The price is already too high for most people, if I charged more I wouldn't have any client at all. They not only have to pay me, but they also have to pay for the print itself, which can go up to 300-400 bucks for the biggest pieces.
When someone wants a higher quality model, like, if they want to sell them, of course I charge more and put more time in it. but otherwise, "normal" clients are happy with something cheaper.
Oh look it's me again. I started this new character for Manaworld and as I have more time to work on it I could use some help.
So that's the ref :
And that's where I am :
I'm not going for the angular style Scratch uses to draw, so keep in mind that she'll be "rounder" than the ref, like Syx was. And of course I need to keep it printable in color sandstone.
This one will be hollow though, not like Syx, so we can reduce the printing cost. there is no room for an escape hole, so I'm gonna cut her in 2 parts and put the holes inbetween, like I did for this one :
If you take a look at the Battle Chasers art dump, there's a couple of concepts towards the top that are extremely similar to this one - same wildly impractical armour, anatomy and even colour scheme. They'll probably be of some use to nailing down the look of this model. http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=157261
She looks like Red Monika , from Joe Madureira's Battlechasters, the Concept is a carbon copy of his character, might help
Though I'm not sure if the design will cause legal problems.
Yeah Scratch said it was a porn parody of Monika, so it's OK. I think that Veronika looks way too much like Monika honestly, which is already a caricature... But he used this character for years now and Joe probably knows about it. At least I hope so.
I'm stil gonna change the armor pieces that look too much like Monika. Without this she's just a bimbo with big boobs and red hair I guess, not really original. Or maybe we should use her alternative design :
I'm gonna di this armor too anyway.
I have the same "problem" with another client who made this character :
Which looks a lot like a fat version of Penny from ZaftigBunny, but he says he didn't copy.
Hey man, not sure if this has already been answered but:
Who do you use for the 3d printing? do you print with casting/molding in mind or do you just straight print?
What difficulties have you had to overcome with the printing process? For example, have you had to beef up things like fingers/hair so they print correctly?
Most of the time my clients use Shapeways. One or two of them had to rely on an Austrian private company to print adult stuff that Shapeways refused to print.
And yes I always have to adapt the characters so the thin parts are printable, that's why most of them have a closed hand, on hand on hips, etc. The Syx figurine I had to modify her 5 or 6 times so they could print it with a successful rate high enough.
So now I always upload the model as soon as possible on shapeways to perform a printability check, or I use netfabb basic to check the thickness.
The other big problem comes from the hollowing on big prints, sometime there isn't any room for an escape hole so I need to cut the character in several parts.
The 2048px limit for the texture used for color printing is also a problem sometimes, it makes shitty details, but the printer can't print those details anyway...
It surprises me that Shapeways doesn't appear to allow coloured VRML prints given that their Z-Corp sandstone printers should support them. ZBrush exports them natively with the polypaint data embedded in the model - no need for UVs and texture size limitations.
But what about the file size ? An highpoly with enough vertices to have a good polypaint is way too heavy to upload, and they have a rather small size limit ( 64mb or 1 millions polys ). So they need a texture on a decimated mesh.
The 2048px limit for the texture used for color printing is also a problem sometimes, it makes shitty details, but the printer can't print those details anyway...
Huh? I use Shapeways frequently for some clients too, and I almost always use 4k maps, have even used 8k maps at times if I recall. Just have to make sure the file size isn't too big.
Ah now that you say it, it's true. I must have seen that on another site, or maybe it was an old requirement when I did my first print more than a year ago.
Did you notice any difference in details between the texture sizes ? They say the printer has a 300dpi resolution but the final result is more like 50dpi. I really wonder if having bigger textures is really usefull.
"Another issue to keep in mind is that we work with a powder that absorbs ink. Even though the resolution of the inkjet printhead is around 300DPI, the effective resolution of the transferred texture map is probably closer to 50DPI. Keep this in mind when designing fine details, especially on small models."
Anyway I'm gonna use 4K textures now to see if there is a difference.
Did you notice any difference in details between the texture sizes ? They say the printer has a 300dpi resolution but the final result is more like 50dpi. I really wonder if having bigger textures is really usefull.
Most of the time I don't get to see the printed result, unfortunately. But it really depends on the scale you plan to print, the surface area of the model and how well it is utilizing the UV space. If you're using most of the UV space, then 2k is good enough for most stuff, but if you're just doing quick UVMaster unwraps, 4k is a safer texture size to just make sure you're retaining the quality you want.
