Merun v2 - Now with 100% more polygons!

Ehehe thanks, cheshirepanda!!

I think I may shorten the toes just a little bit - the more I look at them, the more they don't seem quite right. Almost masculine, I guess? I might plump 'em up while shortening them, just a little, to see how they look. After all, I can always go back to an old version if I don't like them (I love 3D so much!)

I'm using 3DS Max for her, which is a lovely mix of very powerful and easy to use. I've tried other stuff like Blender (which has the big advantage of being free!) but none of 'em have quite grabbed me the way 3DS Max has.

 

I tried Z-brush... briefly. It can do some incredibly powerful stuff, but the learning curve is absolutely ridiculous, and the interface is just -wacky-. I'm sure it can do wireframes somehow... I just... argh, it drove me bonkers trying to make it do what I wanted, so I uninstalled it almost as soon as I started playing with it. Mudbox is similar and not quite so stupid about things.

Blender... well... very very steep learning curve, but incredibly powerful - and the whole free thing is a BIG plus, since a lot of these programs can be crazy-pricey (though most have free trials and you can often get used copies + upgrade versions at a discount if you're lucky and find someone selling). But there's a lot of tutorials and support for it, and it can even do stuff like this, which IMO is like... Pixar-level quality: http://www.bigbuckbunny.org/index.php/download/

It doesn't have support for n-gons yet though afaik (a polygon with more than 4 sides) which is unfortunate as the way I model, I end up with a lot of n-gons temporarily and then chop them up as I go. And I already had 3DS Max and knew how to use it a bit, so it's been my choice, but I've got friends that rave about Blender. Worth giving a try, and I don't think it'll asplode your computer unless you're running it on something that's 10+ years old and coal-fired.

 

The stringing channels I'm doing as I finish each joint. I think doing this while she's still in 3D is key for good posing - though I haven't been able to verify it yet, my working theory is that the best way to make a joint is so that no matter how you pose it, the elastic always stretches the same amount (is always the same length) through the entire range of motion. This -should- make it so that posing is smoother and none of the joints have the tendency to "snap back" or slide out of place once posed (eliminating the need for sueding), because they have exactly the same tension on them when fully extended as fully bent (or anywhere in between).

When working in 3D, I can use a set of "bones" to work as virtual elastic, so I can pose her however I want. Each particular bone is set so that its pivot point is the center of the particular joint - so, for example, her ankle joint has its bone's pivot point exactly in the center of the sphere of her ankle. So in order to make the above "always the same tension" thing happen, when I cut the stringing channel, I have it end exactly at that pivot point, and then all of the slots are cut so that the real elastic will bend at that pivot point.

I hope that makes sense!

Edit: I've tried to show it the best I can here:



I've set the different parts of the foot to be partially transparent, so you can see inside. The ankle is a partial sphere set into the foot, and you can see how there's a stringing channel coming down to the ankle which then sort of branches out like a funnel, rather than a straight slot; this is because an ankle's range of motion is not just a straight hinge, but can pivot a little around too.

The "funnel" in the ankle lines up with the stringing channel in the foot, which then leads to the separate toe piece which has a little slot-and-bar which will either have the elastic looped around, or attached with an S-hook, which will be the termination point for that piece of elastic (it's hard to see that because of all the toes).



The red part is the bone which lets me move the foot at the ankle joint. It doesn't line up exactly inside the foot stringing channel, but that's fine - it doesn't need to. What matters is on the far left, the "pointy" part. It's placed at the very end of the stringing channel coming down from the leg, and at the center of the "funnel" part. It's also at the very center of the ankle sphere, so no matter how I rotate the foot around the ankle sphere, that spot is in the center, and once she's a real doll, her elastic should bend at that spot and shouldn't have to stretch any further whether I point the toes down or rotate the ankle sideways or whatever.

So as I cut the stringing channels, I just have to pay attention to where my pivot points are, and make sure the stringing channels align properly between pivot points at all points in the rotation and hopefully I'll have great posing.

 

I shortened the toes a wee little bit:



Maybe not terribly noticeably different, but not quite as monkey-like as before.

I'll look at tweaking her skull a little bit too, once I get back to the head - I'm not letting myself touch anything above her waist right now, just focusing on getting the hips/legs/etc. all working correctly together. But I'll keep that in mind for when I revisit that part. I think you're right - it needs a little more curve to it in the part that comes down toward the back of her neck. I'll also be doing an alternate version that's not "Amarna Princess" shaped too but more like a real human skull, so I'll probably tweak it then to do the second version as well.

