OT/General 3D Dollies - Info and discussion!

Inspired by the discussion happening in this thread, I thought I'd create a new thread devoted to everything about 3D modelled dollies.

I'd like to fill this thread with info and resources to help beginners get started creating 3D dolls, and to educate traditional clay artists about 3D dolls! Please post any links or info you run across and I will add it!


:p General 3D Modelling Info: :p

3D modelling is the process by which an artist uses a computer to create points in space (called "vertices") which get connected by flat planes (called "polygons") to create a virtual model. This can be something as simple as a cube, or so complex and detailed it's almost as real as reality. While 3D modelling can be a highly technical process, it's also a very artistic one when you get into doing things like the human form, and requires just as much of an artist's eye and artistic skills as traditional clay sculpture.


:p Why 3D Dolls? :p

3D is an interesting alternative to clay for doll making. As a virtual medium, it allows for some additional freedom in sculpting that no "real life" medium can offer, such as:

• Multiple saves - you can experiment with different things in your sculpt without losing anything. Don't like how it's going? Just go back to an old save, or combine elements from multiple saves.
  
• Easy editing - want the legs longer, or the head larger? Just scale them as you like.
  
• Automatic symmetry so you can have both sides matching easily (more on this later).
  
• High level of precision - no worrying about getting joints perfectly spherical.
  
• Unlimited zoom - get as detailed as you want without straining your eyes.
  
• No mess.
  
• The 3D part of the process can be done completely free, depending on your choice of modelling program.

:p Why -not- 3D Dolls? :p

Everything has pros and cons, and there are some drawbacks to doing a doll in 3D:

• 3D has a fairly steep learning curve and because some aspects are a technical process, it may be extra-difficult for non-computer-people
  
• Testing the movement of joints can be difficult in 3D. Joints can be put together and moved around each other to a degree before printing, but not as easily as real-life sculpted joints, and testing things like balance (that require knowing the volume, weight, friction, etc. of your finished doll) are way, WAY difficult.
  
• 3D printing can be prohibitively expensive depending on your model, company you get it printed from, and choice of materials. However, 3D printing is becoming more affordable all the time, and the prices will just keep getting lower.
  
• Traditional clay artists may feel limited not being able to get "hands-on" and feel the surface of their sculpt with their own fingertips.
  
• If you are planning on selling your doll, you may find a slight prejudice against 3D dolls. Dollstown has a bit of a negative statement on their site about how clay dolls are better, and some individuals in the doll community may feel the same way.
  
• While 3D does allow for doing symmetry easily, you must carefully adjust for non-symmetry so that your doll does not look -too- perfect. Dolls which are too symmetrical may be perceived as "not alive" or "soulless" or "creepy."
  
• Just as with clay, the finished product is only as good as the artist who creates it. However, due to the nature of 3D's precision, it can be easier for a lazy artist to make a doll that looks too stiff, with the "cuts" where the joints come together looking too precise and perfect compared to the organic flow of the doll's body. This is not an inevitable outcome of 3D - just something to be aware of.

:p Existing 3D Dolls: :p

Here are dolls that were made fully or partially in 3D.

Finished - Confirmed 3D:

• Pulkidoll by Firefly - Her WIP threads on The Joint are here and here.

Finished - Suspected 3D:

These are dolls that, based on their jointing systems, the precision of the "cuts" and their overall look are strongly suspected to have been created at least partially in 3D:

• Iplehouse - The highly precise nature of the way the torsos fit together and the mechanically complicated jointing system makes it likely Iplehouse creates their dolls in 3D.
  
• Angelsdoll - A highly realistically proportioned doll with a very natural flow - but with extremely precise jointing that seems almost a little jarring in contrast to the natural body.
  
• Fairyland - Extremely precise jointing, especially in the more recent dolls and the sliding knee joints.

Unfinished:

• Merun - My own doll, still a WIP!

 

:p Programs for 3D Modelling: :p

There are MANY different programs for 3D modelling - about as many as there are brands of clay. They all have their own strengths and weaknesses. Many are quite expensive, but you may be able to find them for less by purchasing used copies of older versions, or getting a student copy through your college or university.

