to look at it from all sides.The process was not as hard or scary as I hadimagined it to be and it is something that I will beexploring further in the near future.

So if you haveyet to take the 3D printing plunge, Iencourage you to give it a try.

It is a fun and pretty easy process that results in coolobjects arriving in the mail. :P


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BLENDERART- ISSUE40|NOV2012 IZZYSPEAKS

IMAGINETHEPOSSIBILITIES

Anewyear hasarrived filledwith possibilities for

artisticgrowth and learning. In this issueweare

going to lookat your personal projects and goals

for 2013.Whatdoyou hopeto learn or

accomplishwith blender this year. The

possibilities areendless, so let thepossibility

party begin.Looking fortutorialsor making ofarticleson:

PersonalProjects/Creations

Anytoolor technique

Again way to go on the masters level!!!!

UPCOMING - ISSUE41


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Using current t echnology to realise an imagined relic of sea-

faring history.

INTRODUCTION

3D printing issomething that Iwould recom-mend every CG

artist tries atleast once if theyhave the chance.There is the usu-al safety net ofcopy, save, undoand all the otheruniquely digital concepts we take for granted.However, at the end of the process you have the satis-faction of being able to hold and admire the fruit ofyour labours in a physical form. Renders can be beau-tiful, but if you haven't engaged in much traditional

artwork before, it is really quite something to seeyour work outside of the context of a screen.

It is also a chance to create items that would be verydifficult or near impossible to create any other way.Overlaps, interlocking parts, small areas a knifecouldn't possibly fit and scaled detail that would be ri-diculously hard to carve by hand.

This article will cover a range of processes involved in

printing a metal pendant, but most of the informationshould apply to 3D printing in general. It is also worthmentioning that this is not a detailed modelling tu-torial. With that in mind, let's begin!

INSPIRATIONANDDESIGN

I knew I wanted to do pirate themed pieces when Istarted. I also knew I didn't want to just sit down andmodel the first thing that came to mind. I've done thatbefore and it never comes close to what I havein theback of my imagination. Given that I had some time

off work I threw myself into a range of inspiration.Books, forum threads, films, music, games and more.Thanks to the likes of Geoffrey Rush, Dominic Armatoand Kermit the Frog, I was all set to start with thepencil.

Pencil? This is a computer graphics magazine, isn't it?

I do thoroughly enjoy usingmy Wacom tablet for tex-ture painting, but I still findmyself far more comfort-able with an actual pencilwhen it comes to fleshingout designs and ideas. Giv-en that this was a person-ally directed project, I hadthe complete luxury of go-ing about the tasks exactly as I wanted. So pen and

6

BLENDERART- ISSUE40|NOV2012 3DWORKSHOP

3DWORKSHOPLearningblender the easyway

PrintedPirates

BenDansie

Contributing Author

Fig.1:Frontand sideviewsof facialmodel inBlender.


7/38

pencil it was. While watching pirate films and eatingcheesecake of course. I love the design phase...

After brainstorming a list of all things buccaneer andtrying a few, I decided to go with a female pirate cap-tain. The inspiration just seemed to flow that way. Iavoided doing the ring design because I wanted tohave the end result for sale on Shapeways and sellingdifferent ring sizeswas something I stillneeded to research. Itried the earring

design, but the longcurved attachment atthe top worked farbetter in 2D than itdid in 3D. So I revis-ited the design andthus the pendantshowed itself.

If I had simply thought 'pirate' and started out inBlender, I wouldn't have come anywhere near this lineof thought.

MODELLING

From here I was ready to get into the modelling. All ofthe base meshes were completed in Blender and thesculpting was done in Zbrush. Blender's sculptingtools are gaining ground for sure, but as a Zbrushowner I'm quite happy to use it when appropriate. I'dloveto decide one day that clayand a huge 3D scan-ner were the right tools for the job, but somehow Ilack the funds for a huge 3D scanner. (If someone hasan article about high detail, home-brew photogram-

metry, I'm all ears.)

Often I'll feel free to deviate from my own concept artand just use it as a starting block, but I was alreadyhappy with the feel of the sketches and wanted to atleast keep the overall forms as intact as possible. Tokeep the silhouette, I traced the outline of the piratein the initial sketch with vertices and extruded in from

there. I considered actually modelling the base ofeach major hair curl with proper topology, but thatwould have taken too much effort for too little re-ward in the end. Good topology can help with thesculpting process for sure, but when your end result issterling silver that you can polish, polygons don'tenter into it as much. (Side note: Deliberately printinga low poly mesh can have an interesting effect if youwant to go thatroute.)

While it was

clear that Iwanted to pre-dominantlysculpt the headand poly modelthe wheel, theserpents werecertainly a mix of both. Once all the components weretogether and scaled correctly to fit with one another, Igave the whole thing a subtle 'nudging' pass. Deliber-ately moving parts around slightly to break up perfectcurves, giving a slightly more handmade look to the fi-

nal result.

It is also important to keep physical structure in mindduring the modelling process, not just as somethingyou check for afterwards. Are you you printing inmetal? Plastic? Does it need to hold or support any-thing? This project was always going to be in metal.I've worked with Sterling Silver before, so while I'mcertainly no silversmith I had a reasonable idea ofwhat details would show up and how strong certainparts needed to be. Structurally it just needed to holdit's own weight on any of the top curves that thewearer decided to attach a chain, most likely the out-er two serpents.

What I needed to keep an eye on was the volume ofthe piece more than the strength. Too thick and the fi-nal silver piece becomes very heavy and quite expens-ive. That being said I did have to keep an eye on theminimum detail size as well. A general note though

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(which is reiter-ated on theShapeways web-site) is to take astep back and re-member just howsmall one milli-metre for ex-ample actually isin real life.Something might look a bit nicer on your screen if it ishalf the thickness, but even if the printer could handleit, would you really be able to see sculpted eyelashesat a width of 0.1mm? Given that I love details I had toremind myself of this a lot.

IF INDOUBT, EXAGGERATETHEDETAILS ABITMORE.

Another way to keep overall volume down is to messwith proportions somewhat. While the pirate looks tohave a reasonable proportions from the front view the side view is somewhat flat, lacking the properdepth. Not too exaggerated, but scaling back the

depth of the overall piece saved on a fair bit of volumewhich saves weight, materials and price in the end.

For more modelling and sculpting specifics, there aremany, many tutorials out there by a number of talen-ted artists in manyfields. Remember,just because a tu-torial uses Zbrushor Mudbox, thatdoesn't necessarilymean it can't be

completed inBlender. Most of thebrushes I use arestandard, flatten,pinch, inflate andsmooth all ofwhich are inBlender.

I also found that Cycles and its ability to effortlesslyrender nice looking metal materials came in handy forvisualising the final piece. I'm used to decipheringforms from wireframes, OpenGL previews, ugly videocompression and all sorts of digital representation. Agood quality render can help a lot though, particularlywith metal reflections and getting a feel for how lightwill interact with your physical print. Not a necessarystep in the process, but a handy one to haveup yoursleeve.

PREPARINGTHEMESHFOR 3DPRINTING

This part of the process can take as little as fiveminutes or it can drag out to be a real source of frus-tration. Expect some trial and error, especially if it isyour first piece. Don't let this section of the article putyou off printing because there are a number of designguides out there to help you avoid the pitfalls.

If you are planning to use a service like Shapeways,grab all the information you can directly from theirwebsite material properties, design rules, file typesand so on. In the case of Shapeways there is a user

forum which is also a great resource for artists start-ing out on their 3D printing adventures.