 

Ahh, interesting way of doing it! lol that pic is amusing - something about the repeating nipples cracks me up!

How I check for all angles of rotation myself is simply to move the joint by 5 or 10 degrees and check it at each step of the way, adjusting a little bit to "trim" it as I go. I think I work a lot lower poly than you - my actual working meshes are pretty simple, and I use a mesh-smooth modifier to make it nice and purdy. I just checked and, for example, the polygon count of the upper leg (including the cup for the knee joint, which is really where most of the detail is) clocks in under 900 polys. I'm a low-poly modeller at heart, and like to get into the gritty bits myself, even if it can be a little imprecise.

I'm definitely going to be doing certain parts as hollow as possible. Like for the stringing channels for any big chunky parts (like the legs), I'll have them the diameter I want where they come out on top and bottom, and then the stringing channel in the middle part where the bulk of the body part is, I'll expand the cylinder so it's a nice big hollow cavity inside. I'm going to try to do my molds with the stringing channels already in place, so I shouldn't have to fill the hole down there as long as whatever I use as a "placeholder" when molding is the same diameter as the smaller hole. Shapeways charges by amount of material used, so anything I can make hollow, I will!

Luckily thickness shouldn't be too much of a problem on most pieces though - Shapeways has come out with an ultra-detail material that I think goes down to either 0.3 or 0.1mm minimum (!!!). It's super pricey compared to some of their other materials, but I'm thinking I may end up breaking up certain pieces and getting them printed in different materials - like chopping the forearm into three pieces - elbow joint, middle, and wrist, and doing the jointed parts done in a detail material so they're nice and precise, but the middle will just be a a relatively un-detailed tube that I can get done in whatever's cheap. Then I can stick the parts together and sand and resurface the heck out of 'em with Apoxie/primer. I know I'll be doing plenty of post-work once she's in-hand anyway. It means more work on my part, but I think I estimated her costing several hundred dollars to print even in their cheaper materials, so whatever can save me some money is good!

 

Hmmm... Yeah, I considered the WSF stuff but the flexibility made me go "hmm" about it - I guess I'm afraid of it flexing in ways that I don't want while I'm molding and making things more difficult for me. I was actually considering using the sandstone for some of the pieces that I just don't need as much detail - I can't find the thread on the Shapeways forum now but I've seen how it takes primer/sanding and I think it'd be fine for bits like the main parts of the legs and arms, possibly the backside of the headcap too. Plus if I can save some money on those parts, then I can splurge on using the Ultra-Detail for bits like the hands, feet, and face, and hopefully have to do less post-production work.

No worries about sounding like a know-it-all! I haven't gotten anything 3D printed before so it's great to have some insight and some alternate suggestions and so forth - feel free to blab all ya like!

 

Guro - The foot jointing is actually not all that complex! I know it may seem so, but it's really not! Basically, think of that joint as a cylinder that's a little thicker on one end than the other - thicker on the inside of the foot (the side with the big toe) and thinner toward the little toe (sort of like a slightly tapered vase). Its pivot point is the center of the cylinder - just works like a hinge. It was kinda tricky getting it to work at all points of rotation without gapping, but that was just a matter of adjusting the thickness of the various parts of the foot. Here's what it looks like without the foot attached:



'Course, it did take me several tries to get it working right, and poor Mr. Paroxysm kept coming over and asking me what the heck I was doing - hauling my foot up onto my desk and sitting there in the weirdest position, bending my toes back and then squinting at my monitor. :XD


La vie en rose - I wonder if one of the more rigid materials wouldn't be more easily sandable than the WSF? Just thinking even if the whole thing isn't particularly wobbly, maybe the... individual particles (or whatever) are a bit flexible, making it harder to smooth? I really should get a couple pieces truly finished and then get them printed up in a range of the materials I'm considering to try out. Or just get the sample pack like you are - I noticed a lot of folks on the Shapeways forum having difficulty with priming/sealing/painting their models, having strange chemical reactions between the primer and the material so it never truly dried, or after a few days went tacky and smelly and basically ruined the print! I think I'd have to go lay in the road if that happened with a multi-hundred-dollar print of mine after doing all the post-work needed!