I generally use UV master on a zremeshed mesh and then painfully edit the UVs in MAX ( I've read that the uv editor doesn't use 3D acceleration and thus it's SLOOOOOOOOW with heavy meshes ) to reduce the surface of the inside on hollowed meshes, and I scale the island of the head up a bit to get more details in the face. More of the time with a 2048 I just have enough resol for a good face, but as you can see in this thread, prints with giant boobs can be a mess because they take most of the uv space...
Ahh that's a shame! Personally use Maya myself and it's pretty decent with UVs, especially the newest update that added UV brushes.
But you don't really need to even go into Max to edit your UVs. There's a quick trick to get a polygroup for your hollow inside.
ZModeler Brush>Edge>Unweld>Edgeloop-Complete, and unweld the edgeloop that runs around the area where you have the hollow starting.
Then Polygroup menu > Auto groups.
Now when you do your UV master with Polygroups on, you'll have a separate island with the inside.
You can then go UVMaster>Flatten and use the Transpose tool to scale down just that UV island, either by masking, or turning on "Mask By Polygroups" under Brush>Auto Masking. Quick, simple and not laggy!
(If you don't have a decent edgeloop to use, you can instead hold alt and paint a polygroup around the edge, do a GroupSplit, then AutoGroups and finally Merge it back and Geometry>WeldPoints.)
Yeah, for most parts I just use masking too. But depending on the part and wall thickness, it can be too difficult to mask one side and not have it mask the other... so this method saves some time for getting a polygroup for your hollow inside area.
What the hell, I didn't post here in almost a year. Wait... a year already ? Daaaaaaamn.
Well I won't post all the weird stuff I made, honestly it had become so bad and silly I just stopped doing commissions for a while. And as I can't get a good job in the videogame industry I'll just stop here and look for a "normal" job. I'll just keep doing 3D for fun and a few clients on the side.
Here are the babes. I am NOT responsible for my client's tastes, believe me this stuff is the LESS weird I did XD :
Nobody posts here but this topic has 35K views, a lot more than anything else I ever posted ^^. So I know you are watching.
Perverts.
My Halloween pinup :
A not-so-weird commission :
Other pinups I'm working on. Elvira became the Pumpkin pinup above ( changed the hair and face ), and I'm doing a new Elvira with Lady Death's costume ( see concepts ).
And if you need a tutorial for 3D printing in fullcolor sandstone with useful tips, I did one :
I did two new figurines for Manaworld and finished my Elvira/Lady Death pinup. Maybe I should make a lowpoly of this with proper texturing and shaders. Someday.
I love the stuff you do on your own heh. The client stuff, while well done, is too over sexualized for my tastes but to not fault of yours. I hope you get to do more of your own work to show off!
Ha ha, nice! I always love the updates to your thread here mate.
There's some really nice color gradation going on in those sandstone prints - just wish the detail replication for that material was sharper. The 'fuzzy' textures never seem to do your sculpts justice.
Is that barbarian going to be printed as well, or just remain a personal project? She looks like you could potential take her to full vinyl cast reproduction if you cut her up well.
The barbarian was made for a client who gave me free reins for his character so I made a deal with him, I did a character I wanted to do and then I'll replace the head with his character's head. Took me a lot more time than a normal commission but I can use my character to do a print.
I'll probably just do a sandstone and plastic print. Or maybe make a game model with it, she doesn't look too bad and I could practice with PBR texturing on several materials.
I hope they'll make a better color material soon, sandstone is indeed a bit poor in quality for the price they ask.
Replies
When someone wants a higher quality model, like, if they want to sell them, of course I charge more and put more time in it. but otherwise, "normal" clients are happy with something cheaper.
So that's the ref :
And that's where I am :
I'm not going for the angular style Scratch uses to draw, so keep in mind that she'll be "rounder" than the ref, like Syx was. And of course I need to keep it printable in color sandstone.
This one will be hollow though, not like Syx, so we can reduce the printing cost. there is no room for an escape hole, so I'm gonna cut her in 2 parts and put the holes inbetween, like I did for this one :
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=157261
Though I'm not sure if the design will cause legal problems.
Etc.
I'm stil gonna change the armor pieces that look too much like Monika. Without this she's just a bimbo with big boobs and red hair I guess, not really original. Or maybe we should use her alternative design :
I'm gonna di this armor too anyway.
