P168: 3D Print Part 3
I have now finally finished my Phoenix Avatar Model, for the second time. The first time it was not printable, due to the walls being too thin in several places. This time, I am confident that it will print successfully.
I had to redo quite a lot of the mesh, and the quality did suffer as a result, since I had to reduce detail, especially around the hands. The fingers couldn’t be printed at all, I had to replace them with some “flames” that covered the hands. The hair was also a problem.
I chose to purchase the model from Shapeways (my first purchase from them) instead of Imaterialise, even though it was slightly more expensive, since Shapeways has an online automated model checking tool that makes it very easy to tell if a model has thin walls or not. Imaterialise doesn’t really have this, it seems to be up to the customer to know if their model is printable or not.
Getting the texture to show up was tricky as well, I eventually had to use .X3D format, instead of .DAE. I also reduced my texture size from 2048×2048 to 1024×1024.