 

There's been several threads about it - I remember one specifically mentioned Tamiya. Maybe the weather was weird or... I dunno. I'll get some samples real soon though, and then maybe get the feet done and get them printed up in a few different types and see how I like 'em. Of course "soon" may be relative as I'm at that fun "giant manatee ready to pop any minute now" stage of pregnancy, and then we're moving next month, sooo we'll see.

 

Yay, good to hear about the primer and the materials. I think I'll stick to just getting a few feet in the materials I want to try - probably cheaper (though I wouldn't get the voucher) and then I can have something to play with to see how it drills/carves/etc.

I'm not due to the end of the month, but this baby's pretty eager to get out already and should be fully-baked enough to be fine to come out any time. My guess is anytime within the next few days, but that may just be wishful thinking. Been feverishly knitting baby hats, cleaning, and staring at polygons in between wrangling a 3 year old. Probably not gonna have much dollie-time for the next, oh..... year or so once this little one's out.

 

Hi again everyone - been a while but I'm back to dollie-work now. My daughter's five months old, and as good as one can hope for in a little baby. And we're now living in our new house - with the lovely outbuilding that will become my studio at some point. I've been working away on my doll in bits and pieces as I can (difficult with two small children!) but I'm making progress! I have the feet essentially complete, as well as the joint shapes and drill holes for the knee and lower leg, and I've just last night added a new joint to the leg, as I -really- want her to be able to pull her legs up to her body, and to do a nice crosslegged pose by rotating that joint. This is with the upper torso at default pose, so she should be able to end up with her breasts touching her thighs at the limits of both sets of joint rotations.



It took me a good week just to get this to the point it's at (no drill holes or stops/locks yet, just cup and ball) due to issues with my 3D program and just having to do trial and error to find the right angle of a cut and exactly where to position it to allow this pose (too high up and the piece would collide with her body, too low down and there was too big of a gap). I must have gone through 20 different failed attempts before I got it right... 3D may mean I don't waste material doing that, but it is -so- not quicker or less effort, just less messy!

I've also been working on hollowing the pieces as best I can, to make for cheaper 3D printing, which is a tedious, boring, and rather unrewarding task, but it can cut my printing costs in half easily (and when I'm looking at stuff like 20 euros to print one foot and my final doll will have at least 31 pieces, cutting costs in half is a big deal!). It does mean that the density/weight distribution of my pieces will be waaay off due to all the hollows, which means I'll be needing to do the molding process to get a junk cast to work from sooner rather than later so I can get the proper density to check balance issues and so forth. That's pretty daunting as I've never done anything like that before, but luckily there's a company that sells all the supplies in Amsterdam, which is only about a 40 minute train ride away, so I don't have to pay shipping.

Also, Friday, August 3rd, Shapeways has sort of an "open house" tour of their facilities in Eindhoven which I'll be going to, to check out the 3D printing process and ask questions and whatnot. Should be a fun day - if anyone else is in the Netherlands and interested in 3D printing, I would love to see you there! You can find information on it here: http://www.meetup.com/Shapeways/events/70786582/

 

Hey guys, I'm still here, still working! Just haven't had much to show that's very impressive - lots of carving joint slots and stringing channels, and hollowing out pieces to make them cheaper to print. Booorrring. However, the end is VERY MUCH in sight for me, which is both exciting and terrifying - just a short while more and I will be DONE and ready to print her! Pretty much what I have left is:

1) Finishing up the jointing in the arms
2) Refining the faceplate attachment and head attachment mechanism
3) Doing skinweights and proper IK bones for the hands, so that I can do multiple hand poses with relative ease
4) Finishing up the mechanism in her pelvis, that allows her legs to be individually strung and not connect up through her head.

The past few days, I've been working on her elbows, which is both enjoyable (in that it's a big challenge) and maddening, in that I've had to restart them about five times due to my own stupidity. But I finally have them to a pretty good state:

View attachment 253

That's the full extent of the rotation, to 150 degrees. Still needs a little refinement so it looks smooth and clean through all parts of the rotation, but I'm really pleased with the fact that it's both a true human-attainable rotation and looks really smooth and natural both straight and bent (not too squared off when bent, not too pointy when straight), and while it's very precise mechanically, it still looks very organic.

