Hi everyone! I have been thinking of making 3D parts available on shapeways to help doll makers. If there is any simple shape you need that has to be perfect, request it and I will see what I can do. I can't do anything too complex by request - I am thinking things like spheres with specific joint cuts, peanut joints with specific dimensions, etc. I am also planning on making a blank head that is prejointed with no facial features for people to use as a template. And maybe even a hand "skeleton" for people to sculpt over. Anyone can do whatever they want with the parts (unless it says otherwise - I might make some parts specific for the doll I am making that I wouldn't want people casting and selling without my permission, but that probably won't be available for awhile anyway). I made some spheres and hemispheres today from 6mm-60mm in diameter. The bigger sizes are a little expensive, but it might be worth it if you are having a hard time finding the right size. If anyone needs a bigger size, or needs something even more precise, just ask! I recommend the hemispheres so you can just get one and make a mold. Also, they are hollow to make printing cheaper, but you could easily fill it with clay or apoxy. Thanks to SarahM for letting me use the idea!! Shapeways allows metal prints as well as a few others. I don't have the option available because I would need to make the parts thicker, but if someone for some reason needs a part in metal (like if you need to be bake proof), just ask. The alumide isn't too expensive, but it is more than white, strong, and flexible. I think that is it! Here is my shop (there are sections at the bottom right to help navigate): http://www.shapeways.com/shops/pulkidoll Thanks for looking!
firefly, how exciting! Do you know if the spheres get printed with enough precision and accuracy that someone who uses them wouldn't have to worry about bumpiness and fitting issues?
It depends on the material (the min detail level will affect how accurate). All of them are very accurate - the overall shape will be next to perfect - but the build layers are evident which can create subtle ridges which might affect the piece fitting. Basically, if you are trying to fit the 1cm sphere in a perfect 1cm hole, the tiny build layer inaccuracies will probably make it not fit, but if you just sand it it smooth it a little or make sure there is, say about .1mm difference between the parts, it will. It is built up layer by layer (the thickness depends on the material, but generally <.2mm). These layers shift a tiny bit so it is just next to perfect. Again, the overall shape is accurate just the surface has subtle flaws. Shapeways has lots of information on their materials. Their polished material, which is white, strong & flexible put through a sanding machine, looks promising if you don't want to take the time to sand it down (which can be a bit of a pain).
when the ones i made get here I'll let you know how smooth they are. I think mine are higher poly so they might be smoother... but we can always poly count to see.
I've printed stuff with a similar "resolution" as the spheres and a higher resolution and the difference isn't noticeable - the machines aren't precise enough to discern the actual polygons at that level (I am pretty sure it won't make a difference even for the bigger spheres, but I can smooth them more just in case). Obviously you want it smooth and at some point the polygons would be noticeable, but from what I have read, it is better not to go too crazy with smoothing. I am not sure if some companies say that because too many polygons actually makes the machine less efficient or something, or it is just simply it takes longer to load the parts. I should add the the lower resolution I have printed was white, strong, and flexible. The polygons might be very slightly noticeable with a better material but I still think the build layers would overshadow that and make them not noticeable. Adding again as not to double post: I have been working on my blank face template: Face over it so you can get an idea of sculpting over it. I wanted to know if there is any interest in something like this. I tested it, and my template would cost about $80, but I hollowed it out making the wall 1mm, and it cut the price in half, so about $40 total for the face and head cap. This is a pretty big head - the neck width is 30mm and about 55x70x75mm overall dimensions (bounding box). Smaller sizes would obviously be cheaper. I also tend to make heads a little more realistic, so the head isn't as round as a typical doll. If anyone thinks they might possible want it I will put it up for sale (and scale it for more sizes). I have to do some work to shell it better because it got a bit buggy (the operation I use to do a lot of things can sometimes make the model buggy). You could do whatever you want with it except make copies of the template itself to sell (but you can mold and make copies for your own use or sell heads made with it). I am also going to make some reference lines - like a cut down the center of the face and dents in the side to help make the ears in symmetric.
JungaToy sells similar face-bases (very nice concept to work with, btw), but the prices you name are nicely competitive. Would you also consider a face-plate system or is that too difficult to make?