If you havemodelled your mesh poly by poly all in theone program and you know your face normals are allfacing outwards then congratulations! You're prob-ably halfway there already. If you have swapped themesh in and out of a few file formats, used mesh op-timising tools (eg. decimate), booleans or just sculptedto your heart's content without taking mesh structureinto account at all you probably have some clean upwork to do. Never fear though, there are a range of

free (some as in speech, some as in beer) tools to helpyou out.

http://www.click-to-fit.de/easyfit.php?&lang=en

http://meshlab.sourceforge.net/

http://www.netfabb.com/basic.php

All three of these have their uses, but I found netfabbStudio Basic to be the most

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helpful for what I needed it to do.

After exportingyour model fromBlender (most likelya .stl file, but othersare accepted bynetfabb), you canperform an auto-mated analysis ofthe basic detailssuch as volume,

length and area. These are all handy details and canhelp you keep an eye on weight and cost, but it is theother checks like bad edges, flipped triangles andholes in the mesh that these programs can detect andfix for you that make them really valuable. You canalso perform simple operations like scaling and trans-lating the mesh. Obviously if you have kept a tight eyeon scale already this is not really required, but it ishelpful if you decide your model is just a little toowide for a certain use or just out of your budget forweight or cost.

If the analysis points out any errors, there is a repairoption which is fairly easy to use. The defaults willusually do the trick, but options are certainly there ifyou need them. I always find it worth manually check-ing the mesh after running any sort of automated pro-cess. This goes for any piece of software. It is a forceof habit for the most part, but you never know when asculpted eye socket might be detected as an error andclumsily filled in by the software. It is far better tocheck for it now as opposed to when your print finallyarrives in the mail!

After the mesh is checked overall for being accept-able for the printer, it is time to check the thicknessesfor strength. There is a measuring tool in netfabb, butI find the EasyFIT one to be very efficient to use.Check with the printing guidelines (on Shapeways, orfor the printer you will be using) and start measuringthe smaller more delicate parts of your design - if any.

There is one more thing worth mentioning in this sec-tion in regards to the pendant. The structure of themesh is made up of multiple overlapping closed sur-faces (hulls). Be sure to have the overlapping sectionssolidly overlapping, not simply touching edges.

Initially I thought I would need to have one single con-tinuous mesh for the entire printed piece. This wouldhave either required some heavy boolean work, somework with the awesome remesh modifier in Blenderor a whole lot of fancy re-topology and shrinkwrapmodifier madness. I almost went with the remesh op-

tion, but I was able to print at Shapeways with themultiple overlapping and watertight meshes. If themeshes are simply touching and not overlapping by astrong enough amount, they will simply fall off duringthe print process.

There might be more checks you have to do depend-ing on your design, but in most cases you should nowbe ready to send on to the printer!

SHAPEWAYSEX-PERIENCE

This part in theoryis quite straightforward, but de-pending on howthorough you werepreparing yourmesh for printing you might have some trial and errorhere too. This time I had far less back and forwardsthan with my first few Shapeways prints, but the cus-tomer service team are quite helpful if your mesh isrefusing to print or upload. After a bit of practice you

should be able to simply upload your model, choosethe material and order away!

Depending on the intricacy of your design and the ex-pense of the final print, you might want to order it inone of the cheaper materials first. The flip side of thatfor international customers is the shipping can seemlike forever when you are eagerly awaiting your print

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PrintedPirates

on the other side of the planet. Not that it is the faultof the print company in any way, it's merely a humanpatience thing. Of course, if you own a decent 3Dprinter at home or at work - you're laughing. For therest of us though, patience is a virtue.

My gold plated steel version of the print arrived firstbecause the silver version was knocked back due topolishing issues. This also split the shipping into an-other fee, which was less than ideal. I was as happy ascould be expected with the quality of the printedsteel. A bit of a 'sunken treasure' sort of feel about the

surface quality, which doesn't hurt with this particulartheme. It was always the silver one I was anxious tosee though. Looking at the package tracking data wasinteresting as it shipped from city to city, but I think itactually had the effect of making the wait seemlonger.

Finally the silver version arrived at work and thepackage was eagerly opened and proudly shownaround the studio. Definitely happy with the end res-ult on that one, the surface details are immensely bet-ter than the steel. Again, it differs per design and permaterial but you may need to polish / sand / clean upyour print once it arrives, but some designs benefitfrom the printed texture.

PHYSICALPOSTPRODUCTION

It was suggested on the Shapeways forum that I

should try and patina my work. In short, this is theblackened and discoloured parts in the pendantphoto. The process involves using chemicals to delib-erately age (i.e. tarnish) the metal. This will happenover time anyway, but when applying the chemicalsyourself, you can specify where and how tarnished.Different colours can also be achieved depending onthe metal and the chemicals.

I could certainly understand the point about darken-ing the crevices to help the details stand out.However, I was initially quite reluctant to tarnish

something on which I had worked so hard and thenhad to wait for in the mail. Eventually I decided to giveitagoandIamverygladIdid.

The first method I tried was a more natural approachusing a hard-boiled egg. The internet will give manyvariations on the exact steps, but really it is a prettysimple process. NOTE: Dont expect to be able tocompletely remove or polish the patina off afterwardsif you change your mind - it will come back a bit fasterthan normal once exposed to the sulphur. Think itthrough first.

Clean your silveritemthoroughly andhaveit attheready.

Hardboilan egg (or two for largerpieces), mashit upandplace itin a seal-ablebag or container. (Something that youdont intendon using foranotherpurpose is probably a goodidea.)

Immediatelyputthe silveriteminwith thewarmegg. Itwill beeasierto cleanup afterwards if youcan keep themfromtouching.

Sealthebagorcontainerassoonasyoucanbecauseitisthegasfromtheeggthatdoesthework.Themoregasyoucantrapinside, thefaster theprocess will go.

Thesilver will then rapidlygo through theoxidationpro-

cess it would naturallygo through anyway over time be-cause of thesulphur. Left long enough(overnightshould beplenty)itwillgoblack,butitwillgothrougharangeofcol-ours first if youwantto remove it earlier than that.

Of course I tried it on a small, simple ring first and itworked just fine. However, when trying it on thependant it worked, but it did not work evenly. Imnotsure as to whether this is to do with the amount of de-


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PrintedPirates

tails and surfacevariation or thesize of thependant, but I op-ted for Plan B.

Plan B in this caseis known as Liverof Sulphur (LOS).There are online options for purchasing this sub-stance but it was available locally at a jewellery sup-ply store. If you can find it at a local store, this is

probably the easier option. You might just have to askaround at a few places.

Once again there are a number of variations on howto make use of Liver of Sulphur so I will just give aquick overview of what I did personally. I recommendthat if you are interested in this process or other sim-ilar ones for different metals that you do some furtherresearch and see what will suit your needs. Glovesand very good ventilation are advised. It also smellsquite heavily as you might imagine, so doing it out-doors is a very good idea if possible. Be sure to read

the precautions that come with the chemical. (Note:All these precautions are why I tried the simple eggmethod first.)

First I gentlyheated upthemetalto remove thepreviouspatina. This step is only necessarybecauseof thefailed eggpatinaI didearlier. Fortunatelythe heat required toremoveitisalotlessthantheheatthatwouldmeltthemetal.Asmentionedthough, it will tarnish fasterthanusual once ex-posed tothesulphur, sothis isnt a complete reversalof thepatinaprocess.I used a small blowtorchfor this, thehand-held gassortthat hasa rangeof uses.Obviouslylet themetalcoolproperlyafterwards.

Twocontainers (not to beused foranything otherthan thisprocess afterwards) werethenfilled withwaterawarm

wateronewithatiny(halfapea)sizedamountofLOSandaroomtemperatureonewithsomebicarbonate (baking)soda.Ateaspoonortwoofthesodaisfine.

Eitherlowerthe piece into theLOS using some string(def-initely notyourhands)or with glovesstillon, painttheLOSsolution onthepiecewith a brush.The brushmay give youmore control if you don't want to spend as much timepolish-

ingafterwards.I simplysubmerged itto ensurean evencov-erage.