View attachment 254

(Please click - my actual pictures are quite big.)

Now to just tweak things a little bit more, finish the cup part of the upper arm, and cut the stringing channels, and I'll have all of the jointing essentially finished!

 

So... Mr. Paroxysm just surprised me by ordering an awesome 3d printer, which apparently will be shipping around the beginning of April. I am so excited I think I'm going to burst - and it also means I don't have to keep futzing around with hollowing parts to make them cheaper to print - I still have to pay for materials but the cost is nowhere -near- as pricey as getting it professionally 3d printed. It will mean more finishing work, but I'm going to have to do that anyway, and if I find something just doesn't work properly, I can modify and print a new piece.

In short: EEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

 

Ugggghhh.

I'm trying to double-check and refine all the joints, and I have no idea how I've gotten this far without realizing how poor her torso movement is.

View attachment 257

She does a back bend fine, but bending to the front and to the sides has really limited movement (as does a rotational swivel) and looks really unnatural. I've been trying to figure out how to fix it, and I'm not finding any good solutions. I know many dolls don't have really great movement at that joint (my Minifee does a good backbend though doesn't like to lock that way side bend is good, but she won't twist more than 5 degrees for a swivel, and looks just as unnatural in a forward bend and can't go very far) but I'm feeling kinda frustrated and stuck, as it's really important to me that she have as close to a human range of motion as possible -and- that her body look relatively natural and normal through all poses... So this big back lump when slumping, and lack of torso posing is not okay. I just.... don't know how to fix it, especially not with keeping her proportions similar to this - it would be so easy if she were waifish.

I think I'm gonna have to spend a few days doing some mock-ups till I can find something that works basically okay, and then apply it to my actual doll's anatomy. Luckily experimentation is (relatively) quick and easy in 3D.

BAH.

 

So, I came up with this working yesterday:

View attachment 258

It's a little hard to see from there, but essentially, I've moved the existing torso joint up, so it starts directly under her breasts, and added a second joint at the lower part of her stomach, where it meets her hip area. This should give her a much better, more natural front and back bend, as well as a better range of motion for a side bend.

View attachment 259

View attachment 260

It won't let me attach more files, so here's the front bend: http://i.imgur.com/HMQJELJ.jpg

These are really really rough mock-ups, just temporary to make sure that it is actually possible, so there's a lot of weirdness happening in the torso, and her crotch and hip area have gotten kinda lumpy and strange, but I'll fix that when I decide if this will work well. I do a lot of experimentation like this, just save my file under a new name with "Experiment" in the filename and start fiddling. Love 3D - clay would never let me do that (at least, not without molding and casting myself a copy to play with).

Does this look okay? I really don't want to get her proportions too different, and I really don't want to make her any skinnier - I'd really like her to be thicker, actually, but the more "flesh" she has, the harder she is to get good poses out of.

I still can't get a good twisting motion from her torso at all, but I don't see a good solution for that... The human torso is sort of a lumpy oval, and that doesn't rotate well when made solid. Only way I can see to make her do a rotation is to cut a swivel joint at her waist and just let the oval cross section look awful when she swivels. It wouldn't show under clothes, but it would look pretty bad when she was in underwear/nude. Alternately, make that part of her waist into a cylinder, but then she'd look really skinny from the front and really thick from the side. I tried it temporarily, but it made her look.... well, like a fashion doll, not a BJD, and that's not at all what I want.

Is there a solution I'm missing? And does this look okay (unrefined and all)?

 

Huh, that's a great idea, sailor. I'll have to give that a try! Thank you!

 

With my printer hopefully arriving within a few months, I've been working my butt off! Loads of changes and tweaks!



I split her torso into three parts instead of two, moving the chest joint to directly below her breasts. This allows her much more natural movement and a much greater range so she can arch:



And slouch:



... and it looks much more natural, with a greater range of motion. I still need to do a lot of adjustment, as splitting the torso like this has caused a lot of roughness, especially around the belly. But it's fixable, just will take a long while of tweaking. I tried sailor's suggestion of a trimmed sphere, and it gave a really nice rotation, but I couldn't get it to look nice when bending, and it's really important to me that she not only move well, but look natural and smooth (as much as is possible with a doll) no matter if she's standing plain and straight, or contorted as far as she can go. I expect she'll have more rotation when she's printed than I can test for easily now, though.