Oh wow, I see I have the same ideas as JungaToys - this seems to happen to me all the time! Ha, I am not nearly as much of a genius as I like to tell myself. I do plan on making a face-plate system - I have one made for the doll I am working on now but it is sort of complex and I'd rather keep it exclusive . I kept this one simple because I just wanted to make something free to use in whatever way anyone wants. I'll work on a faceplate head as soon as I get the time.
I like that you started this initiative and use Shapeways. It saves me a lot on shipping. ^_^ I've used the JungaToy base and it works really nice. I've though of using them for sculpting workshops, as it offers students to sculpt the face right away without first building the base and such.
I have no idea how many people would want a head base (I'd be interested in an MSD sized base), but if there are several peole interested, would it be worth the effort of making a few versions? Realistic heads have the eyes more or less positioned at 1/2 of the head hight, but some dolls have the eyes much lower for childlike proportions.
I'd be willing to make a bunch of versions. I have to find the time to make it better and do the others. It shouldn't be too hard to make adjustments. I'll see if I can get around to it by the end of the week.
About the basic joint parts do you work with detailed sketches of the joints or do we have to render them into 3d forms ourselves? In other words, do you offer services for those who are horrible at 3d design?
I added my parts to shapeways. My joints are different from Firefly's in that mine are half spheres with long bases and a slot instead of a hole. They also show up in the preview inaccurately. I don't know how to fix that. e_e http://www.shapeways.com/shops/batchix
I will work from a sketch. It doesn't have to be fancy (I don't have the time to do anything too complicated). Just give me some dimensions. If you can model it yourself you could just order the part yourself :P. There isn't anything special about going through me. But, I will certainly scale a piece or optimize if for printing if you can make the piece but are having trouble finishing it. I am out of town but I will try to get a better head template when I get home.
Wow this is actually pretty cool. Sorry to bombard you with lots of questions but this is so very interesting to me and I would like to get a few pieces made. 1. I noticed you have a blank pre-jointed head do you offer custom pre-jointed heads like if i draw out a specific head with no features or a ball shape cut a specific way can it then be rendered and printed out as a 3d object by shapeways? 2. What happens to the design after everything is printed out do you guys keep copies of the designs?
Doing any specific design for a head is more complicated than I planed. I am going to make more heads, but my intent was just to do very simple requests and maybe a few more complicated things of my own design. Since I plan on doing requests for free it all has to be something I can get done in my spare time. I suppose I could take actual commissions, but I'd had to figure out how to deal with that. I wanted to make this just a resource for the community, so unless I do the whole commission thing, I would just keep the designs up for anyone to use. If I ever decide to take commissions then I would do whatever the person commissioning the part wanted me to with the design. I am away and typing this on my phone so I am not going to go into detail ATM. I just wanted this to be a casual thing where people that were having trouble making a consistent, simple shape could get it printed without me having to deal with any of the logistics (shapeways does all that, I just upload the model).
OOOOOH I see:XD. lol so sorry. I thought you were a shapeway representative of sorts or directly involved with the company. Still thanks for sharing all this interesting info. It was definitely very helpful.
This is fantastic.... I may be making an order or two! But before I do, can I ask whether or not you know if the Shapeways plastic will have enough 'cling' to use air dry clay over it? Most people who use these blanks use sculpture wax, plastilina, formo, or some other non-mineral material. Man, I would love to have a universal head base to work on though.
With the Strong & Flexible material, the Milliput works just fine. I am no sure about any other clay.
Hey :3 Does anyone know if 3D prints are good enough to be finished prototypes? I'm planning to create a BJD in 3D and print it, and use that print for making molds to cast it in resin.
My experience with Shapeways' Strong and Flexible material (the cheap one which already cost an arm if you print a complete doll) is that I found it impossible to make a finished prototype directly from the prints because : -the smaller details gets eaten by the print. -you can see layers of the print. -the overall finish is not smooth enough. We tried to smooth the material at that time with layers of paint and such but that doesn't solve the lost details issue. We figured out that making a first resin cast that you can work on to redo all details was the best solution. I am curious as to hear how other people here have managed to overcome those issues or if they had better results with different materials.