• Autodesk Maya - Industry standard for modelling and animating. High learning curve. VERY expensive ($3500-4000 USD for current version).
  
• Autodesk 3DS Max - Professional-level software. Medium learning curve. VERY expensive ($4000 USD for current version).
  
• Autodesk Mudbox - Allows more of a "sculptural" approach to modelling than many programs. Expensive (825 euros for current version).
  
• Pixologic ZBrush - Similar to Mudbox in that it allows you to sort of sculpt in 3D. Expensive ($500 USD for current version).
  
• Blender - Open source. High learning curve but completely free forever!

:p 3D Printing: :p

When it comes time to make your doll from a virtual model into a real-life doll, then it's time for 3D printing (sometimes called "rapid prototyping"). There are many different methods of 3D printing. The most popular method now is an additive method - similar to printing on paper. A precision nozzle similar to the print head in your home/office printer lays down tiny layers of material based on the 3D model, building it up until the finished shape is achieved.

Many materials are available, from plastics to metals - heck, you can even 3D print using cake frosting! There are many different types of 3D printers, too - from inexpensive ones starting at around $800 for the home hobbyist, to crazy pricey ones for around $100,000!

Another method of 3D printing is subtractive - instead of building up material, the printer starts with a block of material and takes away the unneeded pieces. This method doesn't allow for as much versatility though - you can't do interlocking shapes, hollow pieces, complex undercuts, etc.

3D printing can be expensive - but depending on the size of the doll and the way you make the model, (and your budget, of course) it can be quite affordable. You can also print your doll in multiple sizes without having to re-sculpt it!

Companies that offer 3D printing services include:

• InterPro - United States - Used by firefly, maker of Pulkidoll. Did not respond to my email inquiry.
  
• Gravotech - Netherlands - Found online. Did not respond to my email inquiry.
  
• Shapeways - Netherlands - Wide range of materials at relatively affordable prices. Same-day replies via email and verified to me that they don't mind printing non-sexually-explicit nude dolls. Quick production times too. Transparent Detail, White Detail and Sandstone (also maybe Alumide) appear to be suitable for dolls, with Sandstone being the least expensive but also requiring the most work in post-processing (fixing the rough surface).

There are also home 3D printers available such as:

• RepRap Mendel & Darwin
  
• Makerbot
  
• Fab@Home
  
• Robo3D **
  
• Leapfrog
  
• Ultimaker

However! The precision available on home 3D printers is (currently) not nearly as good as the precision available on commercial 3D printers. If you look at the projects created with them, you'll notice small "striation" lines showing how the material was laid down on the surface. These lines could be filled by hand afterward or smoothed using acetone (depending on the material, of course).

** RE: Robo3D. This is the printer I now have myself at home. Low-end price, high quality. Requires some fiddling and learning, but not near as much as some of the kit builds. Would recommend-ish (company has some communications and quality control issues at the moment but they're a new company and improving). PM me if you want to know more, or see some of the info in my doll thread.

:p 3D Modelling Tutorials and Resources: :p

Some of these tutorials are for specific programs, but the techniques explained within are often useful no matter what program you're using.

• Modelling a Human Head in 3DS Max - Piece-by-piece method. Good for beginners.
  
• Spline and Polygon Modelling - Tutorials are in French but easily understandable even if you don't speak French (just use Google Translate.
  
• Box Modelling a Head - Great technique if you like working from an overview. Good for beginners.
  
• Modelling the Human Figure - Face and body. Doesn't go into great detail but good once you've gotten the hang of things.
  
• The Pole and The Pole Revised - Advanced modelling info on how to make an organic model flow better. VERY useful information, but may be over the head of a beginner.

:p More info to share? :p

If you have any questions, tips, links, or info to add to this thread, please post! I will collect whatever useful stuff comes up as a result of this thread and organize it in the first few posts.

 

Post reserved to be edited later.