Thereactionshould befairlyquick. If submerging thepiece,remove atregular intervalsto checkwhat colours youaregetting from thereaction. Once it hasgoneblack,thecolours aren't going tochangeany more, butyou may wishtoremove thepieceearlier if youlikeone of theothercol-ours.

When happywith thecolour, submergethepieceentirelyin thebicarbonatesodamixture andthen rinse thepiecethoroughlyin running water.

Fromhere youmightbe finished,but youwillprobablywant topolishoff some of theextra tarnish in certain areas.

A simplepolishing clothshouldget thejob done.

Naturally, different metals and other materials canhave a wide range of post processing applied. Paints,varnishes, stains, burns and the like. Just rememberthat undo generally doesn't apply in the real world...

CONCLUSION

All in all it was a very enjoyable experience. Taking theround trip from physical drawing to digital mesh backand then back to physical sculpture was great. Hold-

ing the finished product in my hands was very satisfy-ing. The cheesecake was delicious.

In all serious-ness though -I'm excited notonly by what I'llbe able to printfor future pro-jects, but alsoby the increas-ing range of in-

spiring printsthat are popping up now that the technology is con-tinually becoming more accessible. Hopefully you'veenjoyed this article and all the best for your 3D prin-ted adventures!


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BLENDERART- ISSUE40|NOV2012 MAKINGOF

Using the3Dprint for the productsdesignand finearts

We were looking forward to getting the technology tomake our models not only an 'Image on the screen'but 'Tangible' for a long time. The 'future' is in ourhands right now.

I've beenusing 3Dprinting

for myartwork inthe lasttwo years.We coulduse 3D print service through the internet easily, sotoday I think it's very common technology.

When I started my 'Generative Modeling Project', Ihad a plans to finally make them real objects. As aresult of it, the project has been very interesting.

I don't have a 3D printer now, but I found and alreadyordered a resin type 3D printer from B9Creator.When you read this, the printer must be workinghard.

Usually, I use two 3D print services, 'Shapeways' and'Inter-Culture'. As you know, with 'Shapeways' wecould choose materials from many kinds and the cost

is reasonable, and it is speedy.

'Inter-Culture (a Japanese Company)' can make highprecision models. Iselect which companyto use depending on

thecost/performance,materials etc neededfor this project.

I have made manysmall figures (madewith Blender of

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MAKINGOFLearningfromexperience

ShigetoMaeda

Contributing Author


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course), and some mock up models forproducts. I'm very pleased with their quality.

In some case, these printed models aresaleable. For example, the jewels with silvermaterials, and iPhone Cases with plasticsmaterials.

The things that I keep in my mind for ordering3D print is the limit of the size and details.Defective results can happen if the model is toothin.

Some materials are very fragile. The models aredamaged very easily during production andtransporting.

Even so, the printed objects are so interesting.An imaginary life in the PC would be here, inmy hands! That's really exciting for me

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BLENDERART- ISSUE40|NOV2012 MAKINGOF

Using the3Dprint for the products design and fine arts


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BLENDERART- ISSUE40|NOV2012 BLENDING

CombiningCNCmilling and3Dprojectionmapping for large formatmodels

INTRODUCTION

The Landscape Archi-tecture ResearchTeam (School of ArtsFaculty, UniversityCollege Ghent, Belgi-um) is working on aresearch project calledYpres Salient.

The landscape ofWorld War One(1914-1918), near thetown of Ypres, is thesubject of a mul-tidisciplinary researchproject. One of our research objectives concentratedon landscape visualization techniques. It was a localproject partners wish to havea model produced of animportant historic landscape near the town of Ypres.

One important request was really challenging. Thearea of interest was special because the battles actu-ally took place in different parts of the area. Could itbe possible to somehow highlight these shiftingbattles with some sort of light projection, moving

over the model?

Our research team got interested in supporting the

project partner, so we started a feasibility study on3D printing. The quest actually resulted in the discov-ery of a system that we found interesting enough toshare with the Blender artists community.

It should be mentioned that it is not our objective tocriticize the valuable technique of 3D printing itself. Itis only for the specific aspects for our project that wehad to find for an alternative.

3DPRINTING?

The local project partner wanted to have an architec-tural model of a historic landscape of about 8 by 3.3kilometers, on a 1:1350 scale. The model would even-tually be 6 by 2.5 m in size. Some GIS data (Geograph-ic Information System) about terrain, historicalbuildings, bunkers etc was available so it would havebeen a good idea to look for some sort of digital-mechanical system, instead of having it handmade.

Logically, the technique of 3D printing came forward.However, there were a few drawbacks. 3D printingproved to be rather expensive on this scale. The sur-

face of the model needed to be at least a few milli-meters thick, resulting in a considerably high amountof printing material. Several companies were contac-ted but all of their tenders were too expensive for theavailable budget.

Another difficulty was the fact that many 3D-printingmachines are designed for smaller dimensions and

14

BLENDINGEveryday blendering for all ofus

Fig.1 Australiansoldiers,passing

alonga duckboardtracknear Ypres,

Belgium,1917

JorisVerbeken

VirginiePeeters

Contributing Author


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not for models several meters in size. In our case, thecomplete model would have been composed of morethan two hundred individual elements. As a con-sequence, this also implied a long production time.

One of the major drawbacks of the 3D printing pro-cess however was the fact that, once the model wasprinted, no further adjustments on textures or colorwas possible. Many digital artists know how challen-ging it can be to match screen colors with 2D printedmedia. For 3D-printing, this process can be muchmore difficult and the necessary trial and error tests

would have been expensive and time-consuming.

This inevitable color matching problem frustrated usin the first place, but the ways wetried to deal with itstimulated our creativity and eventually led us to asolution.

CNCMILLING!

We already figured out that CNC milling (ComputerNumerical Control) was less expensive and that largerdimensions were possible. Maybe, with a good test,

we could haveour model for a fair price, and let someartist color it by hand? Luckily, our colleagues from

the Faculty of Applied Engineering Sciences (Uni-versity College of Ghent) were enthusiastic about theproject and wanted to produce a part of our model. Sowe started modeling with Blender 3D!

Our research team had some experience in CAD, GISand desktop publishing, but 3D modeling was fairly

new to us. But as weeks went by, it gradually camehome to us that Blender 3D might be the ultimatetool to fulfill all the project partners needs. Of course, most of our hunger for new knowledge was fed bythe internet and there was one special description ofa workshop, held by Benedikt Gro (Hochschule furGestaltung in Offenbach, Germany) that gave a de-scription of 3D matching. The website is completely inGerman, but the basic idea was clear to us. (2)

We concluded that, in theory, we had found a systemthat could work. Wejust had to do a test.

WITH3DPROJECTIONMAPPING !

So wehad a test model in a single color (white) thatwas milled by the Faculty of Applied Engineering Sci-ences (University College of Ghent), a standardlaptop and a Hitachi ED-X10 3LCD Projector.

Could wefind a way to project color and texture onthis model? Of course, these machines are designed

to project perpendicularly and on a flat surface. Ourmodel wasnt flat at all, and wealso wanted to placethe projector in a skew position (e.g. 45 degrees, in-stead of the regular 90 degrees). This setting wouldmake our test more rigorous, and, even more import-ant, would indicate that several projectors could beused simultaneously, to highlight parts of our meshthat were not facing the average normal direction

15



Fig.2Wireframeofourmodel inBlender 3D

Fig..3CNC-milled testmodel.Dimensions: 25cmby25cm


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(e.g. walls or steep parts in the terrain).