I also gave her a new, bigger shoulder cup, cutting away a larger amount of her upper torso. The old one simply didn't function properly, creating no more than a 5 degree improvement in posability than a single joint... not enough exposed ball. This new, big cup, though, lets her shrug, slouch, and bring her arm across her chest rather than just being able to extend her arms straight out:



I still need to get the socket in the torso working for it, and drill its hole for the elastic, and shape it a little so the shoulder line is more natural, but I'm pretty pleased with its range of motion now. I really want her to be able to move just like a person as much as possible!

 

I can't be absolutely sure, since I have no physics modelling happening here (waaaay beyond my knowledge level to do any kind of material testing, friction, balance, etc. type stuff here). But I'm doing most of the walls quite thick, with the drilled holes intended to be just large enough to hold the intended size of elastic, with very little wiggle room. I was making it hollow before, but now that I'm printing it myself, I don't need to worry about that, and in fact, I think doing it hollow would be A Very Bad Thing when it comes to pressure/vacuum molding, as I'm afraid it might implode!

I fully expect to be doing some significant modification in Apoxie Sculpt to certain areas (especially things like adding details back in, as I'll be doing a lot of surface work to smooth things out), so I'll be able to test out how delicate things are (and if it holds up in much-more-delicate-than-resin printed ABS or PLA plastic, it'll definitely work in resin).

But I suspect that my method of doing things - so that the elastic will always be the same length no matter the position of the joint, and with the joints extremely close fitting and perfectly matched in shape - will also mean that she should hold together and pose with much less tension (so looser/thinner elastic) than a doll done in a different way, which should minimize the stress on her joints. But resin can go pretty thin as it is - I'd say the ends of the legs (near the ankles) on my Minifee are no more than 1mm thick, and have held up fine through all manner of normal use and only chipped slightly when the whole doll fell off my desk. And I'm certain everything except perhaps some of the sharpest edges are at least 1mm thick... My document is set to centimeters and she's about 42 cm tall in 3D, so I can easily check how thick certain areas are by sticking a little sphere inside and scaling it until it collides with both walls. Plus I'm starting to think I may do her around 60 cm instead of 40ish, so everything'll be even bigger.

 

nia, I'm super excited about it too! Not just for doll making, but for like... random stupid things, like being able to make a little clip to keep my daughter from opening one of our cabinets, or being able to make a new latch for my son's broken lunchbox.

It's taken me a loooooooooong time to make this doll... started her in September 2010. However, much of that length of time is due to life getting in the way, as I'm an at-home mom... to one kid when I started my doll, and then I got pregnant with my daughter and for some reason even opening my 3D program when pregnant made me sick to my stomach, so there was a good 8 months or so I didn't work on it at all (and then after that, I had a little baby to look after). Plus some random stops and starts due to my lack of knowledge of how to achieve what I wanted (and relative inexperience with my 3D program - I knew 3DS Max but didn't really really know it like I do now). I think where I am now with my current level of knowledge, if both my kids were in school so I had several uninterrupted hours a day, I could probably make a similarly complex doll in about six months, maybe less, maybe more. I guess we'll see - once Merun's done, I'm going to make male doll to go with her. A simpler, more stylized doll with single joints and with less of an emphasis on a truly human range of motion, I could probably do in under a month.

The actual printing itself will likely take several days since I'll be printing at (at most) a 0.1mm layer thickness, and maybe even less, depending on what kind of print quality I can get with my testing. I'm getting a RoBo 3D printer, which is one of the least expensive ones on the market, but with a really solid, well-built case (essential for getting high-quality prints - if the printer is subject to jiggle or vibration, the print quality degrades). They're not officially "out" yet (they're taking orders, but not shipping yet till next month) but I liked what they were doing enough to get in on their Kickstarter.

BBG - I wish I had the skillz to use zBrush! It looks like such a powerful program, but the learning curve makes me crazy! I'll probably try again sometime, when I have more uninterrupted time for learning complicated things. I really, really hope I'll get good print quality from my printer! From what I've seen, it should be capable of really great quality, but so much of it is a matter of settings and calibration. I expect I'll be doing quite a lot of sanding and using a filling primer and whatnot anyway. I went to an event sponsored by Shapeways that had a big variety of their prints in different materials... really nice stuff, the things done with fused resins and suchlike, though at the same event they had extruder printers (like the ones you can have at home) and the best quality prints off those were not too different than the quality of the items from Shapeways. I doubt the outcome Shapeways was looking for from that event was me going home and buying my own printer so I don't use their services, but I'm super glad I went - it was really educational!