I have only printed something with shapeways Strong & Flexible and InterPro's Objet Polyjet technology (which is probably the closes to shapeways detail but going off the numbers it is even a little more detailed). I did a spread sheet using my old doll and I think Strong & Flexible was (obviously) the cheapest, then InterPro, then shapeway's detail. So, if you are printing a full doll I strongly suggest going through a company like InterPro. Shapeways is really great for what it is intended, but if you are spending $1000+ a company that more caters to business is probably a better choice and a better deal. For materials the Objet was much better. InterPro also did some sanding, but I asked them not to do any finishing to help the price. At the time they didn't have as much options, but now they ask what the part is intended for and how much finishing you'd like, so it seems like you can ask them to make it ready for molding, but I don't know how expensive that would be. I figure they know how to make it perfect better than I do, since they do it all the time, so seems worth it depending on the price. When I did it there wasn't really loss of detail but there was still the grainyness that needed to be smoothed (and thus mess up the detail). You are going to get the grainyness on any printed part ATM, but look for information listed as min detail level or build layer, and the smaller it is the smaller the layers are so the better it will be. To fix it I primed a thick coat to try to get in the gaps (thin coats didn't seem to be filling it at all - and a cheaper primer I tried actually worked much better than an expensive version I was using for a while - I'll try to find them and post what they were), sanded that down, and repeated tons of times until it was finally smooth and all the layer marks were filled in - it was a giant pain and took forever but my doll is perfectly smooth. This does wash the detail out so on more intricate things you might want to do something different. I ended up having to chip off a bunch of primer for the face and hands on detailed areas and get back down to the plastic and smooth that the best I could. I probably would try a different approach for those parts in the future. And, I am home now so I will try to make a better head template when I have the time. I got sick when I was away and the plane messed up my ear and I feel like crap so I may just stay home tomorrow and work on 3D stuff.
I confirm patience is a key. In my case, real patience was involved when sanding the resin cast made from the 3D prints to get rid of the layers. I found the print material more or less impossible to effectively sand. Here are some pics to illustrate what I said on my other post about details loss and visible layers (material is Shapeways' strong & flexible) :
I didn't know that layers are visible on 3D prints O.O That complicates things, I have to admit ^^; Thanks, La Vie En Rose, your comment and especially the pictures are very helpful :3 And thanks, firefly. I will definitely take a lot time to find the right shop. I like the idea of creating a BJD in 3D. It would make things like symmetry so much easier, hehe. I'll check InterPro out :3 I need to find a good and cheap material for the 3D print, otherwise I won't be able to afford it ^^;
No problem, glad it helps I must clarify though, layers aren't always THAT visible. This is the top of the piece and it is round so it shows more, but in any case you will see light/thin parallel lines everywhere on the model. It kind of reminds me of fingerprint : it is soft lines but they make the piece far from the smoothness of a finished ready to cast model. Then again ours is not the best material available, you'd probably have more luck with the Shapeways' Frosted Ultra Detail for $3.49/cm3 (for reference, the material used on the picture is $1.40/cm3).
I don't want to sound pushy, but is it possible to have the face-plate bases available at the end of the year? At a local doll forum people are organising a doll make meet up and I thought it would be nice to have a few bases. My JungaToy headbase was a success last time. Another question: does all the money go to Shapeways or do the 3D model designers also get some of the proceeds? Just something I was wondering about.
Once I have a free night I can probably get it done - it shouldn't take too long unless something turns out to be more complex than expected. Is just a magnet attachment okay? Latches and things can get more complicated. And any specific size/style? And how smooth/detailed would be good? The more I smooth away the face and open up the eye holes the move versatile the template will be, but also it will take more skill to sculpt a face on top. I was going to make a skull base for more realistic faces (and idea I got from seeing Don's process), but that will take a lot more time and something I am not really planning for a while. The way shapeways works, is when you upload a model, you get a bunch of prices for each material cost. Then, the person who makes the model can add an additional fee on top of those prices. For me personally, I was not planning on charging much for simple pieces that only take me about a hour (a few cents just to make me feel better about spending my time doing this when I should be doing more productive things :P). For something like the faceplate that will probably take about 6 hours to model I might charge up to an additional $10. I will try to optimize the part to make it as cost efficient as possible. If you wanted multiple parts it would probably cheaper for me to mold and cast them resin (I'd have to calculate out the price of one print plus material cost for how may parts to see). This way I can smooth out the build layers too. And if I totally fail and and it looks like I won't get them done in time you can always just get them through shapeways.
My personal preference is something MSD sized and I would only need a few. I don't need something that is complicated as I want to use it more to instruct on sculpting a face than on making a finished BJD head. It's just so much easier and faster if you can skip making the head base.