The trick is actually simple. A camera in Blender 3Dreceives light from certain light sources that interactwith the material of the virtual surface (our mesh) andcaptures this light, through a virtual lens, onto a virtu-al sensor. A virtual image is born. On the other hand, aprojector works in the opposite direction. A physicalemitter (theprojectorslamp) radiatesa virtual image

through aphysical lensonto a physicalsurface. In ourcase, the virtu-al surface (ourmesh) and thephysical sur-face (our CNC-milled model)are more or lessthe same. Weonly had to set up our virtual worldidentically to our physical world, which eventuallysucceeded!

After a few hours of tinkering with rulers and pro-tractors in the real world, and much more hours withBlender 3D in the virtual world, our first tests werepromising. In fact the most difficult part was the ver-tical lensshift ofthis typeof pro-jector.Luckily,it is pos-sible inBlender3Dto setup a ver-tical

shift as well.

THEPRELIMINARYRESULT

From an artists point of view, our materials, textures,light settings, etc. need considerable improvements.After all, this is a basic test.

The photosincluded inthis articlealso reveal

that themapping isnot 100percentcorrect. Weare fullyaware ofthis, but wecan attributethis to thefact that ourmeasurement instruments were not designed for pre-

cision work. Also, our test lab is located in an historicbuilding, where floors and walls are not alwayssquared, making it difficult to measure.

Much work is being done at the moment to generatethe complete mesh of 6 by 2.5 meters. Wehave alsobeen working on the animation part, where differenttechniques were applied. We used keyframing on ma-terials, textures and spot lights, and some modifiers(e.g. build) gave interesting results. However theseresults are difficult to show in this article. More testsare being done at the moment and further investiga-

tion is necessary, especially for a setting with multiplebeamers. Nonetheless, we do hope that this descrip-tion of our work in progress inspires other Blenderartists with similar projects.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The Ypres Salient research project is funded by the

Fig.4The setting ofthemodel and the pro-

jector. Noticethe angle of45degrees ofthe

table onwhich themodel isplaced.

Fig.5 TCamera andmodelsetting inBlender 3D.

Fig.63Dprojectionmapping,usinga regular

projector, aCNCmilledmodelandBlender 3D.


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University College of Ghent, Belgium. The researchteam consists of Steven Heyde, Ruben Joye, HarlindLibbrecht, Virginie Peeters and Joris Verbeken.

We are grateful for the tests, performed by Frank DeMets and his team of the Faculty of Applied Engineer-

ing Sciences (University College of Ghent, Belgium).

Many thanks to Bram De Vries for our first steps inBlender 3D and for the valuable advice on 3D printingand projection.

REFERENCES:

(1) Frank Hurley, 29 oktober 1917, Australian WarMuseum, E01220 (Image copyright: Copyright ex-pired - public domain /http://cas.awm.gov.au/photo-graph/E01220)

(2) Description of a 5 days workshop in SchwbischGmnd on 3D matching: http://ig.hfg-gmuend.de/Members/benedikt_gross/lehre/100-Jahre-

workshop, consulted on Oktober 5, 2012

Authorcontact:

Joris Verbeken GIS lecturer

Royal Academy of Fine Arts & Royal Conservatory /Vakgroep Architecturale Vormgeving

University College of Ghent,

Jozef Kluyskensstraat 2

9000 Gent

Belgi

[email protected]

Fig.7 Detailedviewofa partof themodel.Noticethe richcolor

possibilities. In this case,wehighlightedthebunkers andemphas-

ized their connectionwith lines. Themapping isnotperfect,dueto

measurementerrors.
http://%20http//ig.hfg-gmuend.de/Members/benedikt_gross/lehre/100-Jahre-workshophttp://%20http//ig.hfg-gmuend.de/Members/benedikt_gross/lehre/100-Jahre-workshophttp://%20http//ig.hfg-gmuend.de/Members/benedikt_gross/lehre/100-Jahre-workshophttp://cas.awm.gov.au/photograph/E01220http://cas.awm.gov.au/photograph/E01220mailto:[email protected]


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The last few years have seen a remarkable changein the ability to create and produce computergenerated 3D forms. Not only has open sourcesoftware such as Blender become far more usable andreliable but commercial companies have jumped intothe mix with high quality free programs such asGoogle's SketchUp, Pixologic's Sculptris, andAutodesk's 123D. On the hardware side, 3Dextrusion printers from MakerBot and UP areapproaching the sub-$1000 mark, while onlineservices like Shapeways and Ponoko provideaffordable 3D printing in plastics, ceramics, metals,and glass.

MakersFactory, based in SantaCruz,California, is aprofessionalservices/education company

whichspecializes inthe use of opensource software with in-house and online 3D printing.The majority of our clients are creative professionalswho need fast, accurate visualization andprototyping. Blender, like other open source

programs such as Inkscape, Processing, and Gimp, is avital part of this work process.

Let's look at what MakersFactory has in terms ofhardware. Apart from an Epilog laser cutter/engraver,a NextEngine 3D laser scanner, and a Roland vinylcutter, we have six 3D printers. The literally eighthundred pound gorilla in the room is a top of the lineZ Corporation 650 color powder printer.

This machine produces four color three dimensionalmodels up to 15 by 10 by 8 high. We also have anolder Z Corporation model, a 310, which has beenreconfigured to use cement powder in its 8 a sidecubical build chamber. That only has one colorcement but makes up for that with its affordability.

Powder printers are simple in concept thoughcomplex in reality. A layer of powder the thickness ofa sheet of paper is spread over a steel build plate. Aset of five inkjet heads then go back and forth acrossit. From four of them colored ink cyan, magenta,yellow, and black is printed as in any other inkjetprinter. But the fifth print head spreads a binder, like a

18


MakersFactory

ChrisYonge

ContributingAuthor

18



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19


MakersFactory

thin glue, and thissolidifies the layerof powder into across section ofthe 3D model thatis being made.Then the buildplate drops downa fraction of aninch within itssurrounding walls,another layer of

powder is spreadover the top ofthe previous one, and the process begins again for thenext cross section.

Powder printers take an hour for each inch of height,but accept items that are stacked and nested so thatthe build chamber can include dozens of objects.After printing is complete the items are surroundedand supported by loose powder. Using a vacuum hose,brushes, and a lot of care, they are dug out, andunused powder is recycled into the machine. The

prints are removed and de-powdered with acompressed air jet in a closed chamber. At this stagethey resemble unfired clay, and are fragile, dusty, andwith faint color. After they have been de-powdered astrengthening agent, either cyanoacrylate (superglue)or wood hardener, is applied to the surfaces. Thisstrengthens the prints and brings out the fullbrilliance of the colors. A quick sanding in a beadblaster, a light spray with polyurethane varnish, andthey're ready for prime time.

As well as powder printers, which produce items thatare colorful and complex but somewhat fragile, wehave four plastic extrusion printers. These devicescan be likened to miniature hot glue guns, as theyproduce a thread of molten plastic from their nozzlesthat is precisely laid down in layers to build objects upto eight inches on a side. The objects can only be onecolor, but that color can range from black, white, and

translucent through vibrant yellows and blues tomore muted grays and browns. The reels of filamentare generally engineering grade ABS plastic thoughsome printers can also handle the similarbiodegradable, milk-derived PLA (Polylactic acid)material. Extrusion prints are light and tough, wellsuited for engineering prototypes and models thatwill see hard use.

MakersFactory uses Blender in several ways. First, wehave regular Friday 3D scanning sessions for peoplewho want a model of themselves made. This is done

using a Kinect device with open source software, andproduces large .OBJ files which need cleaning up inNetfabb and then rendering in Blender. Sometimesthe 3D print file is also made from Blender, using an.STL file to export the form.

Organic forms for monochrome 3D printing are alsogenerally made in Blender, and exported as standard.STL or .PLY files for direct opening by the ZCorporation printer driver Zprint. For mappedgraphics, however, we have best success exportingtextured .3DS files from Blender, opening them in

Rhinoceros (a useful file translator as well as NURBmodeler), and then saving out in the proprietary .ZPRformat.