 

Yes, I expect it will likely take quite a long time to print each piece. And I'll probably do them one at a time, rather than as a batch - minimizes "stringing" (y'know like the strings you get when you're using a hot glue gun?) and then if something goes wrong in the printing process, I'll only have lost one piece rather than the whole batch. And then I can do just one arm and one leg to start with, and test the way they move before printing the second set. Hell, I can probably just print half of the body at first if I need to, to test the movement. I guess I'll see.

I'll definitely be documenting as much of the process as I can, when my printer arrives. I won't be printing doll parts straight off as I may need to do some testing and calibration, and learn to use the printer. Maybe I'll take some videos of how it works too - this stuff is SO EXCITING, I'm really eager to share with ya'll how it works.

 

So because the last bits on the body that I have to do before I can print are pissing me right off, I started on another face.



Not sure yet whether I like it or not. I'm having trouble getting the lighting in my new document to work like the old one (which makes no sense as it's just a copy of the same document... I think I moved something accidentally). I like the lips, anyway, but I'll have to keep fiddling. It's made to fit on the head back of the other face... or nearly so, as I think I moved something I shouldn't have, but it won't be terribly hard to fix.

... I kinda desperately want to make a male head now too, but I'll have to make a male body too. And I'd like to get the female one working first too, so that if I need to make changes to the jointing, I can do it on the female body, and maybe reuse some of the joints on the male body without having to change them twice.

... I think I'll have to start on a new male body without joints. Which gives me a mixture of WOE OH GOD SO MUCH WORK and also YAY FINALLY SOMETHING ARTISTIC THAT DOESN'T MAKE MY EYES BLEED. Because srsly, hours of tweaking angles and stringing channels and stuff can go (censored) a giant pile of (censored).

 

Not yet. Been eagerly watching their progress on getting all their parts in, though. I think they said they're on track for shipping the first batch (of which one should be mine!) toward the end of the month. Will probably take a while to get here as it's an international shipping thing, and I'll probably have to sell my firstborn to pay the customs charges.

I've been busying myself crocheting a blanket and preparing my studio space to house my printer (as, if I'm printing in ABS plastic, I don't want it in the house due to ABS off-gassing at high temperatures). Also been futzing about with an alternate head or two, but I haven't gotten anything going that I'm really happy with yet.

The moment I get my printer up and running, I'll be scampering over here to share pics and a giant wall of words, at least half of them squealing.

 

Still awaiting my stupid printer. But that's what I get for doing a Kickstarter rather than just ordering one. But that's okay. Gives me more time to work on stuff.

Been playing with my alternate head and have it looking a lot more distinctive and presentable:



ETA: Side view too... The weird seam on the side is where I've separated it to make the head cap, but haven't yet actually started doing the inside faces yet (it's just a shell at the moment).



... In fact, I like it so much more than the head I had been working on that I'm kinda tempted to just make this my main head. The other one... I think I worked on it so much I couldn't see how fugly it was getting. This one's a lot more realistic. Trying to get a look somewhere between Mathilda Bernmark and Keiko Lynn - narrow, sort of long face, long straight nose, full lips, interesting eyes. There's something sort of masculine about it that I can't quite put my finger on, but there's still loads of tweaking to do. I still need to do the inner part of it, but it should go much faster now that I know what I'm doing.

 

Yeah, I think some of it is perspective and the lighting. In any case, I kept fiddling with it for a while, because I tend to work best working after a specific likeness rather than just "gonna make something interesting". So I've settled on trying to make her look a lot like Keiko Lynn (Mathilda Bernmark is gorgeous but harder to find pictures of). And then I'll tweak things a bit to my liking.

I got off my lazy butt and went looking for some info on doing a good lighting setup. Makes it a LOT easier to see what's going on, though I really want to get the lighting closer to the reference photos I'm using.





This is Keiko Lynn, btw... She's a fashion/beauty blogger and just... absolutely stunning:



Of course I still have the old drafts of my file and I do want to maybe use the old lips for something, but if I can make her look a lot like Keiko I will be super pleased.