 

Post reserved to be edited later. :p

 

How weird that they seem to have basically started over with the sculpt, though - their initial sculpt looks basically spot on except a couple little spots (and I LOVE Castiel, omfg). Seems like they really should show you the print and let you guys critique needed changes based on that. Right now, you guys are critiquing the likeness of the pictures you're given, so you're really just trying to get back to where it was before, so I'm not sure that's actually going to get you a better likeness, but just a repeat of the same issues.

 

It really really does sound very weird to me, knowing how the process works. I can see -some- things being off because of the sculpt... For example:



Those two are the exact same model - no changes to my 3d shapes whatsoever. The only difference is my setting for the perspective field of view. Left is one degree, right is the default (for the program I'm using) of 45. I -think- what I will get when I print is closer to the right one (I hope so!), but I'm not sure. So I can see how that might affect the print vs. 3d, but I still don't understand why they would need to change so much.

I think it'd be worth asking for a photo of the print - otherwise, you're just flying blind not knowing why t was wrong in V1, and I don't think throwing it to you guys for tweaks will actually help get you closer.

 

Cool, thanks, firefly! Very helpful to see your actual print vs. your 3D. Such a dramatic difference between your last two pictures! And yet both are lovely and aesthetically pleasing - perhaps I've just been looking at my project for too long.

I also got a reply on the Shapeways forum where I asked: http://www.shapeways.com/forum/index.php?t=msg&th=10551&start=0&

"The default 45 is going to be pretty close.

When I was in school they said that at 35mm lens is what you want to use if you want your picture to look similar to what the human eye sees. Now, I believe they're teaching that a 50mm is most life like.

A 35mm lens has an FOV of 54.4 degrees.
A 50mm lens has an FOV of 39.6 degrees.
45 degrees is in the middle there somewhere."

So I'll stick with the 45 degree setting for the face aesthetics and continue dropping down to 1 degree for close-up work (I get camera clipping at higher settings but can zoom in WAY close at 1 degree).

 

So I'm strongly considering purchasing a Solidoodle. The print quality is supposedly as good as I can get from Shapeways (0.1mm minimum detail) and the price of just buying a printer and some materials is roughly equivalent to what I'm expecting for a full print through Shapeways. Plus if I need to redesign or tweak something, I can do it in my living room for pennies, rather than another 30 euros or whatever. Even if the print quality isn't -perfect-, I was planning on having to do some post-work anyway, and the plastic used in it can be smoothed with acetone.

Anyone doing 3D printing considering getting their own desktop printer too?

 

firefly - The print lines they're showing on their demos are definitely not printed at the finest detail setting. I've been trying to find some more demos of it printing at finer settings, but it seems to be fairly new so there's not a lot of folks using it yet. Material costs are pretty low - I found a fairly local source of material for about 15 euros per kilo. Not sure what that translates into per volume, but it can't be terribly much. Edit: ABS plastic has a density of 1.04 grams per cubic centimeter, so you'd get about 962 cubic centimeters per kilo of material. Let's call about half of it waste because the learning curve is apparently pretty high, plus you sometimes have bits of support material/bad prints, so that's 481 cubic centimeters which is still only about 3 euro cents per cubic centimeter, at the pricing I was finding for materials.

penguu - That is waaaay outta my price range, unfortunately. The prints look beautiful though. It appears from what I'm reading that most any extruding printer built with the open-source Reprap stuff can be tweaked to do incredibly detailed prints, but it does seem like some of the best are coming off an Ultimaker. Edit: I posted on the Solidoodle forums asking if I can expect a similar print quality to the Ultimaker with enough tweaking. Now to see what they have to say. I'm fine with doing some post-work on the prints with acetone/primer/sanding, though I'd certainly like to minimize that. Not sure if minimizing post-work is worth twice the price and a lot more effort putting the thing together in the first place, though. Edit 2: I got a reply back and looks like the Solidoodle at fine detail settings will be more than sufficient in print quality - it's not the absolute best quality I've seen, but it's pretty good. Though the one offputting thing is that the Solidoodle is apparently not built on the same open-source tech as many of the others, so it's not going to be upgradeable. Ultimaker looks great and I like that it's fairly local to me, but their supply of units is apparently abysmal. So... more research needed, but I really would like to buy me a printer, either way.

