Modelling armour for 3D printing

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I want to model storm trooper body armour and then 3D print it.  So I am looking for a good method / approach to do this.  I have a youtube piece where the author imports a foot and then sculpts around it to make a shoe.  This looks an ideal method to me? but it has to be hollow so once I have a suitable outline I want to make it say 1mm thick so it can be 3D printed?   Is there a better way / ideal way to approach this task?

[colin.smith]

Hi @Anonymous,

Do you want to share the YouTube video you are talking about.

You could scan different body parts and then use T-Splines to model the armour parts.

If T-SPlines are not a close object when you convert them to a solid and they can be thickened using the Patch > Thicken tool.

here is a really quick (and badly modeled) example

Brought in a shoe last mesh as reference.  To do this:

Model > Create > Create base feature

Insert > mesh

Move the mesh in to the position you want.

Finish base feature.

Modeled a T-Spline body around the shape. And hit "Finish Form" which converted the shape to a surface.

Use patch > create > thicken

Thickened solid ready for printing.  Of course you may have to cut the object down to fit in the print bed depending on which printer you are using.

So it may make sense to include pins or registration marks so that you can line everything up again.

Again, this was really quick and simple (and ugly) but I think it gets the point across.

There are some good prop maker online who show this type of workflow - you may want to research that also. 

Colin

[Anonymous]

[Anonymous]

Trying indeed to do splines but it seems very messy as you can see and long winded, it has taken me hours so far but it looks awful.    I must be missing some technique in extending the individual faces/units as it just goes out of control if I try to make bigger faces/units.  Very frustrating as I am trying to model a 3d item in 2d so before I know it Ive moved  what I think is 10 or 20 mm visually but instead find ive move 100mm in the plane I cannot see. 

[Anonymous]

I will look up prop making and see if there is something

[Anonymous]

I will indeed need to slice the parts up somewhat.  So I have to figure out how to attach M/F pegs or something at each side of the "cut"  That is one of the next jobs.

[Anonymous]

Video I initially watched,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRwdzwYd5iU

[Anonymous]

Watching the video again, i can see a better technique I just didnt appreciate when I started.  I think maybe I should just scrap what I have done and re-start from scratch, put the hours down to learning.