Also still have to fix the lower torso/belly joint because I -hate- how it makes her look like she's wearing granny panties.

 

Inspired by firefly's super awesome techniques of instanced rotations, I decided to try my hand again at doing a butt joint going, to allow for the leg to move backwards. I've been looking at a lot of yoga poses to get an idea of different things I'd like this body to do, and both the Warrior Pose and Dancer Pose need this kind of movement.

So I've tried adding a new joint that will basically be the whole of the butt cheeks. The existing hip and cup/shim are still the primary joints for the hip, and the butt joint will have quite a solid lock in it that will have to be pulled out slightly before the leg can rotate backwards, and its only function is that backwards rotation (unlike some other dolls I've seen where the butt joint is the primary hip joint too). The butt joint doesn't show at all from the front normally, and I should be able to get a fairly nice look to the transition from butt cheek to, uh, upper buttcrack in the back.







I don't like how much of a gap there is at the front of the hip when the butt joint is moving, but I'll probably be able to minimize it a bit more as I work on it (this is still very rough, sort of a squashed sphere at the moment rather than the cup it will become), and I'm okay with it having a bit more of a gap than the other joints do, simply because it's sort of a "bonus" joint rather than something like an elbow or knee that really has to be perfect.

 

I haven't posted in a while, because I'd been waiting on my printer to arrive. Finally, 6 months (!) late, it got here yesterday!!!

I've been struggling to learn how to use it - it's very fiddly, requiring a lot of adjustment, but I'm getting it to spit out actual things! Mostly calibration cubes and pyramids, but, despite being exhausted, I had to try to print one little doll thing.



It's not done with good calibration, the layer height is far too coarse, and the underside is a hot mess due to me not really knowing how to setup the raft properly (a layer printed underneath the actual thing, to help it stick to the print bed). And also my phone camera sucks. But... you guys... I am holding in my hand a little piece of my doll (or, rather, a test piece - no way will this piece be good enough to use!). It's a real thing. A REAL THING! I can touch it, feel its weight and texture... hell I could eat it if I really wanted to! I am so excited and I'm kinda crying a little I'm so happy.

I will post more when I have more to show you! Which I really hope will be soon!

 

More to show! So excited!

Using a home 3D printer has a learning curve like a sheer cliff face, I swear! I have learned more about how 3D printers operate in the past two days than in two years of research and reading and Youtube videos! It is a -really- finicky process, with "properly calibrated" being fractions of a millimeter, and if you don't get it just right, it's possible for it to throw off the calibration entirely and have to start over. But I'm getting better at it, learning the quirks of my particular printer (when you're talking about this level of precision, even a seemingly perfectly flat, level piece of glass used for the print bed can have distortions you have to take into account!), and today I tried lowering the layer height and reprinting my toe piece, and then, encouraged by how well that went, I printed the rest of the foot:



I should've put something in there for scale, but that's about 5 cm long from toe to heel. The toe piece took about 30 minutes to print, and the foot piece took a bit over an hour, I think. The finer the detail and the greater precision needed, the slower the printing, but it's such that I can just start it printing and putter around and keep half an eye on it and it just does its thing without me having to interfere.

The undersides are still quite rough from cutting off the raft - I need to learn how to set up my raft better so that it's easier to remove, or at least more obvious which bits are raft and which aren't! And some areas, like the very top of the foot piece, have a little bit of bowing, because each layer is so small in area that the previous layer doesn't have time to fully harden before the next is laid down. But that's just a matter of me learning the software and hardware, and making adjustments. But for areas like the sides of the foot, the print quality is just exquisitely nice - barely visible layers at all (despite this being twice as coarse as it can go!), and even on the top of the foot, the print layers are smaller than the ridges on my fingerprints. Will not be hard at all to smooth this!

I am so pleased with how this is going and I am REALLY happy that I went ahead and bought my own printer rather than printing through a company. There's already a couple little things I want to change in my design, and this will allow me to move through iterations and test various setups quite quickly!

More soon!

 

InNoTeb, it actually smells yummy too! My husband thinks it smells like someone's baking a cake whenever I'm printing. I think it smells sort of like sugar cookies. It's NICE!



Got the lower leg printed, and got it strung! Already identified some areas that need a bit of fixing, but I'm really happy! Took about 4 hours to print the lower leg, though, so, uh, it's gonna be a while before I have a whole doll printed.