 

Does this link work, firefly? https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/solidoodle/iNRnJxHdz9Y

I'm kinda thinking about it thusly: I'm used to working in clay, and that worked fine, even paperclay. My main frustration was a relative lack of precision, and having to do everything twice to make both sides (for things like knees and whatnot). Post-work is always a necessity - but having a printer at home would mean that if I decide I want to test the working of a new type of knee joint, I can whip up a simple one and print it in an evening, with just minimal or no post-work at all... And if I can spend $500-700 for either a prebuilt or kit and get decent prints at home, then what I don't spend on the printer, I can put toward a good pressure pot and compressor for the actual doll production. Acetone appears to do some almost sanding-like smoothing on the parts.

I like the prebuilt nature of the Solidoodle, but not its non-open-source-ness and the fact that it can't be upgradable like the Repraps can.

It appears the ABS plastic is pretty much universal except for the sizing (there's 1.75/1.8mm and 3mm) - some of the companies say "We've tested ours and we can guarantee ours will work, but, y'know, use whatever - you'll have to tweak your temps but you should get used to doing fiddly stuff like that anyway." So there's lots of different sources for it, and it's cheap as chips. I even saw an amazing demo of a company who'd set up at an outdoor festival and was using their nifty little machine to clean, dry, shred, melt, and recycle empty beer cups into material that they were then feeding into their printer at the festival!

The support material appears to be set up to snap off - if you've ever built a little scale model kit, it seems to be sort of like that, where it has pre-determined "break points" that it should come off easily. Support material isn't necessary for all models though - depends on the orientation of the print and how the parts are done.

There's a looooad of tech schools nearby, but the printing costs are super high through them too - the closest I can find charges by the hour, which means any extruder-based printer (which is what they have) is gonna be crazy pricey.

Edit: After doing a lot of research (seriously, my eyes are about to fall outta my head), I've decided to go for the RepRapPro Mendel. It's available as a kit out of the UK at a reasonable price, and is a Prusa-i2-based RepRap (so open-source, customizable, based on a lot of trial and error and research). I will get the printable parts printed separately through a semi-local person printing them at cost (materials + shipping), which should save me quite a bit of money. It's a fairly complicated build, but it doesn't look like anything I can't handle, possibly with a bit of Mr. Paroxysm's help. It's upgradeable and extremely tweakable, and if I mount it in a sturdier case, it should be capable of extremely fine detail. I look forward to seeing what I can do with post-processing with it.

 

Hi patricia, I didn't see your post till now (I only check in here occasionally).

I think the place to begin is by getting a 3D program and learning to use it. As Blender is free, it's a good starting point - a greater learning curve than other programs, but because it is free, it's widely used by many people so there are a lot of learning resources for it. When I was first learning 3DS Max, I just started doing every tutorial I could find. There's a bunch of video tutorials out there, and I made all kinds of things - vases and cups and barbecue grills, lamps and tables and horribly blobby faces, etc... It's all about learning the tools and discovering various techniques. Even though you may be making a fork in a tutorial, maybe the method used for part of it will be useful for making something else later on.

And then once you have the basics, you can start studying more in depth. There are many tutorials out there on how to model the human figure, so ya can look at a bunch of those, get an idea of the approach you want to take. There's many different ways to do it, and it's worth it to try various methods and see which you like best, as you can often combine the methods or mix-and-match (spline modelling for the eye area, box modelling to do the main part of the head, and extrusions to add the ears, for example). Once you have a little bit of basic knowledge, you'll know how to Google for specific problems you're having and will likely end up doing more tutorials that may or may not help, but will add to your skillset.

There's always something more to learn, but once you know how to do the simple stuff, you can at least start experimenting and seeing if it's something that intrigues you and makes you want to continue. And even if you don't end up doing a full 3D dollie for print, it can still be really useful for doing quick mock-ups of jointing systems to see if something will work without the mess/fuss/waiting for drying time inherent in testing things in clay.

