Sword of Omens for 3D Printer WIP

[foxa]

While Guilding a metal onto plastic would be more realistic, it still seems "delicate" to me. I wonder if plastic can be plated or anodized, I never really thought about it until now, but that would be cool.

[Edymnion]

Originally Posted by foxa

While Guilding a metal onto plastic would be more realistic, it still seems "delicate" to me. I wonder if plastic can be plated or anodized, I never really thought about it until now, but that would be cool.

Nope, because long story short you can't get plastic to carry a charge, as it is generally an insulator and not a conductor.

[Andy]

It can be done but you need some "water, copper and other ingredients"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbKRQfOlhhI

[Edymnion]

Yeah, basically they coat baby shoes in electrically conductive paint first, then electroplate the paint.

[Edymnion]

Welp, I guess I have something to do until the printer gets here.

I was reading up on scaling models correctly for shapeway, and it mentioned that one blender unit = 1 mm printed. Assuming "1 blender unit" is equal to one square on their default grid, I exported a 2x2 gridsquare cube into AC3D. It was 2 of the larger grid squares big (aka 20 of the grid squares you normally see when you start the program).

I had been working off the assumption that 1 small grid square in AC3D = 1 mm when in reality its 1 big square = 1 mm.

This sword mesh is now nowhere near detailed enough for a full scale print.

Gotta remake it from scratch again, at 10x the resolution this time!

I'm going to have to break out of my "less is more" mentality when it comes to modelling if I'm going to make stuff to print. You can always make something look better by throwing obscene amounts of polygons at it, but I suppose when you're going to print something out that can be measured in feet you really do need those hundreds of thousands of polies.

[foxa]

Sorry to hear that. It's a whole new industry, and we are all learning

[Edymnion]

Yeah, but at least now that I'm having to up the resolution and poly count 10 fold, I can go back and do the things I decided I wish I had done the first time around.

Namely put in space for battery compartments, EL Wire and pushbutton switches so the Eye will light up, texture the dark areas with some baked in geometry, and split the colors up into separate pieces so they can be printed in different colors of metallic filament.

If I gotta go big, then by gum, I'm going *BIG*!

[jentron]

Shapeways asks, when uploading obj files at least, whether the dimensions are millimeters, inches or meters. So you have some options.

They made a suggestion to use flat-shading while modeling, more polygons are better. I think they have a million polygon limit per file.

Fine detail may be lost, the one plastic model I've done was pretty rough. So were the two rings I ordered in "gold steel". The ring I did in gold plated brass was very smooth, though.

Jentron

[Edymnion]

Haven't even finished one plate for one side of one half of the crossguards and already clocking in at 12k polys after a single subdivision. Thats more than the entire original sword had.

And good lord, its aftet 11:00. I've been working on that one lousy plate for nearly 6 hours.

Oh well, it'll be worth it. Least thats what I keep telling myself.

Maybe I can turn the old one into a Skyrim mod or something...

[Edymnion]

Crossguard Faceplate
Final Poly Count: 16,481
Est. Time Required: 10 hours

Next step, the crossguard core piece that the faceguards will fit onto. Ideally I'll be able to find enough shades of metallic PLA filament to print everything in the color it needs to be. If not, this will at least make painting everything easier.

And just as a point of reference, the old sword there in the middle was just under 11k polygons for the entire thing.