[Oscar56]

Gents,

For your entertainment (hopefully), I thought I would take you along with me on how I make this model from scratch.

Not a how to but more a pointing out the key points in my workflow on making my models. I will be using Blender 3d, free program, which has an entirely different way to do things than CAD.

By the way, probably the worst possible way to make models. I have not finalized my design so I am going to design as I go which means incredibly inefficient processes as I try different things.

Regards,
O

 

[Oscar56]

First step: Make the ball and socket that fit each other. Super easy. Add two sphere primitives. Make one 1.02% bigger than the other and chop off the end. Make the thickness going outward so the inner diameter doesn't change by 20% of the sphere size.

Add a cube primitive in-between and extrude until it can support both spheres. Start box modeling by adding loop cuts and moving individual vertices until it roughly looks like what you want. This will be the leg segments of the spider.

For the foot section. Add a sphere primitive and then add a cube primitive and extrude and resize downward. Again, box model and and move individual vertices until it looks like what you want.

I looked at how they fit together now. Again, I haven't used any measurements so using analog movements to see if they fit together and where stuff is intersecting. Had to tweak the angle of the socket and location of the sphere to make them fit a little better.

I am also going back and adding more detail. I thought they looked a little boring so added some soft spikes and ridges to the segments.

This is where I am at as of right now. NFL game on tonight so will get to it some more tomorrow. Depending on how many adult libations I have that is.

Tomorrow, I'll go over digital sculpting and brushes. Super powerful for speed and finer details.

 

[MadMark]

Way cool!

 

[Oscar56]

Once I am happy with the overall shape I can go back an add finer detail.

A feature of digital sculpting is that you can paint texture/detail on the model using texture brushes. These brushes are essentially grey scale height maps that can be used to modify the surface based on the height information of the map. You set the size of the brush and rotation and then you paint (click) the detail into the geometry.

There are thousands of free texture brushes online and many artists sell the ones they make. I also make my own. The bumps on the model was a quick brush I made yesterday. I also made a vein one but haven't decided if I am going to use it.

This is where I am at now. I am still playing around on where I want the bump detail and what other textures I want to use. I have a library of texture brushes available to me so there is a lot of potential combinations I can use. This can take a while based on how complex and detailed you want the model to be and I am just playing around with what looks good to me. Again, if you actually have a design you don't have to waste your time on this.

I am currently here.

 

[Oscar56]

I found a purchased dragon skin texture brush I really liked so used that in addition to my blister brush. Once I was happy I just duplicated the legs and fit them to center body.

The center body was made by extruding vertices to create a plane that made a shape I wanted. I selected the plane and extruded until all 4 legs on one side would fit and then subdivided to add more geometry to work with.

I should mention, a downside of using texture brushes is you have to have dense enough geometry that it does not pixalize too badly and it captures the details needed. It does dramatically increase the size of the model. This model will be several 100 megs when complete but we can go back after the fact and remesh to reduce the size of the file.

 

[Oscar56]

Good morning all.

This morning I added two cube primitives for the body and head of the monster. I box modeled until I had the rough shape I wanted and then subdivided the mesh to get denser geometry so could start digitally sculpting.

Used the texture brushes again but this time also did some digital sculpting. With digital sculpting, the model acts like a clump of clay you can mold to what you want. A ton of fun. There are a few free programs that allow you to do this if anyone who hasn't used this wants to try it. Sculptris is one of the better ones. Blender obviously has this as well (slightly larger learning curve).

The eyes are just sphere primitives. The fangs are cubes I extruded and shrunk on one side.

 

[Oscar56]

TADA!! The final model:

I still have to go back and prepare the model for 3d printing. That means cleaning up any bad geometry (intersecting geometry, double vertices, bad normals, ...etc.) and reducing geometry which is another entirely different process. This process can be a bit tedious and boring as you are joining pieces together or separating parts to see how they fit better for exporting to print. So calling this thread done.

Lol. For fun I exported the model as is to STL. Sitting at 615 MB.

Hopefully, not too boring and a little insight on my process/workflow. Everyone have a wonderful day.

 

[Rincewind]

Excellent move with the screen recording on post #6 Oscar...video's are a win, win, win...thank you for the thread; it's much appreciated and well done

 

[Oscar56]

Thanks.

It's in the printer now. Should take about a week to print with the model at about 12 inches long and 27 individual pieces.

I am finding the ball and socket I made is too loose so if you pull on them with a small amount of force they pop out again. I will probably pose and then glue in place so don't have to worry about missing pieces in the future.

What happened is I tweaked the socket design at the end from my test piece because I thought it looked better but to the detriment of the structural integrity. Good learning point.

 

[difalkner]

Should take about a week to print

Wow! Is that abnormally long for a print job?

 

[Oscar56]

Unfortunately for lower end 3d printer models and models this size...no. That is why that Bambu labs printer was so impressive.

It's also not one extended print for this model and I am also exaggerating the time a bit.

About 3 hours per leg segment (24 pieces) and 12 (x2) - 23 (x1) hours for the larger pieces (3 pieces). On my printer, there is about a 1/2 hour wait time between prints because I have to wait for my bed to cool off to release the print. I am also using infill (20%). If I printed the model hollow I would probably half the time.

You can optimize the speed better by increasing speed and nozzle heat but it takes a lot of fiddling to get consistent successful prints. I am using out of the box settings which are usually safe but slower.

 

[Oscar56]

This is also what I would consider a very large print. It will be around 12 inches long and about 16 inches wide (depending on how I pose it).

 

[Oscar56]

Also, since I only have about 6 months of 3d printing under my belt and only one printer, what is the experience of everyone else?

 

[MadMark]

I would print the ball joints with more infill for strength ...

 

[Oscar56]

The body section should be done in about an hour. This is going to be a big ass spider. lol.

Just like the movie. Yes, there is a movie with that title. Quality film.

 

[MadMark]

Arachniphobia! Spiders
Them! Giant ants

 

[Oscar56]

AArrgg! 15 hours into a 19 hour print and a series of quick power outages. I was so close. If it would have only been one power outage I think the machine could have recovered.

Getting an UPS first time I go to Walmart or Best Buy.

 

[difalkner]

Getting an UPS

We have them all over the house but not on the CNC because it's 240v. I could have one on the controller computer but it wouldn't do much good for running jobs.

 

[Oscar56]

Man, this print has been ridiculous. I still have probably another two days to finish printing all the parts. I have 3 legs left to do. About 30 hours left. Then a pose and glue up and figure out the color scheme for it.

 

[Oscar56]

It makes my mech look small. lol.