We teach Blender to children and adults; ouryoungest students are nine years old and our oldestwell, weve hesitated to ask. Probably late sixties. Buteveryone I believe enjoyed the classes, learnedabout 3D modeling and animation, and has been giventhe ability to create in a digital environment, all due toBlender.

Finally, I also teach Blender to students at theUniversity of California, Santa Cruz. The classes atMakersFactory are fairly simple, focusing mainly onthe creation and animation of a simple box modeledcharacter, but my course at UCSC lasts a full quarterten weeks with two lectures and two labs per week.It covers most of the basics required to becomeproductive and confident in Blender. It is also highly


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20


MakersFactory

popular, never failing to fill its 175 places twice a yearwith one or two dozen auditing students in addition.Most are game design majors, though there is also asignificant presence from astrophysics, film anddigital media, marine biology, and the mathematicalsciences evidence of the wide demand for 3Dmodeling and visualization skills. And, though itsnotan intended consequence of the course, severalstudents have changed their career choice toprofessional animation as a result.

The depth, richness, configurability, and power ofBlender makes it an ideal tool for production andeducation. MakersFactory, the School of Engineeringat UCSC, our students and clients, and ourselveswould be far poorer intellectually and creativelywithout it. Congratulations to the Blender team!

chri s@maker sfacto ry.com

831 212 3458
mailto:[email protected]


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Theres an increasing range of making optionsavailable to Blender users, from full fledged 3Dprinting services like Ponoko, Shapeways &iMaterialize, to DIY options like Makerbot andRepRap. These are all a fantastic opportunity to takesomething that was once constrained within thecomputer, and turn it into something tangible thatpeople can hold, feel and interact with.

As well as printing several of my own personalprojects, I get to see nearly every single designcoming through our system. This has given me apretty unique viewpoint, where I get to see lots ofstuff going right, and lots of stuff going wrong! Withthat in mind, Ive taken what I think are the mostimportant things to know, and compiled a list ofthings you should know about 3D printing

Remember todesignfor thereal world,not Blender.It's supereasy toforgetaboutstufflikematerialproperties andgravitywhenyou're modelling

something, or be sosuper zoomedin creating detailswhich are going tobe sosmall thatin reality you wontbe ableto see them.

Know your materials. 3D materialshavesomeuniquepropertiesthat youneedtoconsider whenyou'redesigning your objectsuch as thecrumbly"greenstate" of stainlesssteel, or theextrusionprocess of FDM. In particular, make sure youvegotyourwallthicknessrequirementsmet.

Designfor 3D printing.3D printing is great forintricateobjectsand low volume designs. Embracethis! Theres no penalty forhow detailedyour objects

are,so gonutswith it. Rememberthatmost 3Dprintingservicescharge youby volume NOTcomplexity, detail or size.Reduce thevolume,reduceyour cost!So many designs arealready much strongerthantheyneed tobe, and can bemademuchcheaperbyhollowingout your design, or removingvolumewhere it's notneeded. Rememberthat theresnocostpenalty fordetail, so usethis!

Check your units!Pretty easy oneto miss, butalwayscheck the units ofyour filebeforeyousendittotheprinter. 5 inchesis prettydisappointing when itturnsouttobe5mm!Ifyoure working with an STLfile, 1 Blender unit= 1 fileunit- youll specify this when

you uploadyour file tothemaking service.Non-manifoldmesherrors.Blender hasa greatshortcutto isolatenon-manifoldvertices:CTRL+ALT+Mselects allnon-manifoldvertices.Thereare2common culprits:Vertices with 0 or 1 edge attached,and edges withanythinggreateror less than 2 faces.It's important

that your designdoesn't haveanyinternalwalls,asthese confuse the3D printer as towhat is"inside" andwhat is"outside" your design, andit won't be able tobeprinted.

Netfabb is a great free tool tomeasure your STLfileandcheckthevolume beforeyou uploadit toyourmakingservice.It'san easy way tomake sure you'remeeting thewallthicknessrequirementsof yourmaterial,as well as spot anynastymesherrorsyou

21


3DprintingwithBlender andPonoko

RichardBorrett

Contributing Author



22/38

might have missed in Blender. Particularly usefulistheCut feature which lets you easilysee a crosssectionthrough yourfile.

Prototype! Mistakes are expensive.We can make ourbestguessesas tohow a given 3Ddesignwill comeout, butwe'll never know 100% until we print it. Smallprototypes allowyou to experimentwiththematerial& designbefore committing toa full-sizeprint-especiallyimportant if youhave specificmaterialrequirements,like flexibility, strengthor surface finish.

Prototype. Seriously.

Havea go! Itcan be a littlescary atfirst,but there isawealth of expertise out there.

Tip forcomplex geometry:Use Ctrl-Alt-Shift-M toselect Non-manifold vertices. Expand this selection acouple of times with Ctrl-+. Invert the selection withCtrl-I and hide these vertices with H. Select the non-manifold vertices again with Ctrl-Alt-Shift-M

22


3DprintingwithBlenderandPonoko


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Using theMakerbotReplicator, the process is asfollows:Makemodelin blender

Export .stlfile

OpenReplicatorG

Open thepreviouslysaved .stl file

PressScalebuttonPress theinches-> mm

Press theMovebutton

Press theputon platformbutton

Press thecenterbutton

ThenonthetopIselectthe4thbuttoningreenModeltoGCode

Selectthe default profile forthe machine, andthen choosetheoptionsyouwantforthisprint

Then press theGenerateGCodebutton on bottom.

*ThenIeditGCode(onlyifIm printing with PLA, tochange

theheatingbuild platformfrom 110 to50)Thenselect BuildtofiletousewithSDcardandsavethe.s3gfiletoSDcard

InsertSD card tomakerbotandprintfromtheSD card.

Everything here has a purpose and I wontbeabletocover every reason. If you have any questions, my e-mail is [email protected].

EXPERIENCE

The most common issues

Ive run into involve theleveling of the buildingplatform, overhangs,flipped normals, hiddenfaces inside the mesh, andconverting model size toreal world needs. So letshit on what was done toaddress each of the issueson this list.

For leveling the build platform, use the in-system

leveling option at first. Ivefound it to be far better tolevel during a print of something with a wide base(advanced). You are aiming for a flat line of plasticbeing pushed into the build platform, not a roundedtube being lightly placed on the surface. Also whenleveling this way, do not use raft/support.

The rule on overhangs is to be aware of the angle ofchange for an overhang not to exceed a 45 degreeangle. There is a little more that you can push with,but when extending too far, you will have plasticdroop off of the side of the print, and thenmaybe

catch a little bit on the next layer of some of thedropped section. Things get messy fast. There areways to print overhangs with a lot less worry and thatis using raft/support. that is an option you can selectwhen you are generating GCode. This will create athin line of plastic that will build up with the model sothat it can catch the bottom of overhangs. Thatscruff is kinda fun to pull off.

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100hours ofprint time,andwhat Ive learned...

MetalnatHayes

Contributing Author


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When dealing with flipped normals and hidden facesthere are some things you must consider. Manypeople say the best way to deal with this is to importthe .stl of the model into a yet another program anddo a clean or repair. I personally have opted to bestubborn and figure out what Im doing wrong in thefirst place! To self-diagnose, first identify the facesthat are inside your mesh but are not intentional.

The best example of this issue happening is when youextrude 4 vertices on one side of a cube. When youdo this you are given 4 new vertices, and 5 new faces.

The model on the outside looks fine and you justmade the square a rectangle. But what was leftbehind was a face between those 4 vertices. At nopoint did we tell blender to remove that face, so itremained to throw things off later. Be aware of whatyou are leaving behind when extruding. Also considera remove all doublesjust to be safe.

