Adding pictures to faces / 3D printing

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I am looking to add a picture to a face of a box and then 3D print the object using I.materialise (multicolour material. https://i.materialise.com/3d-printing-materials/multicolor). I have added the picture with decal, but that does not get recognised by the software so I figured I would add the picture by changing the material. This leads to two problems:

1. As you can see only a quarter of the image gets displayed on the face and I don't get why. The box is 10x10mm and the image as well as you can see in the screenshot below. Despite there being no tiles, it still seem fusion seems to create tiles on the face and puts the image in the top right. Can anybody explain this. I opened all settings boxes in the screenshot so you can see my setup. 

2. Even the partially applied picture does not get recognised by the software of the 3D printing service, whereas if I would change the face by making the material a different colour, the different colour does get recognized. Given that they can print 17 million colours, it does not seem to be a lack of functionality on their side. 

Thanks a lot in advance!

Screenshot: 

I am 

[ben.lorimore]

Hi @Anonymous,

Fusion 360 does not export to the 3D file types needed to color 3D print on i.materialise (PLY, VRML, X3D, and Collada). The mesh exports Fusion supports are FBX (from cloud only), OBJ (from cloud only) and STL (from cloud and within Fusion 360), these file types contain only geometry related data. 

I'd check out this page, it seems to have the information you're interested in.

Best,

Ben

[Anonymous]

Thanks! Very helpful.

Forgot to mention that I use .step to export. With this format it seems that colour information is transferred as well, at least it gets recognized by I.materialise's automatic analyser when I upload it. Hence, it did not seem the issue is on their side as colours did get transferred, just not those on the picture I put on the box. Any potential explanations w.r.t. to the picture on that? I have posted the same question to I.materialise to see whether it may indeed be a file type issue like you mentioned. 

Any thoughts on why the picture only gets displayed on part of the face (my q1 in the original post)? 

Best,

Richard

[Anonymous]

So I got a reply from I.materialise. They acknowledge the issues with the printing of pictures (even though applied as materials in fusion360), although colours in general are recognized by their software (also applied as material). 

They could work with a .obj however, but I am not sure I understand what you mean with this sentence 'The mesh exports Fusion supports are FBX (from cloud only), OBJ (from cloud only) and STL (from cloud and within Fusion 360), these file types contain only geometry related data', as I am not familiar with mesh exports. But my question boils down to, is there a way I can make a .obj file from my current model, and if yes, can you walk me through it. 

Thanks!

[ben.lorimore]

Hi @Anonymous,

Yes. To export to obj you must export from the autodesk cloud because Fusion does not support a local export of obj.

How you do this is:

1) go to Fusion team in your internet browser and sign in

2) click on your project

3) click on your file

Click the export icon > OBJ

And voila! You have your OBJ!

Best,

Ben

[etfrench]

But will it have the color information?

[Anonymous]

Thanks, so I have done this and obtained the OBJ. The automated system from I.materialise still doesn't recognize the colour. Sent it to them separately as well, maybe they can do something manually, although I have little hope for that; assume they will get back to me tomorrow (CET). 

On the I.materialise site it mentions the following on OBJ:

Some of them formats are also able to include colors or textures in the file (e.g. PLY, VRML, X3D, and Collada), while others store the texture in a separate image-file (GIF, JPG or PNG) and map-file (OBJ).

I looked into this mapping file and good-old wikipedia says this: 

The Material Template Library format (MTL) or .MTL File Format is a companion file format to .OBJ, also defined by Wavefront Technologies, that describes surface shading (material) properties of objects within one or more .OBJ files.

Although I am absolute noob on this topic, I would assume that the colours should be included in the MTL file that should accompany a OBJ file. Does this sound right? If yes, where can I obtain the MTL? 

Thanks!

[ben.lorimore]

Hi @Anonymous,

Unfortunately, Fusion doesn't currently support the export of mtl.

Honestly, Fusion is not the right tool for making and exporting complex mesh files as it is a parametric CAD tool (with a little mesh capability). For advanced mesh capabilities I'd recommend using a mesh centered 3D modeling tool like Maya.

Best,

Ben

[Anonymous]

Hi Ben,

Thanks for your honesty. Two questions though: 

- Can you explain to me how the mesh capability is related to putting a picture on a 3D model. I had a quick look at Maya which seems to be about animation, which to me seems way beyond what I need. I also only know mesh in the context of frames and networks, so I don't understand how it is related. 

- Can you also come back to my other original question: 

1. As you can see only a quarter of the image gets displayed on the face and I don't get why. The box is 10x10mm and the image as well as you can see in the screenshot below. Despite there being no tiles, Fusion seems to create tiles on the face and puts the image in the top right. I opened all settings boxes in the screenshot so you can see my setup. 

Thanks!

[TrippyLighting]

When we're talking about meshes here on the Forum we are taking about polygon meshes. Here is a Wikipedia article that explains what a polygon mesh is.

However, not all meshes are of the same structure

.

The first image in that article is a dolphin and that mesh is made from triangles. Now imagine we remove all the little diagonal lines that go through the rectangles this is made from. That's a Quad mesh and that is how you usually would model something like this in Maya, or Blender. That quad mesh is only a control mesh that is then subdivided automatically by the Catmul Clark algorithm to give it a smooth appearance. Such a Quad mesh can be exported as a .obj file and such a file can contain UV maps and textures such as images mapped onto the surface. Also that quad mesh has a topology or mesh layout specifically created do model that object.

Such quad meshes can be imported into Fusion 360 (without the UV maps or texture/material definitions) and converted into a T-Spline and then into a solid model (BRep) , or surface and then have the same smooth appearance as the Catmul Clark subdivided quad mesh in. Maya or Blender. This is not what you want to do but I mention it for others that might read this.

So one task is for you to figure out what format is accepted by the multicolor 3D printer you want to print this on. It might be .obj 

However, when you export such an object into a .stl then that mesh to be sent to a 3D printer is decomposed into a mesh composed of many more small triangles. .stl files only contain triangles and do not cary image or texture data and as such are not the right format for your purpose.

[Anonymous]

Thanks! Very insightful post, great to get a bit more background on this! 

In the end it seems there is no way I can send both the geometry and the texture in one file by using fusion360 as the mtl cannot be downloaded. I.materialise does however have the capability of adding texture/a picture with their own software, so I guess that's the workaround for now. They would just require to know how to apply the picture, for which I guess some screenshots from the model in fusion can be used once I am able to solve my other issue of adding the picture to a face in the correct way.