Could it be possible to get your ingame item as a 3D Print?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Myrcello, May 27, 2014.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. Myrcello

    Myrcello Avatar

    Messages:
    2,662
    Likes Received:
    9,176
    Trophy Points:
    153
    Gender:
    Male
    Hi all.


    I asked myself how cool it would be to be able to print your SotA-Avatar, or your favorite rare item or any ingame item with the new 3D printing technology.
    Maybe a Chaos Shield. :)






    So first question i had is if it is possible to print Unity 3d items on a 3d Printer.






    Step1:
    First we need to find out if 3D Unity Items can be transferred into a .stl file.
    A .stl file is required for 3d printers.


    And yes. i found a STL Script on the Uniy Asset Store for only 5 Dollars.

    https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/3397

    The description:
    Category: Scripting/Input - Output
    Publisher: Sixth Sensor Rating: (4)
    Price: $5 Buy $5.00
    Requires Unity 3.5.2 or higher.

    STL exports unity meshes to the STL file format which is widely used for rapid prototyping and computer-aided manufacturing (3D printing). – exports binary files – exports text based files – exports multiple unity meshes into a single STL file avoiding the 65K vertices per mesh limit. Find documentation in the top of the STL.cs script. Note that the script does not yet support colors


    Or this workaround Solution i found also:
    The External Lightmapping Tool (http://unity3d.com/support/resources/unity-extensions/external-lightmapping-tool) is able to export a Unity scene as FBX to 3ds max (where it can be lightmapped and imported back). And 3ds max is able to save as .STL, so this is probably a way you could go.


    Step 2:

    Now we have the right format option for 3d printing, they Developers can choose some ingame 3d models, for example monsters , buildings, rare items and transfer them to STL format. They provide these STL formats for download, or a little purchase amount on the ADD ON STORE.


    Step 3:

    Now you as a User need to find a 3D printer. Pretty easy actually.

    I recommend this 3D Print Community , that shows you 3D Printers in your location, feedback how the service is and cost: http://www.3dhubs.com

    For example 3D Printer Services in Austin: http://www.3dhubs.com/austin

    Instructions how to print: http://www.3dhubs.com/how-to-3d-print

    Examples of cool 3d printings:

    3d printing of a Evil Enemy from Skyrim

    [​IMG][​IMG][​IMG]
    [​IMG]




    Myrcello
     
    Jynx, Retro, Lord Albert and 13 others like this.
  2. Lordy

    Lordy Avatar

    Messages:
    114
    Likes Received:
    156
    Trophy Points:
    18
  3. enderandrew

    enderandrew Legend of the Hearth

    Messages:
    7,359
    Likes Received:
    15,646
    Trophy Points:
    165
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Omaha, NE
    I know it would take time to set up the script and add this functionality to the store, and this is definitely a post-launch feature, but it could drive some revenue to Portalarium for future episodes.
     
  4. aevans

    aevans Avatar

    Messages:
    387
    Likes Received:
    545
    Trophy Points:
    43
    This looks like it would be a good candidate for a community driven project. Any available assets that can be converted, catalogued, tagged, and maintained on a 3rd party site. All model files, etc, needed to print on various printers can be made available for download. Options available to update/tweak the models, etc. If allowed, files can be uploaded to various sites already dedicated for production and purchase for those that don't have printers.

    Not sure what kind of blessings would be needed from Portalarium, but I'm sure something can be worked out. Would be nice if any generated proceeds could be sent to Portalarium for further funding of the game.

    Disclaimer: I have no practical experience with 3D printing, just wanted to suggest the community get together and work on something like this to save on developer resources dedicated to bringing us this game.
     
    Mata likes this.
  5. PrimeRib

    PrimeRib Avatar

    Messages:
    3,017
    Likes Received:
    3,576
    Trophy Points:
    165
    Gender:
    Male
    While that's interesting, amazing would be scanning stuff in and creating new assets for them.
     
    rild and Mata like this.
  6. Eriador

    Eriador Avatar

    Messages:
    2,874
    Likes Received:
    5,154
    Trophy Points:
    165
    Location:
    Here!
    If you finally print some item I will write a special article about you. :D
     
  7. Mata

    Mata Avatar

    Messages:
    4,027
    Likes Received:
    9,894
    Trophy Points:
    153
    Gender:
    Female
    Location:
    Ruhrpott - Deutschland
    As an additional source of income, I think that's good.
     