In dealing with normals it is important to make surethat normals are facing outward, otherwise the printwill attempt to print up to where the normals face.That may sound confusing but if an object has three

faces on one side and one face happens to be flipped,then that flipped face will be bypassed because thereis no printable area behind where the normal isfacing.

Most of the time that I have run into this problem iswhen I was joining meshes with boolean unions. Atthe intersection of two meshes you may have facesflipped randomly. Im sure there is a reason to thismadness, but I just assume the role of inspector aftereach union.

Now you may have the need to make somethingfunctional for real world. Or something reallyawesome, but it has to fill a certain space. The way Ipersonally have addressed this, after lots of tests, is toassume the default cube is a 2 x 2 x 2 cube. So, if youpress s for size and type .5, you now havea one inchcube. If you remember my list earlier, in ReplicatorG iselect scale and then inches -> mm. this allows me

to work flawlessly withdefault blender units andhave a mesh in 3D viewthat isnt unbearably huge!So modeling sections areeasy enough now, as longas you are comfortabletyping in yourmeasurements in inches.SoifIwanttomoveavertex 2.75 inches, I justselect the vertex, press theg button, then press x,y, or z depending on theaxis I want to move on and then immediately type2.75. That principle is carried throughout the model.If you are modeling around a real world object (like anLED) then make a model with the dimensions usingthis method, and then artistically make the model fitaround the modeled template of the real worldobject.

The last thing Ive had the privilege of working on wasdual extrusion prints. And Iveincluded a file to be

used. When you create a dual color print, at leastwith ReplicatorG, you will find that you have to createan .stl file for each color, and when being printed eachcolor will have no awareness of each other. It ispossible to have the printer print twice in the same3D space. Sounds cool I know, but can cause theprinter to get jammed up.

And it is a pain to clean at times. You may also noticeparticles of each color found on the outside edges dueto the nature of plastic melting and expanding insidethe print heads nozzle. One way to address this is toenable a profile to build a skirt around the model tocatch all the loose particles of plastic. This is anadvanced setting to handle, but alternatively, it iseasy to scrape off most of the loose plastic.

My best advice: try things, take chances, and havefun!

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100hours of print time, andwhat Ive learned...


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A few years ago I received an e-mail from thepeople at Shapeways asking whether they coulduse a model of mine for their promotion. Back then,hardly anyone had heard of this brand spanking newphenomenon called 3D printing. The model in ques-tion was one that I had created for the Blender Con-ference Suzanne Awards in 2007. Its name is Petunia,after a flower and as a joke on the Blender Institute'sprojects all being named after fruit.

Shapeways was kind enough to get me a copy of the3D print, and they had someone make quite a gor-geous photo as well! This photo then went on to getpublished all over the place.

From newspapers in New York to the Brisbane Times!I'd never gottenas much atten-tion for a piece ofmy work asI didthen. And all be-

cause I did asmall model forthe BlenderConference andshared it under a

creative commons license.

GETTING THEBUGTOBITEMEIf you haven't yet... I have to warn you. There's littlethat prepares you for the feeling of holding one ofyour 3D models in your hands for the first time. It'ssomewhat magical, and made me hungry for more.You see... I was trained as a traditional artist, and onlygot into com-puters after I gotmy degree in mo-numental art. Thislatest develop-ment felt like acompletely nat-ural return to myroots withoutabandoning mynew found tool-set. Great!

THEBIGMISCONCEPTION (ORONEOFEMATLEAST)

There seems to be the general consensus that 3Dprinting means... well... that anyone can make any-

thing now! If you have a great product idea, you canget it into the marketplace yourself by making it avail-able for print. I don't think that's true.

Pretty much every product you can come up withneeds to be tested. Even if it's just a statuette youneed to print out a test to make sure it can be printed,and see what its really like. I recently had a great idea

25


Gettingmyprint on!

DolfVeenvliet

Contributing Author

25


Fig.1Petunia asa 3Dprint courtesyof

http://www.shapeways.com

Fig.2meholding one ofmyentoforms

http://www.entoforms.com


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(at least I think so) for a commercial product, had atest print made... and only then found out I had tomake it twice the size to make it function, and thatwould have put it in completely the wrong pricerange.

So you see, you stillneed to have somemoney for testing.

BUT I CANBLEND

Where design wasmostly 2D in thepast, one of thebiggest benefits forus Blenderheads isthat since 3D print-ers are everywhere, people need more and more 3Ddesign as well. And yes they are everywhere indeed.

A major Dutch department store just started sellingthem for 1000 Euro-ish. That means your mom canbuy a 3D printer and print herself... well absolutely

nothing until you teach her to Blend (that's a job), orshe gets you to make her a design (that's another job).And if your mom can, so can everyone else's mom!And theyall need our help. Of course by mom I mean,anyone, or the less computer literate amongst us, ex-cept for your mom, who I'm sure is a whizz on the key-board!

Now that everyone can get a 3D printer, they need usto help them make stuff, or make tools for them tomake stuff!

SOMUCHTODONOWTHATIT'SBEENDONE

For a while everything that you 3D printed was cooljust because it was 3D printed. And as long as youwere the first to 3D print it, it was pretty certain youcould get some attention.

You might even make a buck. That was great, but itmade it all very

gimmicky as well. Ithink/hope/believeweare coming to apoint soon where noone cares about 3Dprinting any more. It'llbemoreofa Heywhat is that?... Ohmy new 3D printedtoy... Duh of course it's 3D printed. I want to knowwhere you got that great design from?. It's abouttime we stop caring so much about technique and

start thinking more about design/concept/coolnessagain.

ANDTOMORROWIWANTA...

Maybe the trickiestthing about 3D print-ing is that it's a bit likea tablet computer.You don't really knowwhat it's good for un-til you own one (or

have used one for abit). For me person-ally, it's exactly thetool I want to useright now, and I neverwould have known hadn't I been using Blender for thedecade before 3D printing became a thing! Now letssee how we can take all this cool stuff wecan makewith Blender, and make it real! Because in the end, forme, that's what it is about

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Gettingmyprint on!

Fig.3oneofmycommercial ideas, the

variable cross http://cross.shapewright.com

Fig.4mymakerbotbeforeI unwrappedit

Fig.54 versionsofblu... a 3Dprintable

model availableat

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:31767


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To learn is the most important thing around theUniverse, and we are living in an information age.This is the easiest age to learn anything. If youwould like to learn something, just click and askGoogle. I can assure you that even learning languagesis completely possible with Internet resources.

Were you ever curious about how people learnedBlender 1.x? There were very few tutorials, websites,

articles or teachers. Maybe you can say that they didnot know blender 1.x, they learnt Blender about 2.4x.

Nope.

Trust me, I talked with them, they knew both blender1.x and blender 2.4x.

HOWTOLEARN LEARNING- DESTROYTABOOS INYOURMIND!

I want to talk about my opinions topic by topic. Thefirst one is Taboos in our minds. In the past, if

someone wanted to learn Blender, they must try,because there were no tutorials available.

In the old versions of Blender, there were lots of bugsand a lot of features that are not present in thecurrent version of Blender. But when I saw a carrender with Blender Internal and in Blender 2.49, Irealised that the problem is not in Blender, the

problem is in our minds....

And you know, if professionals are better than

beginners, the reason for that is not thatprofessionals are in this job for longer time than us.Dont kid yourself. They are better than us, becausethey are creating, and always doing new things.

So, what we are doing?

We are watching tutorials and making simplemodels.... I know just a few people who are workingon real projects. And they are going to be aprofessional!!!

You know, I want to mention a taboo which is in ourminds when we start to watch any tutorial: I amafraid to try. However, the guy is teaching, they dofirst, then I will....

I amsurethat youdont agree me when you read this.no I am saying like this, Because of this, what Iconsider to be the worst taboo, we are afraid to try,and then because of this taboo, you decide onsomething, and think that there is only one way to dothe model.

