Hi guys. Been away from the posting for half a year or so. At least half a year.
I fought a kidney stone for a week. That was painfull experience!
But it's mostly because I decided to enroll on a ceramics course. At first 6 weeks long. But after the weeks were gone, -Hey this is fun. So 6 weeks more. But, -Hey this is still fun, so only 3 more weeks because there is something called summer that puts stop to many things, like attendance. Because of the sun and bathing in lakes and other nice things people likes to do rather than play with clay.
And I didn't even try to throw pots. Only did the kneeding clay and do it by hand without the wheel.
Didn't produce much but I always wanted to work with clay. It is an amazing material. It has its quirks and limitations.
So if you got nothing to do, want to try something new and different, try a pottery class.
But I have not been idle for all this time.
I have been collecting greeblies, where ever I could find them.
I will make a post about them later. I started to prepare one so I will add to it.
Also did a lot of thinking about the build. I am still doing what I have been planning. There might be some small changes though.
The biggest thing is that I 3 weeks ago got a new 3d printer. It was just time to get it. After wanting a better one for 2 years or so. I wanted it before I went on vacation so I could play with IT instead of go out in the sun. And a specific printer kept popping up on internet, and a friend of a friend already had one, and it was the Anycubic Photon.
I have been learning it and how to make models in 3d to get the best prints from it. As a 3d-artist I make models. But all that are different sometimes to what you are used to. The rules of what will work. How to put smaller objects together into larger ones.
I think I have sorted that out now, since the prints that turn out good.
The other day I switched from the green transparent resin that came with my printer to a light grey resin. It's the one I want to use (if it works) because StarWars is very light grey. So as a "primer" or foundation I want it grey.
Started to print things and props for my ship and diorama immediately. No wasting time on test objects. :-D
I like to make my own models, because I know how to do it. I will hopefully never download from a site and print it just as is. There's nothing wrong with doing it, but I want it to be my bad.
I sometimes download from sites and use them as reference. It's a quicker and easier way to get sizes and proportions correct. Or MORE correct, than me doing it all from scratch. And there are always things I want to alter.
The free files on the download sites could be models ripped from games and those models are not always suited for 3d printing.
So I change thicknesses on details to maybe make them stronger, remove details because I can add that later as a styrén detail, change proportions to what I rather want, and make models hollow (to use less resin. Important for economy). And I know how MY model is constructed. When errors occur in the slicer I know how to fix them.
I am not going to ramble on about printer settings and things like that. So please don't ask me. There are excellent groups on Facebook for that.
This is something I printed today. Made a test print yesterday and noticed that the outside perimeter of the "barrel" wasn't smooth enough. It had 36 edges around. Increased it to 108. And that is for an object that is 20mm in diameter. Printing it smaller will work. But larger and I have to add more edges to it. One of those things I had to learn by printing. To find that threshold between smooth enough and not smooth at all.
At work I do VERY low polygon modeling (among other duties) so I am not very used to nurbs and sub-divisions.
I am open to new ways and softwares but I like what I know. It's meditative when it just works, and the end result is what I imagined. I often watch a movie at the same time.
I saw a barrel in a photo that looked interesting. It was a well-lit behind the scene photo so I am not sure how much of it visible in the movie. And I am not sure what movie it was from. One of the latest I think. Solo maybe. Just guessing.
Top to bottom.
1. The lineup in the slicing program.
2. Finished prints. Cleaned and cured.
3. Closeup on the crispness of the details.
4. For some reason the objects are not complete. Not sure why.
I will reprint some of my previous objects with the grey resin and upload.
And guys...
Don't mess around with resin without protection. It's not worth it.