Its easy to use dynamesh and create shell for solid objects and inorganic items. But how do I hollow a highly detailed 3D model, with arms weapons and other accessories?
any tutorials or links?
Please help me out as I am badly stuck with my model.
I tried using mesh lab and netfabb as well, but zbrush model just crashes them because of high polygons (about 50K)
Your model should have intersecting faces and edges, look for them in the small fissures of the model. It is a very time consuming thing, i know. But i had to do this in a model a few days ago. Lots of details and all that. I try to pull geometry from every detail that is “floating” away from the model, into the model before printing, because those details become very breakable after or during printing. Altough I am using a makerbot ABS printing, so it is more limited than the zcorp like printers.
The hollow part in the case of the makerbot is calculated by the infill percentage in the ReplicatorG software, then after entering those values it generates a .gcode file from the .stl file you saved in meshlab for example.
My workflow is:
1 - Get your model prepared, fill the small holes and connect floating parts as much as possible.
2 - Get them toguether in a single subtool
3 - Duplicate the subtool
4 - Get the duplicated one and do a dynamesh with a higher value, enough to get all the shapes
5 - Subdivide the dynamesh product so you get enough mesh for “project all” (but not yet)
6 - Do a mask by cavity, soft enough, and keep the cavities masked. This is relative, but i think it helps the cleanup of the last point.
7 - Do a “Project all”, it should capture all the small details of you overall model, but the cavity mask prevents a lot of spykes and intersecting mesh that occur in the cavity areas of the projections, If you skip n6 you will have to do a very good cleanup
8 - Do your check and cleanup of the model, looking for spykes and intersecting geometry, I use smoth brush a lot on this, the model to be good can´t have holes or messed up areas like project all does, keep looking for it, would take half hour to check all the small fissures of your model, and use the close holes feature too, even if you do not find any, it could be hidden somewhere.
9 - Decimation master to below 500k (this is not a value that i found somewhere, it was my learnign from the process that made me stay below this, i had a larger model and the gcode crashed, but it could be something else, like bad geometry)
10 - Use some diagnostic tool, in 3dsmax you have the xview to check for floating vertex, double edges, overlaping faces, open edges and a lot of those creepy mesh defects, it helps a lot, i use to paint relax on areas that I find black normals artefacts, but i think it is not needed. A good diagnotic tool is to make a boolean operation, if the model concludes successifully then the mesh should be ok for printing.
11 - Export the obj from your diagnotic tool and import it in meshlab or other stl exporter, even zbrush, but i never used Z for that.
12 - Use the software of the printer to load the stl file and do the correct setup for your needs, your needs vary a lot, so cant help much here. I use to make my models in ReplicatorG for makerbot as this:
-infill between - 5% or 10% for normal sizes, you you go very tiny, you should try more dense infill, even 100% if needed.
This is the workflow i have been trying but i am new to the printing world so you should experiment more than just follow this as a guide.
Thanks that will solve lot of my problem.
I also just found makerbot through this forum.
That is pretty cool.
Thanks again.
Andre
I have sent you a PM, help us out if possible.
If you send me the model file I can probably hollow it for you.
How is everyone hollowing models???
I read the big post above but it sounded more like cleanup stuff (very good to know and I love the cavity mask trick!).