Planet Calypso: 3D-model of Jamira

... A New Hope

Ha! Big THANKS to "Federal Employment Agency"! They sponsored an 8-week training course of Autodesk Inventor 2016 and 3DS Max 2016 for me ;-) Best of all is: I got a 3-year "educational" free full version of both programs. I've learned the basics of Inventor during the first four weeks. Not much differences to SolidWorks. They copy each other from time to time. Checked. Meanwhile I am at relearning 3DS Max.

21 years ago I started with 3D Studio R2. That was under DOS 6.0 with a 386-processor (+ turbo!) and a 14"-monitor. Not to mention: "high color" only. OMG! Must have been like the "postwar period" our parents told about. My last significant experiance with 3DS Max was V3 - more than 10 years ago.

How ever. I made a bunch of new experiances with 3DS Max already. I've learned some basics of character modelling, running skeletons (called "Biped"), learned a lot about texturing and prepairing geometry for 3D prints. The last point is the important one. Our lecturer let us do the projects we want to do. So I dug my old 3D-rips of Jamira and my Her Famousness Sister Kristin and did some experiments with. The results were promising. To resume: Once it was my goal to get a big statue of Jamira (800 mm high - 32"). Obviously the rip delivered very rough and unclean geometry. Good enough for a game with all its renderers, textures and shaders and what not ... by far not suitable for a 3D print. And all the old cracked versions of 3DS Max (5 and 7) didn't work with 64 bit and Win 8.1.

Now I got complete new options! Shall we start with amazing new possibilities? Yes, we shall! Still no clue if it'll bring up good results.

 

What do we have?
A very rough 3D-model and a screenshot from ingame. Additional a WANHAO Duplicator i3 (US$ 400). But that's just a vague option. This time I won't promise much.

Aaaaaaand:
3DS Max 2016!​

Finally I left my exile at Athena Space Station and flew to Rocktropia to have access to pictures of the Lion armour at auction.


Let's see what we can make with this basic stuff!

 

First of all: we have still the old problems with this 3D model.
Very rough geometry, intersections, open parts:



This time we'll probably have solutions for all that shit.
First step: I split the model


This will help to repair and improve it. It'll will be a lot of work and will take some time.
For now I will give you an idea why I said: ... a new hope. We will treat one part as an example - the left thigh. I closed the gaps.

 

3DS Max comes with an incredible row of possibilities. I better post it as thumb ;-)

But amongst all this sits a mighty and useful modificator:
It tesselates the original geometry, rounds the edges and changes the the original flat polygons to curved geometry:

Finally we have a great improvement:
---------->
This would be more than enough for a good 3D print.
But we want more. Compared to the textured model we miss several details like this carvings:

I clicked again MSmooth two or three times to get this;

The reason for this is another pretty nice modificator: Paint Deformation. It's hidden at the very lower end of 3DS Max' modification menu:

And here is what it does:

Either with a positive or negative value. I love it!

MSmooth and Paint Deformation were the reasons for me to start again with this Ulla-statue-project. Both modificators change the 3D-geometry really - not only render- or shading-parameters. Essential for a 3D-print.

 

My experiance is:

• You must set yourself a goal. Something you love ... like I do with this statue of myself ;-)
• Start with the biggest possible project and challenge you can imagine. Just to learn that you are a noob and fail so far
  
• Than start again with a smaller one and succeed

Too sad, Friday I forgot the USB-stick with the last results of Ulla-treating at school. So I was thrown back to lame things like TESO and write another futile job application.
I will continue Monday or Tuesday.

 

Well, I forgot the stupid USB-stick again ***roll eyes***
For now I realized that I should try to work with a dress form in Max and stich the armor parts to it. No clue if it makes sense. But I'm open for new ideas and solutions.

I re-installed DAZ 3D to get such a puppet for free in good quality. Usually I install new software at D:/program files (C: = 180 GByte for OS and such, D: = 1.8 TByte for everything else: software, libraries, customer data, renderings). It took 1.5 hours until I gave up and installed it at C:/program files. No way to install it at D:. The folks at DAZ ar realy insane!

Warning to OZtwo: Your fellow countrymen from Salt Lake City still deliver naked basic models! Okay, no pubic hair, no naval, no nipples.

The reason for that puppet is that 3DS Max' Character Studio uses a ready to pose or animate skeleton called "Biped". The puppet's skin can be connected to the Biped and does the same as the Biped do - walk, run, jump, sit. The skin will be deformed automatically. Problem with Ulla's armour is: It shouldn't be deformed. And problem with Ulla's grabbed 3d-model is: It has a pose alredy. Means: left and right half of her body arn't symmetric. Hard to fit the Biped to it.

However, finally I got all the free stuff. Standard female figure in DAZ:

Exported as OBJ-file from DAZ and imported into Max:

Pretty good. Some texture problems. But I don't need textures at all. Probably I have to fit puppet's body to Ulla's proportions. That could become a bit tricky because I don't want to learn DAZ. First result of scaling extremities doesn't look good: I didn't find a way to scale it along one axis only. The thigh was scaled in all three axis. Not what I want.

I think I will use the standard model as it is. It's just a dummy.

Okay, Dummy with it's Biped. I will try to bring them together tomorrow at school.


Pssst! Don't tell OZtwo: Ofcourse the model is prepaired for everything if one is in need of

 

Additional I will make some carvings to one of the feet and try to print it. What I've learned from my previous tests (Tamara): Scale should be 1:2.5. Ulla is two meters tall. So one foot is kinda 300 mm long. Scaled down by 2.5: 120 mm. Oha! Even a small part like a foot is a significant challenge to the printer. LOL! But 120 mm should be possible in one piece.

Another idea came to my mind:
What if I don't make a special fixed pose for her (static statue), but give her joints - like an action figure even? Could work as long as she wears stiff armour parts. That would save all this Dummy- and Bipedactions.

 

LOL! The computer at school isn't that highend device. So no carvings at the shoe. Painting with the mouse is far to slow. I only got some zig-zag carvings.
I made a rough smoothing of the whole figure instead. Couldn't resist ;-)

I spent some time with the hair. Really a hard job to put thickness to the hair in 3DS Max. That was way easier with Rhino 3D.
Another job was to fit a Biped to the figure. Our trainer had an idea: a mixed model. Torso and hands bound to the Biped for deformation parts (red) and all other stiff parts only attached to the coresponding Biped-parts.



It works. Unfortunately I cannot upload an AVI-video here. At least her legs make a few steps meanwhile.


Nice experiments to relearn 3DS Max. But it's all not good for my statue. I think I will stick with the given pose from the grabbed model, repair the geometry to make it printable, smooth and carve it to fit better to the textured ingame appearance and give her a Castorian Combat EnBlade-10. That's enough work

 

Oh well, during my activities to get access to my old 3D-rips I found a model of Ulla in Lion armor with the old appearance! That's kinda treasure to my ;-)

Notice: Old face and haircut. Original shoulders. Beloved Niflheim at hand. Tits not messed.