Hey man did you hear? There were only a few waysto model a soccer ball

Yeah, he taught one of them

Hmm... So we have only one way to do it....

Yeah! So lets do it.

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HakkRza Kk

Contributing Author

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Then every single Blender user only knows one wayto do a soccer ball because theyhave a soccer ball andthey dont haveto learn another way to do it.

Dont be afraid to try. Use a reference photo from thefirst moments of tutorials that are showing the resultand then try to make it without watching the tutorial.If you cant figure something out, watch the tutorial,then stop it, and continue to try again. Then you willrealize that Hey, I know Blender! :-). I knowif youdothis, it will take lot of time for every tutorial, but it isworth it.

Try, it is not important that Blender crashed, we canstart it again,but we cant goback tothepastandcantlive the same time again.

I am not saying that tutorials do not help us. Wehavea tutorial ocean now, and unless we use it correctly,we will drown in that ocean.

Dont be afraid to try.

HOWTOLEARN LEARNING- CREATEANIMPULSE

TODOBESTHe is a professional. I cant compete with him. It is anunnecessary effort to compete with him. Dont thinklike that, try to beat him.

If we do havenot a deadline or someone who is betterthan us or a work that we want to recreate, wecantimprove ourselves. We have to have an attitude thatwill give us the impulse to keep getting better.

A lot of us are learning Blender for a hobby whichmakes it harder to Blender than if we were doing it

for a job. Wemust choose a way to get better. Theremust be an impulse in our mind to push us to keeplearning. This is really easy to put it in our mind,because it is still there from when we were babieswho are curious about everything.

So that is all for this topic?

Nope, now I will talk about the important points tomake it awake in our minds.

Are you a beginner and you can just make a few thingsin Blender? This is for you! Check previous BlenderART Magazines gallery chapters and choose a renderthat you find really impressive. Then say to yourself: Iwill do this in the future. Put the render somewherein your computer. After a few months, you will findthe render again it wont look as impressive. Then tryto make it again. If you cant, you will realize that theimpulse will start up again and you will want to learn

more. This is the best impulse I think. For example,when I was beginner in Blender, a 2D printer with anelectronic notepad, was too impressive for me. I amstill trying to make it again ...

HOWTOLEARN LEARNING- DIG YOURWAYWITHYOURFINGERS

Actually, for this topic I met with Gottfried Hofmann.He is the founder of BlenderDiplom and his job is allabout physical simulations. He started to use Blenderin 2009 and at the time, it was hard to learn physical

simulations.

When I asked So, how did you learn about smoke andfire simulation so well?, hesaid Ihadtodigmywaythrough with my hands!.

It was impressive; he was learning Blender by himself,asking questions, trying without being afraid,searching and things like that... Eventually, he becameone of the best smoke simulation teachers in theBlender community.

But, Hofmann knew one more thing: where I amgoing to?. This is a good question. For example thinkthat you are climbing Mount Everest. Finally, youreach your goal, you turn around to see how far youclimbed and ohh.. COME ON! Everest is on the otherside! Unfortunately... you climbed to the wrongmountain... but Hofmann knew this when he started.Keep this little tip in your mind, and know where you

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want to go.

So you might be asking: Why doI have todigmy waywith my fingers? Why cant I ask other people? Whatif you fall down from the middle of the mountain,there wont be people who will help you. You wontfall down if you do the same as Hofmann, but if you dofall down, it will be very easy to climb to the samemountain again...

So lets talk about how? Weare not climbing to amountain, we are learning Blender 3D! The first thing

that you have to do certainly, is SEARCHING. AfterBlender is first released, 14 years passed and nowthere are lots of forums everywhere, lot of tutorialswebsites and thousands of topics and questions.

Dont go onto Facebook and write howtoaddanocean simulation?. You probably saw some Blenderfeatures which are taking your mind away and youwant to learn how to make an ocean simulation.However, this is the wrong way to learn, you cansearch for the same on Google and learn it fromtutorials and articles. To ask people all the time is like

taking help from the other climbers... What if you felldown?

But if you can't get any results from your searches,then asking people is okay. For example, Hofmannwas one of the people who had to ask. Because therewere hardly any tutorials about what he wanted todo. He is one of the people who knows how to learn.They were lucky because they have to dig their waywith their fingers... I hope after this article you willlearn how to learn, as well.

HOWTOLEARN LEARNING- ASK

Just ask. Ask until they are not answering anymore.To ask is one of the most important learning styles.Think about when your teacher is talking about mathand you cant understand something. Without asking,will your teacher explain the issue again?

Did you ever watch a 3D movie or a showreel or a testanimation?

And did you ever say thathow did this guy do this?.

Do you know why Andrew Price opened a page calledwinners hall of fame?

Because they want you ask something of them. Yes,actually, they really want that. Select any good workfrom any artist, find the contact information and tryto ask something. You will see, they will get back to

youif they are not busy:-) .

My brother who is advanced with 2D, is always askingquestions of people who are impressive to him. Andhe has a philosophy that you must ask until the persondoesnt answer anymore.

Be a little bit cheeky, ask until they are not answeringanymore!

And I want to add a little note, dont confusesearching and asking methods.

I am talking about asking, but not always in forums. Iam just suggesting to ask special people. And do notforget searching.

So guys I hope you learnt something from here. AndIdont think so but I hope you also enjoyed it :-).

See you next time!

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Since I got into 3D graphics, I was looking for somegadget to keep me closer to the subject. After playingwith the web searcher I found the mug render,painted in the mash pattern. There were a couple ofmug mesh renders but that was all. I figured it out. Itwill be necessary to start a new project to decoratethe mug that way. The best way to do this is to printthe model on the 3D printer, considering the lines aregoing to be painted in the grooves on the surface.

ThefirstthingIhavedoneismodelthemugIwouldliketohave, keeping myeye onthetypologythatI would like to seeon thesurface.

Then I unwrap themodeland export thelayout toPho-toshop.

ThenI use the layoutas a texture ofthe model.

Useit on thedisplaymodifier tomake grooves onthemug.

After making the mug out of the clayyou will havethegrooves to fill in the paint, that creates the mesh pat-tern

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3DPrintingaMug

KrzysztofBozalek

Contributing Author

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For manyof us, there is something of a mysteryconcerning the whole topic of 3D printing. 3Dprinting, in and of itself sounds like something straightout of science fiction. And yet there are those whohave already mastered not only the art of designingfor 3D print, but are actually selling their designs aswell.

So just how do you get from a cool Blender model to a

3D printed object worthy of being sold? To answerthat question, we rounded up a couple of successfuldesigners that routinely use Blender to create awe-some models that they then print and sell throughShapeways.

One aspect thatseems to be im-portant is the abil-ity to find andmarket your own niche. So first we take a look atMark Bloomfield and his wonderful Electrobloomcre-

ations. Mark has launched a fun and creative line of3D printed jewelry that is not only customizable butcan be worn and put together in an endless variety ofcreative ways. Mark, a trained jewelry designer hascome up with an amazing concept that allows his cus-tomers to choose various components and materialsto make their own unique pieces that can be worn asrings, bracelets and necklaces.

What wasyour inspiration for Electrobloom?

I came up with the name

Electrobloom some yearsago before I knewwhat Iwasgoingto dowithit!Iwanted a name that in-cluded my name but alsoimplied a collision betweenthe old and the new, I likestrong contrasts so Elec-trobloom had the right ringto it. After living with the name for a few years I de-cided that I wanted to do something hi-tech withflowers, so I then started to develop a jewellery col-

lection using floral motifs that would be made using3D printing processes.

Your jewelry line is modular and cust omizable, wh at

prompted you t o chose modular designs over say fi xed

designs?

