Hello everyone!
One year has passed since my last blog entry about my bizarre 3D printing adventures. During this time I took the opportunity to write in my notebook about the projects that I have been working on for the past year and now I decided to share them with you.
Life is getting busy and busy, but I am trying to steal a bit of time for myself and my favorite hobby - 3D printing! I hope that you will find it interesting to see what my workflow is, what problems I came across and how they were solved in the next series of blog posts that I am about to write.
Without further ado let me introduce you to the first entry of my journal - a collaboration with my friend Kalina Stoicheva - Art of Shade . Make sure to check out her artworks! They are absolutely stunning and she is getting better and better with every art piece!
How it started
I was browsing through her gallery and came across this really cool and cute character design of kitties in space ships which she calls Space Buds. I just couldn't resist and had to turn them into 3D and print them. We had a chat and she accepted my proposal for collaboration and this is how our adventure began!
Here are a few words from the concept artist herself, Kalina Stoicheva:
When Vline Designs
approached me I was so happy! It took a little bit of time before we
actually started thinking about it, but when we started the project
we were super determined to do our best. At first I didn’t know how
we could handle it, but then we did some sketches, figured out the
deets and started working. It had been a while since my last project
in Illustrator and I wanted to try something new. I found a really
cool retro-inspired image with soft colours and cool designs that
resembled TV static and the like. The poster which I made came about
so easily, somehow it all came together perfectly.
After the
poster was made, Vili started working on the 3D side of the project.
We picked colours together, made some executive decisions (!) and
that was that! (she worked so hard on it! ).What I really loved
about this project is that the character we did was a character that
came to me two times - when I started my journey with illustrator and
when I first stumbled upon Blender. Both of those times were hard but
resulted in super cool things!
And for Vili as well - her whole
journey of learning 3D and all the work she put into this project !
This is exactly why I was so happy with it - our two journeys all
ended in the same place - this project - a result of both of our hard
work !
Concept art and planning
Let's start with the concept art. Kalina drew the sketches with two views for the cat and space ship - front and back view. The design is pretty simple and clean without too many details.
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| Concept art by Kalina Stoicheva |
The first step was to analyze the concept and separate the models into parts.
- Cat - model will be mainly created in ZBrush since the form is organic and for that matter 3Ds Max is really not an option. According to the sketch the kitty has a scarf and headphones. After a discussion with Kali we agreed to not include them into the final model. There is a chance that the headphones might be too small and the printer won't handle them properly. As for the scarf I suggested to draw a mouth and whiskers instead. On the back side I created a tail.
- Space ship - Here we have more parts and combined execution in 3Ds Max and ZBrush. The parts are as follows:
- Cover with cat ears - transparent
- Hull with small hands, details in ZBRush - solid color
- Lamp on top of the cover - solid color
- Lower part under the ship - in the end I decided to omit it simply because the construction has become too heavy for it.
Prototyping and modelling
After the analysis it is time to start modelling. First stage is always creating a prototype and from there continue to work on it and improve it. I modeled the entire ship in 3Ds Max. The idea was to catch some basic starter shape on which to expand further. The SubDiv modelling approach was the logical choice here.
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| Stages in the process of modelling |
With the printing of the first prototype I had to make major changes on the size of the cover and the way it fits inside the hull. It's kinda hard when you have such type of models to match everything from the first try. That is why it is important to do the testing and prototyping in the early stages. Pictures below are of the first and second prototypes. Not perfect but trying out possibilities until figuring out the right sizes.
For the third and final version of the model of the ship I downscaled a little bit the cover and extruded part of the inside of the hull so the cover can be placed properly. The rest of the details for both parts were created in ZBrush. The tools I used were pretty simple and straightforward like the Move brush and Dam Standart plus SubDiv levels. Also I gave more volume to the cover since the first model was very thin and it broke pretty easy.
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| Hull detailed in ZBrush |
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| Back side of the hull |
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| Perspective view of the cover in ZBrush. |
The model of the cat was created entirely in ZBrush. I had to go through a couple of iterations there as well. The main goal was to make the details on the face visible enough for Cura to detect them. For that matter the Dam Standart and Clay buildup brushes helped me a lot.
Slicing in Cura
After the modelling stage was completed it is time to launch Cura and slice everything.
Lets start with the hull of the ship. Here the main dilemma was which part to sacrifice to the supports - the bottom or the inside. At my first try I decided to put the supports on the bottom of the hull, outside. It was a mistake...
The supports ruined the perfect shape and surface of the model. On the next try I rotated the hull in 180 degrees, the hole facing the bottom. Thus the supports will remain inside but will keep the outside intact.
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| The hull sliced in Cura |
Settings:- 70% scale in Cura
- Layer height - 0.3mm
- Infill - 30%, lines pattern
- Supports - Grid pattern, Support Z Distance - 0.3 mm, Support Density - 30%
- Brim - enabled
- Time taken - around 4 hours.
Next up is the cover. For this model I did not hesitate even a bit. I knew that in order to keep the outside smooth I had to place the supports on the inside and that's why I positioned the cover like shown on the photo. The most important thing was the scale. On the first try I left it at 70% scale but it barely fit the hull. After that I scaled it down to 68% but it turned out too small and the cover was not standing still. I guess I had to try with 69%, but didn't have time to see. In the end it is always a matter of mere 1 or 2 centimeters until you get it right ;).
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| The cover sliced in Cura |
Settings:
- 68% scale in Cura
- Layer height - 0.2mm
- Infill - 50%, lines pattern
- Supports - Grid pattern, Support Z Distance - 0.3 mm, Support Density - 30%
- Brim - enabled
- Time taken - around 3 hours.
The slicing for the cat was pretty straightforward and simple. Here I wanted to focus on the details of the face so I loaded the fine settings. Supports were not needed.
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| The cat sliced in Cura |
Settings:
- 270% scale in Cura - roughly 44mm height.
- Layer height - 0.06mm
- Infill - 8%, gyroid pattern
- Brim - enabled
- Time taken - around 2 hours and 43 mins.
The final two models are of the antenna and the ball on top of it. There is nothing special about them,really. I left the settings on default, since there are no special details on them. They were ready in a matter of 5-6 minutes.
I admit the worst part post printing was removing the supports, especially the ones from inside the hull. It probably took me one or two hours at best plus a couple of small wounds on the fingers but it was totally worth it. I also used sandpaper and Parkside tool for smoothing the surface of the hull as well as on the cat.
You can see on the picture below that the cover is smaller than the hull, but it still fits eh? :D
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| Kalina's ship and cat |
In conclusion I am very proud of the result and I am also happy that Kalina let me turn her cute space buds into 3D! It was a pleasure working together with her on this fun collaboration! Last but not least I learned a couple of new things and gained a bit more confidence to create complex models and shapes.
This blog post has become rather long, so If you reached this far you have my sincere gratitude! ;)
Until next time! ~
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