 

I've edited the first bits a little bit, to better reflect the realities of 3D doll-making, based on my experiences with them thus far.

I'd also like to talk a little bit here about the Dollstown "Why Original Handcrafted Dolls?" Statement and the very similar "Dollshe Statement", because I've been thinking about it a lot lately, and I've gotten a lot more experience under my belt when it comes to making dolls in 3D, understanding the technology, etc... This is long, and for that I apologize, but I don't think I can express everything I want to say here in less than a short novel.

Their argument against 3D seems to consist of two major points:

1) The use of 3D scanning and printing allows for easier pirating of existing doll sculpts, and
2) 3D printed dolls cannot compare in time and effort as well as artistry of traditionally-made clay dolls, and thus cannot be considered handmade, or valued as highly.

I disagree, for the most part, with both of these points. I'd like to say, up front, though, that my disagreement with their opinions on these points is in no way a judgement on their work in traditional clay sculpture, or their artistry, or anything of the sort. Their dolls are stunningly beautiful works of art, and between the gorgeous detailed anatomy Dollmore bodies, and my heart-on for Dollshe's Saint head and incredibly posing bodies, I'm probably gonna end up giving them a lot of my cash.


Firstly, to the issue of piracy/bootlegging of dolls. At the moment, the technology exists to both do a 3D scan (where you use either photographs or a laser to take an existing real-world object and create a digital, 3D model of it) as well as to output the scan back into the real world as a 3D print. But except for the absolute highest-end scanners and printers, the technology is simply not at a level yet at which it is practical to 3D scan and then print a doll for the purposes of piracy.

Most 3D scanning at this point is relatively crude, and creates a 3D model which resembles a wax sculpture that sat in the sun a bit too long. Fine details are lost, even when scanning larger objects. Of course, better scans are possible, but they are currently the exception and difficult to achieve. They also tend to create a very "tangled" model, which is harder to modify than one made by scratch, by hand.

Even when you do have an excellent 3D model made, getting a good print is still difficult, and expensive. It requires an extremely detailed, high-polygon model (either hand-crafted or 3D scanned), but even the best 3d prints from a relatively affordable printer still will have noticeable "print artifacts" - striations, lines, etc., that require intensive surface finishing. There are high-end commercial printers capable of excellent quality, but even those will still have some features that still require resurfacing, similar to the image above... I have handled prints from such printers, and while some are quite detailed, they are still quite rough in texture, like fine sandpaper. This means someone is going to have to sand and retouch areas on the physical printed version which are not smooth from the printing process. And the products of high-end commercial printers are much more expensive - around 500 euros (668 US dollars) to print one MSD-sized doll in the cheapest materials from the cheapest print services... and again, still requiring surface work. Even the lowest-end 3D printers for home are still around 500 US Dollars, and require extensive time and effort to calibrate, as well as the print process taking many hours to print in fine detail.

For piracy puposes, 3D scanning and printing are simply impractical at this point, requiring a much greater outlay of time, effort, money, and materials, to achieve a finished product which will likely be inferior or at least substantially different to the original in regards to its fine details and surface finishing. It makes much more sense, if one did wish to pirate an existing doll, to simply mold it in silicone and begin recasting it straight away. If you already have the doll in-hand, why go through the trouble to make an inferior digital copy, when you can just do so the same way all resin doll artists already duplicate their master sculpts? Even if someone wishes to produce a pirated cast with modifications, these modifications can be made with epoxy clay to a junk cast and then re-molded.

The major exception to this would be resizing.... That is, if a doll is only available in a certain size but the pirate wishes to make it significantly larger or smaller, 3D scanning and printing would allow a rescale of the design. However, it would be with the same problems outlined above regarding detail loss, surface issues, money, and time.