Firefly, I am very interested in this skull base for realistic sculpts, once you're ready to work on it....
If anyone's been on the fence about buying any of Firefly's or my ball joints, right now is the time to do it. Until midnight tonight Shapeways is 20% off. :3 wooo~
On the subject of materials, I recently printed three pieces in Transparent Detail, Frosted Detail, and Frosted Ultra Detail. Even the FUD had visible layers in some areas, although very fine ones. I also think these materials are probably more 'sandable' than the White Strong & Flexible... nylon is a pain to work with, in my experience. Right now I'm actually about to try Sandstone. I'm hoping with a few rounds of priming and sanding, it will be a viable alternative for less detailed parts. Whether it will be strong enough under tension is another question...
Aaand Sandstone for the win. The ridges are only slightly more pronounced than White Detail, and I only had one small break, on a joint socket edge that went from 2mm to less than 1mm. It happened in shipping -- I strung the leg to the opposite hip socket and moved it around with no damage. With Apoxie to patch things up and primer + sandpaper to smooth them out, I think this is a viable material. And my part was $16, when it would have been $53 in White Detail.
Morgan, how different is the texture/detail in WS&F, Frosted Detail, and White Detail? For my part, frosted is cheaper than white detail ($20 less), so I don't know if that would be better to get. It says frosted is more brittle but how much more brittle? And how much better is the detail and finish in the detail materials vs. WS&F? Do you think it is worth to extra cost? I am printing my face so I don't want the detail to be washed out, and the better the surface the less finishing I have to do which will also mess with the detail (and I have text on it I don't want to get messed up), but I really don't know how big the difference is to justify the $90 vs $40. I'd try sandstone but I'd worry about ears breaking and the text not being detailed enough. I tried asking on the shapeways forum but I haven't gotten a response yet, and I want to print soon so any opinion would be very helpful.
I actually haven't printed any WS+F. Unrelated sculpting experiences with nylon led me to steer clear. Frosted Detail v. White Detail... eh. My test cases were small, but I couldn't see much difference. And neither of them were fragile shapes, so it doesn't mean much that neither broke. But it doesn't 'feel' brittle, for whatever that's worth. Frosted Detail and Frosted Ultra detail are visibly different, but even with FUD, you still do get those teeny tiny ridges in spots. I'm inclined to use FUD for faces, to preserve as much detail as possible, but I don't think I'd bother with it anywhere else. Hands, maybe, if I weren't planning on sculpting my hands traditionally. Again, I don't speak from first-hand experience, but in addition to washing out detail, WS&F is almost certainly going to be a pain to finish. The 'strong and flexible' bit means that carving and sanding are not fun. If you have to go for a cheaper option, I really think sandstone is the way to go -- maybe do the ears & text in detail plastic, and then epoxy 'em on? One advantage of the detail plastics is that you can go much thinner than sandstone, which might save you money. But you're going to end up bulking it back up, which adds to the cost (Apoxie isn't free, even if some of us have way too much of the stuff around already), and definitely adds to your time. As for printing soon... heeyyy, they got over their "gremlins" already! *starts queuing uploads*
Thanks, that helps . Unrelated but since I have talked about them a few times, I got a quote at InterPro last week and it was $800 (shapeways is $300 for detail and $100 for WS&F).. when I was expecting it to be $200 at most, so I am guessing their prices went up. It was originally $2000 but the dimensions were off; I am pretty sure they measured in inches what should have been cm, so I was expecting the price to go down by around 1/16 to account for the change in volume (though I am sure the price has more to it than just volume) but it only went down by about 1/2.5 (which would be just a linear change from inches to cm.. but that could be a coincidence, it wasn't exact by very close). I was assured the dimensions were right this time but when I compared prices before InterPro was cheaper than shapeway's detail. The person that helped me years ago was promoted (I think) so I was dealing with someone else. InterPro was really great before so I am sad not to use them, but I guess if the price is that much more than I have to go with shapeways.
Too bad, it's always good to have competition around. Have you looked at Ponoko at all? Their white superfine plastic looks like it might be equivalent to Shapeways' detail plastic, and it's a bit cheaper.
OMG yes ><;;;; Took pics I thought could help, ultra heavy so linked: Shapeways materials pic 1 Shapeways materials pic 2 Shapeways materials pic 3