  8. aevans

    aevans Avatar

    Messages:
    387
    Likes Received:
    545
    Trophy Points:
    43
  9. Hops099

    Hops099 Avatar

    Messages:
    8
    Likes Received:
    12
    Trophy Points:
    3
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    United States
    Fantastic idea! Would love to see it come to fruition one day...
     
  10. Gooseboy

    Gooseboy Avatar

    Messages:
    41
    Likes Received:
    54
    Trophy Points:
    8
    I got a printer for my students and got them making stuff in meshmixer...meanwhile I'm printing 3d assets on the side for fun...it will,take 12 hours to,print the firefly plane...
     
  11. Mystic

    Mystic Avatar

    Messages:
    965
    Likes Received:
    2,139
    Trophy Points:
    93
    @Astrobia has a 3D printer. Maybe he could make a business out of making SotA items come to reality. XD
     
    enderandrew and rild like this.
  12. rild

    rild Avatar

    Messages:
    1,220
    Likes Received:
    2,485
    Trophy Points:
    125
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Portland, OR
    Myrcello, you continue to amaze me with your in-depth research and creative ideas!
     
  13. Astrobia

    Astrobia Avatar

    Messages:
    519
    Likes Received:
    1,137
    Trophy Points:
    63
    Making unlicensed merchandise of a trademarked franchise is kinds of a sketchy area and one I tend to avoid out of respect if I haven't been granted specific permission by the IP holders. Otherwise yes... Though based out Australia the shipping charges would be obnoxiously prohibitive for the bulk of potential customers. :p
    That Skyrim logo print for example? That would cost maybe 5c to make and then like $30 to ship to the USA. :-/
    Something like the sword... It's a bit hard to tell how much that would cost by eyeballing, plastic is about $30-$40 a kilo (looking at maybe $1 or 2, probably less in electrical costs for the printing process) but if the moddel is well designed it will be hollow with supports of even have a honeycomb interior so it's hard to know how much plastic was used just looking at it... I'm guessing there's maybe $10 there but it could be less if it's really well designed and also significantly more if poorly so. Though I can clearly see it was done in 3 separate prints and then glued together... Now if I didn't assemble it on my end and shipped it as 3 separate parts in one package to reduce bulk, it would still cost over $80 to ship.
     
  14. Isaiah

    Isaiah Avatar

    Messages:
    6,887
    Likes Received:
    8,359
    Trophy Points:
    165
    Gender:
    Male
    How much money do you think it will cost to 3D print an entire suit of Epic Plate? If it actually came in pieces we could print it and put on the armor.

    However the dukes and Lords of the Mannor people could print their crowns. lol
     
  15. Astrobia

    Astrobia Avatar

    Messages:
    519
    Likes Received:
    1,137
    Trophy Points:
    63
    I think the main problem with that is the plate is actually a combination of metal, leather and cloth. You can certainly print plastic in place of the metal and paint it but given all the other components and work simply estimating the price of the plastic isn't going to give you a close approximation of the total cost. Depends on your ability to source and combine the materials. But just to give you and everyone else some reference locally PLA plastic is priced at about $35 for 1kg (price in the US is in the same ballpark, varies from $25-$40USD depending on volume of purchase), which gives you about 300 meters of 1.75mm filament give or take a couple of meters. If you were to print that into a flat sheet it would give you about 5285 square cm... Which is just over half a square meter (roughly under 6 square feet I think). The average adult male has a body surface area of about 2 square meters. So loosely speaking full suit is going to need 4kg to cover that surface area and with a sheet thickness between 1mm to 1.5mm (less than 7/128ths of an inch) with minimal to no structural support, fine for outer surface of small object but something that size you want to wear... It's hard to ballpark what thickness and what level of infill you'd need for something like that... Now you aren't going to use the full surface area of a human body and you may be above or below average there anyway...