Please note of course that I am in no way advocating the piracy, bootlegging, recasting, or otherwise duplicating anyone else's sculpts. I find the practice of doing so extremely offensive, both as an artist and as someone wishing to produce dolls for sale. I merely mean to address the practical aspects of doing so with 3D, and point out that producing doll copies is quite easy with the "low-tech" methods already available to anyone producing resin dolls. The assertion that "3-D scanning converts the image of a doll into digital data, which can easily be used to make pirated copies or modified versions of an original" seems to be a misunderstanding of where the technology is at this point in time. "Easily" is not yet a word I would put to any part of the process.



The second point, regarding the greater value and artistry involved in traditionally-made dolls, is a bit more subjective, but I think it also stems from a misunderstanding of what is involved in making a 3D model. 3D, at its heart, is simply a tool, not fundamentally different than the tools a sculptor uses to form the clay, or a set of calipers used to check sizing, or a schematic used to work as a guide for the proportions. All are extensions of the artist's hands and eyes, used to allow greater precision, easier work, and for the artist to make a more accurate representation of what they see in their mind's eye. Whether you're using polymer clay, oil clay, paperclay, wax, stoneware, cold porcelain, or polygons, the workflow is fundamentally the same.

All are manipulated with the hands or tools that are extensions of them (be that sculpting tools, a hot pen, blades, or a mouse and keyboard), and all require an intense investment of time and effort. All have a learning curve, and require a deep understanding of the medium. All require the artist to have an excellent grasp of the human form and the way it moves, to understand anatomy, the way the body and face can be expressive, how proportions work together (and how to exagerrate or accentuate certain elements). All require the artist to become a bit of a mechanical engineer, understanding friction and balance and the limitations of their materials, as well as finding ways to express the soft shapes of the human body in a hard medium that cannot stretch and compress in motion, while retaining a natural look. All require hours, days, months, even years of work to take an original rough version through the stages of adding and testing jointing, tweaking the forms, making sure everything works right, etc... And in all media, the outcome is only as good as the artist themselves - I've seen amazing clay dolls, and terrible ones, just as I've seen amazing 3D dolls, and terrible ones.

There is very little to no element of the computer just doing it for you, and the assertion that a 3D doll can be "a doll that is primarily the product of digital data manipulation with only the very final touch-up phase done by human hand" is a fundamental misunderstanding of the way 3D dolls are created. It really is sculpting - just done in a different medium. When I work on my 3D doll, I shape her forms carefully, slowly, painstakingly, by hand (yes, my hands are on my mouse and keyboard, but they ache no less at the end of the day than when I worked in clay). I "cut away" extraneous parts, "chop up" limbs into pieces in preparation for jointing, "smush" bits into place, "carve out" hollows, and "smooth" rough or misshapen elements. Just as with a clay doll, I find myself rotating my 3D forms to all manner of angles, looking at it from above, from below, this way and that, to identify areas that are misshapen, and work carefully to fix them. And correcting small errors is one place that 3D fails a bit - to my knowledge, there is no easy and reliable way (at least in the program I'm using) to fix a section of surface that is weirdly bumpy, or dented, or pointy. Sometimes it's simply a matter of dragging a single point to where it should be, but there are many places on my doll where things are a bit weird in 3D and I don't know why, and I will have to fix them with clay and a craft knife once I've got her printed. These are things that I could fix in just a few minutes were she a physical doll in clay, blobbing on a lump of clay with my fingers, smoothing it a bit, and hitting it with a little sandpaper once dry... but in 3D, I may spend two hours rearranging the way the polygons are aligned, dragging around points, and then eventually giving up in frustration when there's still a damn inexplicable dent I can't fix.

 

(Continued, because I'm apparently so long-winded I had to split this into two...)

There are advantages and disadvantages whichever way you do it, of course. One of the greatest advantages of 3D is that you can easily do bilateral symmetry, so that you only have to make one side of the body, and the other side is made automatically. You don't have to spend hours or days going, "I just can't get these damn knees to match right" (which is the exact issue that drove me to 3D, after getting about 75% done with a clay doll which was months of work in itself, and now sits disassembled in a box in my attic), but can simply apply a "symmetry modifier" that fills in the other side for you, an exact and perfect mirror-image.