It was the sheer amount ofdiversity in the naturalworld that led me to devel-op a customisable collec-tion, even plants that

appear the same are verydifferent when you look atthem closely and a cus-tomisable collection allowsfor these differences. Also,the 3D printing process removes many of the con-straints that traditional forms of manufacture en-force. The idea behind a customisable system is that

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How tobecomea successfulBlender Shapeways designer

dreamsgate

Blendermomextraordinaire

31

BLENDINGEveryday blendeing for all ofus
http://www.electrobloom.com/about/http://www.electrobloom.com/about/


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How to becomea successful BlenderShapeways designer

nothing is fixed and can evolve over time. As a design-er the investment you make in a fixed design can bedifficult to recover but I'm finding that each new itemI design both expands and changes the collection inways I couldn't have imagined at the beginning. It'salso beneficial to the customers who buy the jew-ellery because they can swap charms over and addnew designs to their own collection without having todiscard all the items theybought in the past. I want toinvolve the customer in the creative process,everything works together and you can have somefun with it, making your own collection!

How oft en do you create new designs or pieces?

I'm always thinking of new ideas, it never seems tostop! I'll do lots of sketch modelling to see how newdesigns will look and then get into the detail to makesure they will work. That's the beauty of using a toollike Blender, I can quickly rough out an idea to get thelook right and then refine it. I use Blenders modifiersa lot to enhance simple meshes that are easy to ma-nipulate. It also means that I can go back and re-usedifferent set-ups which can really speed up the devel-

opment process.

I like to make sure that the designs actually work oncethey've been 3D printed before offering them forsale, but waiting a couple of weeks for new designs tocome through can be both frustrating and exciting! I'llwork on new ideas while waiting for 3D prints to ar-rive and then refine those designs if needed once I'veseen the physical sample.

Do you plan to expand your line to more than bloom

ty pe creations or have you found your niche?

I'll always focus on plant motifs and be inspired bynatural forms but I'm also interested in how theychange over time. I've worked in the fashion industrywhere seasonal change is the main reason for intro-ducing new collections and I still want to use that pro-cess. But rather than working 2 years ahead as withtraditional manufacturing, I'm able to be more re-

sponsive and develop new styles in season. I intro-duced new charms this autumn and have started todevelop new styles for winter. Obviously there arenot many flowers in bloom during winter so I have tolook to other forms of inspiration such as leaves,twigs and decay. I've also designed charms that moveor change shape which adds another level of engage-ment and wouldn't normally be done using traditionalforms of manufacture due to the expense, but 3Dprinting makes these impossibilities possible!

Are there any difficultiesor obstacles to overcome duringth e design phase, either in Blender or w it h Shapeways

th at you had to solve t o obtain good print ed result s?

Sure, as with anything you design for manufacture it'simportant to consider that it can be made and that it'sgoing to work! Shapeways has a good resource thatexplains each of the 3D printing processes they offer.

It's important to remember that the term 3D Printingcovers a wide range of different processes and mater-ials, each with their own set of characteristics and tol-erances. I'd always pick the most appropriate material

for the design or if I wanted to use a particular mater-ial then I'd take into consideration the material char-acteristics and the production process to ensure thedesign will work.

As I mentioned I have designed and made items thatmove. This has been particularly challenging as the3D printing process I use requires a 0.4mm toleranceto ensure the parts do not fuse together. But as I'musing a Laser Sintering process which fuses a powderwith a laser to make solid objects, you also need to besure that excess powder can be removed to allow the

parts to articulate.

Sometimes this works first time but I have had tomake tiny adjustments to some models in Blender toget them to work. And although 0.4mm doesn't soundlike much, when you're working at a jewellery scaleit's surprising how easy it is to run out of space!


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How would you describe your experience using Shape-ways?

In general it's been really good, I love being able toupload new models at midnight and get an instantprice, it's a really convenient service. And if therehave been problems, then the customer service teamare on the case and resolve issues quickly. I feel thatthere will continue to be issues as this is still a relat-ively new way to make things and each new designpresents its own set of problems. An active com-munity also helps, there's always someone on the

Shapeways forums that can answer questions orpoint you in the right direction, all you haveto do isask!

How have you marketed your creations?W hat has been

t he most successful marketi ng you have done?

I am a bit of a Twitter addict and have used it to testdifferent marketing ideas but I mostly use it to letpeople know what I'm up to and to share news. I'veyet to finalise a full marketing plan, but I'm workingon it! Just as 3D printing is a different way of makingthings which carries benefits such as 'made on de-mand, made to order, customisable and potentiallymade locally', I also want to come up with differentways of marketing my designs.

I've been experimenting with Augmented Reality andlinking AR virtual objects found on the streets of Lon-don to myShapeways shop. I want to push this fur-ther, I like the idea of being able to populate OxfordStreet in central London with 1000's of virtualflowers! I am also talking to traditional retailers andexploring ways that the shopping experience can beenhanced through these new technologies. I also re-cently participated in a couple of Trade Fairs and hadmany really interesting conversations, brilliant tosimply talk to people about the collection and get in-stant feedback, sometimes the old ways work best!

Shapeways has an excellent interview with Mark, Iencourage you to check it out.

Nextwesit downand chatwithAlexDelderfieldown-er ofDelta Edge. Delta Edge is filledwithwonderfullittleMineCraft figurinesprinted in full color sand-stone.

Your shop, Delta Edge is fil led wi t h Minecraft fi gurines.

W hat prompted you to model and print t hem vs anything

else?

After receiving myfirst 3D print earlyon in 2011 (whichwas more of just an

experimental testout of interest) Ithought for a while about what my first major 3Dprinting project could be.

I spent a lot of time looking at what other people weremaking over on the Shapeways forum, in particularthe people who were selling successfully (makingmoney with Blender has been something I've beenhoping to do for quite some time)

I was playing Minecraft at the time when it occurredto me that a creeper might make a decent 3D printedobject, and it was definitely something I would valueand want. After a bit of searching around I foundthere currently weren't any of the quality I wanted, soI decided to whip up one of my own.

After the Creeper model had been completed and Iwas happy with it, I quickly put together a couple ofother figurines to have test-printed as well. About
http://http//www.shapeways.com/blog/archives/1724-Designer-Spotlight-Mark-Bloomfield.htmlhttp://www.delta-edge.com.au/MCPrints/http://www.delta-edge.com.au/MCPrints/


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two weeks later the bigShapeways box arrived,and I was more than im-pressed with the models.Importantly, I knew otherpeople would also sharemy enthusiasm! By thatstage the Minecraft com-munity was growing by millions every month, so I de-cided to make several more Minecraft models to fleshout the store better, before making the figurines pub-licly available.

How do you go about creati ng

each figure?

Since the creatures in Minecraftare very simplistic, the actualcreation of the figurine withinBlender is pretty simple, espe-cially for someone who has sev-eral years of experience usingBlender. The tricky part is tak-ing a digital model and making it

acceptable to print. Not all di-gital models are automaticallyready to be 3D printed, in factmost digital models probablywouldn't work if you just threwthem at a 3D printer and told itto print - there's a lot you needto consider.

For my process however, eachfigurine starts as a cube. I gen-erally started with the head of

the figurine and then added thebodies, arms etc. This was allvery simple modeling, just res-izing boxes to focus on gettingthe sizes and proportions cor-rect. Once the (very) basic meshis done it's then subdivide untilthe subdivided faces match the

resolution of the low-res blocky texture style Mine-craft is known for.

From there I unwrap the models UV'sandadd a col-oured texture map which lines up exactly with thesubdivided faces. I did this so particular 'pixels' on themodel could be easily extruded for extra detail. This iswhere I really felt the quality and depth of the modelsdeveloped, I was able to add a lot of custom detailwhich isn't at all present in the game versions of thecharacters.

Once the main model for the figurine is finished it'sduplicated. One of the duplicates is resized to becomethe larger figurine.

Blenderart Mag-40 Eng

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