    Still if you double the number of layers you can create artificial thickness of the armour by having the inner layer support and out layer with a mostly holly honeycomb structure providing support between them. Still not good for much more than cosplay and any rough wear will crack, split and punch holes in it at various stress points... If you are clever you could concievably design it so you could fill the pieces with polyurethane foam to add structural support too which would let you use less plastic for support. Add $50 or so for cost of fabric (leather will look better but cost way more), glue paint and other minor components... The epic plate armour metal sheets cover a lot of surface area... I think you could feasibly do that with between 10-15kg for a full suit of armour depending on the design. So that's $350-$500... And that could quite possibly be low balling it. You might be able to do it for around $150-$200 if you just printed an out layer to glue on a foam support depending on how good you were at sourcing materials and designing it. A lot of extra work getting the inner moulding right to fit on your body comfortably though... Cotton padding could substitute foam in a lot of places as well I suppose. I can sew just fine but actual tailoring is not my area of expertise. @Darkblade would be a good person to bring into the conversation. From memory he's involved with a groups that tailors actual armour.
    This is assuming you are buying the plastic. It's possible to create your own recycled plastic from other sources. I have 20kg of filament I've made by recycling milk bottles with a filabot system at virtually no material cost. That particular plastic is no good for this particular project but if you recycle other say ABS and PLA plastic products they'll do the job. Big outlay on those recycling machine though, considerably more than my printer itself and it's pretty cutting edge for a home system, of course I build it myself so it cost me maybe 20% the price of an equivalent commercial model.
    It can actually print in polycarbonate...
    So you could conceivably print that into proper plates for constructing proper armour. Now you can interlace print layers for some potentially promising impact spreading effects but printed polycarbonate is not going to have the same level of bullet resistant properties as solid moulded UL752 grade stuff. Still under several layers of kevlar it could conceivably take the hurt off small calibre weapons. I wouldn't want to try it though... And you'd be looking at about $1500-2000 in materials for such a project... Oh an you simply could not do a visor for the helmet. Printed polycarbonate comes out effectively opaque... I also wouldn't call it light weight... Plus I wouldn't trust it to stand up to a proper stabbing either... There are much better materials and fabrication methods for such things. It might substitute a cost effective make shift work around for a civilian but I seriously doubt you could fabricate anything even close to proper police grade gear... Though you could make it look much cooler. For medieval armour, it's still plastic. It's not going to stand up to metal. And axe will chop through it. A warhammer will crush it... Arrow penetration would be a very interesting thing to test due to the thickness to weight ratios... Still this is all very speculative and superfluous of course.

    As for just making a suit of epic plate for look... It would probably be most cost effective to buy some cotton balls, glue them onto a long sleeve tshirt, pants, gloves etc. from an op shop as necessary and take some tin snips to some aluminium cans for your faux plate layer to glue on. Whole project could conceivably be under $40. :p
    Taking the existing model and modifying it for 3D printing would be considerably less work for the individual, especially over multiple suits but such large scale projects aren't where home printers really excel. Doable totally but if you want something sturdy, wearable with good quality detail... It's going to cost... These prices are DIY by the way. If you actually took the design to a rapid prototyping/printing company triple the costs at least.
     
    Myrcello likes this.
  16. Darkblade

    Darkblade Avatar

    Messages:
    171
    Likes Received:
    185
    Trophy Points:
    40
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    Germany - from Kentucky
    I craft leather armor. Printing plastic pre-formed plates and then covering them with a very thin layer of leather might be a way to "cheat" around creating it with normal leather. Then you would have a hardened leather set with potentially outstanding form, but it would not stand up to a hit of any kind without shattering under the leather.

    If you want to go with full metal, you could always use the 3d printer to create the pieces in plastic first to see if they fit properly, and then use those to make the casting for the metallurgy. Then you have the piece in metal after casting, and just need to polish (or age) it to your liking.

    OR you could just spray paint the printed pieces, but imo, that would look potentially horrid.

    Also for those who have not heard yet, the hospitals have their first working casts being printed with the 3d printers. Google them for the images. Wish those had been available years ago, would have helped tons with the itching under the cast.
     
    Myrcello likes this.
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.