I have the same "problem" with another client who made this character :
Which looks a lot like a fat version of Penny from ZaftigBunny, but he says he didn't copy.
Who do you use for the 3d printing? do you print with casting/molding in mind or do you just straight print?
What difficulties have you had to overcome with the printing process? For example, have you had to beef up things like fingers/hair so they print correctly?
And yes I always have to adapt the characters so the thin parts are printable, that's why most of them have a closed hand, on hand on hips, etc. The Syx figurine I had to modify her 5 or 6 times so they could print it with a successful rate high enough.
So now I always upload the model as soon as possible on shapeways to perform a printability check, or I use netfabb basic to check the thickness.
The other big problem comes from the hollowing on big prints, sometime there isn't any room for an escape hole so I need to cut the character in several parts.
The 2048px limit for the texture used for color printing is also a problem sometimes, it makes shitty details, but the printer can't print those details anyway...
Huh? I use Shapeways frequently for some clients too, and I almost always use 4k maps, have even used 8k maps at times if I recall. Just have to make sure the file size isn't too big.
Did you notice any difference in details between the texture sizes ? They say the printer has a 300dpi resolution but the final result is more like 50dpi. I really wonder if having bigger textures is really usefull.
"Another issue to keep in mind is that we work with a powder that absorbs ink. Even though the resolution of the inkjet printhead is around 300DPI, the effective resolution of the transferred texture map is probably closer to 50DPI. Keep this in mind when designing fine details, especially on small models."
Anyway I'm gonna use 4K textures now to see if there is a difference.
Most of the time I don't get to see the printed result, unfortunately. But it really depends on the scale you plan to print, the surface area of the model and how well it is utilizing the UV space. If you're using most of the UV space, then 2k is good enough for most stuff, but if you're just doing quick UVMaster unwraps, 4k is a safer texture size to just make sure you're retaining the quality you want.
Should be better with a 4K texture.
But you don't really need to even go into Max to edit your UVs. There's a quick trick to get a polygroup for your hollow inside.
ZModeler Brush>Edge>Unweld>Edgeloop-Complete, and unweld the edgeloop that runs around the area where you have the hollow starting.
Then Polygroup menu > Auto groups.
Now when you do your UV master with Polygroups on, you'll have a separate island with the inside.
You can then go UVMaster>Flatten and use the Transpose tool to scale down just that UV island, either by masking, or turning on "Mask By Polygroups" under Brush>Auto Masking. Quick, simple and not laggy!
(If you don't have a decent edgeloop to use, you can instead hold alt and paint a polygroup around the edge, do a GroupSplit, then AutoGroups and finally Merge it back and Geometry>WeldPoints.)
Didn't know we could edit the uvs in zbrush, gonna try that.
Here is an update on Veronika, she's painted...
Looking great though!
Scratch is making a test print for Red, which will be available as a diorama with the first Syx and some props :
Arvalis got the print of his dragon girl Naera. Came out pretty good ( 15cm ) :
And two other characters I did for commissions :
Well I won't post all the weird stuff I made, honestly it had become so bad and silly I just stopped doing commissions for a while. And as I can't get a good job in the videogame industry I'll just stop here and look for a "normal" job. I'll just keep doing 3D for fun and a few clients on the side.
Here are the babes. I am NOT responsible for my client's tastes, believe me this stuff is the LESS weird I did XD :
In progress :
Some that got printed and they sent me photos :
Perverts.
My Halloween pinup :
A not-so-weird commission :
Other pinups I'm working on. Elvira became the Pumpkin pinup above ( changed the hair and face ), and I'm doing a new Elvira with Lady Death's costume ( see concepts ).
And if you need a tutorial for 3D printing in fullcolor sandstone with useful tips, I did one :
http://texelion.deviantart.com/art/3D-printing-tutorial-621224246?q=Texelion/12451404&qo=9
See ya
And a photo of a printed Vermana :
There's some really nice color gradation going on in those sandstone prints - just wish the detail replication for that material was sharper. The 'fuzzy' textures never seem to do your sculpts justice.
Is that barbarian going to be printed as well, or just remain a personal project? She looks like you could potential take her to full vinyl cast reproduction if you cut her up well.
I'll probably just do a sandstone and plastic print. Or maybe make a game model with it, she doesn't look too bad and I could practice with PBR texturing on several materials.
I hope they'll make a better color material soon, sandstone is indeed a bit poor in quality for the price they ask.
I'm really wondering why 90% of my clients only want those big ridiculous boobs...