But leaving a 3D printed doll perfectly symmetrical is simply not possible through all of the extensive finishing work that must be done to make it mold-and-castable. Human hands must work over it in every part and in fine detail, smoothing the surface through various methods, and the outcome will be just as imperfect as any highly-precise sculpt from clay. And there is certainly no rule that says a 3D artist must make a perfectly symmetrical doll anyway. It is not terribly difficult to generate the two halves of the body, and then edit them separately to add details that are not symmetrical... Or to not use the capability of 3D symmetry, and make the other half from scratch. Again, it is simply a tool - just like using digital calipers to check a clay doll, or taking a photograph and flipping it to be able to see issues that were not readily apparent. What matters is how it is used, and the skill of the artist who applies its use.

So when I 3D print my doll, when I spend the likely days or weeks (and maybe even months!) tweaking and re-tweaking the finished print and printing new parts to fix errors I may not have anticipated, when I do the painstaking work required to give her a smooth and perfect surface finish, when I add all the tiny details by hand like the fine creases in her knuckles and palms and the faint tracing of tendons on the backs of her hands, when I pour my time, effort, heart, and soul into her, and all of the skills I have learned over the years as an artist, I absolutely will call her handmade, and it will not be at all inaccurate.

And if any sculptor still has doubts about 3D being capable of just as much artistry and being handmade, I welcome them to come to my home studio and watch me work! I'm only about 45 minutes from Amsterdam, easy trip by train if you're in Holland, come by anytime! I've got great coffee, homemade cookies, and a dog who loves visitors.

Lastly, I do want to say that in both statements, I very much agree with the assertion that all doll artists should provide work-in-progress pictures and info of their dolls. I think it will help reduce or eliminate any accusations of piracy due to coincidental resemblances (as well as just being darn interesting to see how people work and how their ideas develop!), but even more importantly, I think seeing the time, effort, and artistry involved in creating any doll in any medium is important. I've seen a lot of discussion about recasts lately, and I think it's important for everyone involved in the hobby who are strictly consumers and not creators of dolls to understand just how painstaking and time consuming the process is. That it's not just something someone's slapped together in a weekend and are being terribly greedy sticking a $600 price tag on it, but that it's taken an actual human being weeks - or more likely, months or years of aching hands and eyestrain just to get a doll to production. I believe that work should be valued, no matter the medium used to produce the originals, and that doll artists can help foster a culture in the hobby that values the dollmakers' work... By respecting the work of others, encouraging new artists, and and helping others understand the effort involved in bringing any doll to market, we help create an environment in which doll makers and hobbyists can thrive, fed by creative and positive surroundings, and with their work appreciated and valued for its intrinsic beauty and artistry.

 

There's always a surface texture from the printing process. How much a texture can vary a lot, affected by factors like the material used to print, the orientation of the print (which side is up when it's on the print bed), how well the printer is calibrated, the resolution of the printing, etc... But even the really high quality prints from somewhere like Shapeways still have a texture - feels a bit like smooth but unglazed ceramic, ever so slightly grainy, and some pieces have slight "striation" to them, from the layers being laid down.

There are some smoothing things possible if you use an additive extruding printer like the home printers - I've seen some cool things done using an acetone vapor bath, which does an amazing job of smoothing the whole thing to an almost glass-like shine. It does mean some detail is lost, but it's definitely something I want to experiment with, to see if it can be done just for a few seconds to just ever so slightly smooth the surface without losing detail, to reduce the sanding/priming/etc.

I suppose you could 3d print a finished doll, but reprints are still pretty pricey unless you own your own printer (and then you'd be printing in ABS or PLA plastic), so IMO it's more suited toward making a master for casting, as you can then modify and tweak your printout with Apoxie or whatever, rather than hope you've got it 100% perfect and correctly jointed when you print, only to realize the balance is off and you wish the arms were 5% shorter or whatever, and have to pay for a reprint. That's part of why I'm getting my own printer, so if I do decide something is way off and would prefer to just reprint it, it'll only set me back a little bit, rather than a ton.