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So if I am understanding this thread, they (who ever that 3D "publisher" is) can print a 3D figure in various plastic materials, however each has its own drawbacks, including being brittle. When it comes to color the options are very limited - almost like Henry Ford.."you can chooses any color you want for your model T as long as its black". How a 3D printer can handle gradients in skin and clothes will be interesting to see. So I assume the modeler will have to hand paint the finer detail himself. And this business is ready for prime time ? I wish them luck.. Meeting the expectations of what a 3D modeler sees on screen is daunting and fraught with problems. We all know how tough it is to match what is on screen to a 2D print.
I do think that 3D printers are a necessity if you are a small inventor and need prototypes. It is amazing how the machine shop business has changed over recent years. They are more like labs than machine shops. And they have their own 3D protocols as others have mentioned....
Coming back to Carrara, I hope DAZ is not betting the farm on this product.
Starboardtack
Woohoo, I must make the elite 1000 because a 3D figure came in the mail. I am not sure what the intended market is. I suspect that I am not really it. Since I am just a hobbyist, I really can't see a use for this type of product for me except as a novelty gift. For example, there is a local sports bar that I spend too much time at during baseball season. The bar's decor includes shelves of the free bobble heads that teams give away for special games. For the anniversary of the bar, the employees had custom bobble heads made for the owner and the manager to be displayed along with the bobble heads of the baseball players. Other than some gift like that, I don't see someone like me using the product. But who knows, I've said that about a lot of new products over the years that went on to become very common. Wait and see.
Diomede64
Is it in color ? How good is the color ? What is it a model of.. Genesis ?
Starboardtack
• Victoria 6
• Super Hero Suit for Genesis 2 Female(s) & Victoria 6
• Janna Hair for Genesis 2 Female(s) & Victoria 4
• Hardcore M4’s gun
Does that mean you're a 40 year old virgin?
(ducks and runs) %-P
Does that mean you're a 40 year old virgin?
(ducks and runs) %-P
:lol::lol::lol:
To show how out of touch I am, the figure comes with a chance to win $1,000 if you creatively display the figure in your instagram account, twitter, etc. I don't have any of those accounts. :ohh:
To answer another question, yes, it is painted. As for the quality of the painting, we will all be able to judge by checking instagram and twitter - however you do that.
I guess the obvious thing to do is photograph it, and use that picture as a texture to drape on another figure...
I had only briefly skimmed this thread until my very special and select free bobblehead (no, I mean figurine) came in the mail. Now I understand some of the questions better.
- it is four colors (suit has two, plus a skin tone and a hair color).
- the card that comes with it says genesis 2 is updated to allow 3d printing without modification, which might address some of the V4/M4 issues people were talking about and Dustrider mentioned about enclosed volumes
- the card also says that the license agreements have been updated to allow 3D printing for personal use
- there will be various 3D print figures for purchase
- and separately says there will be 3D print collections (is that different from various 3D print figures?)
- ...and custom on-demand 3D printing services (could that mean I model my own figure in Carrara that if it is 3D print compatible they will print it? or am I way off base and it just means I can custom pose one of their models?)
- it confirms that I am part of a select group of Daz customers :coolsmile:
Also, my figurine came with its arm broken, so I will have to see about that liquid superglue. People collect all sorts of things, so I'm not going to make too much fun of a collection of characters someone made with Daz products.
But with that caveat, after going through the thread, I will now make a little fun of a few other potential uses to add to the D&D player and menagerie collector categories.
- garden gnomes with dragons and laser guns
- well endowed female scarecrows in leather vests, tattoos, and steampunk helmets
- retail store mannequins in painted on lingerie
- terra cotta warriors for a knock-off tourist destination at an interstate rest stop
- accessories for a cuckoo clock
You should raise a ticket about the broken arm - if nothing else it'll clue them in that they need better packaging.
Ya’ll really need to get out more :cheese:
If your wondering about the market for 3D figures, just do a google search for “resin figures’ or “garage kit figure”. I learned about these probably 20 years ago in a collectibles store while looking for Star Wars toys/figures for my boys, and it looks like they are still quite popular. Just guessing, but it looks like there could be a very good market for DAZ’s 3D printed figures :bug:
With the kit version of these, they have to be assembled and painted. From what the shop owner told me years ago, it’s not very easy, and a lot of work to assemble and paint one of the kits, and quality of the kits varies a lot. I guess many of the less expensive kits take a lot of extra work, where the expensive ones have better fit and surface quality (though still need a lot of the flashing removed). A very well done finished version can (or could back then) easily get 2x-5x the cost of the kit (depending on artist and quality). He had an extremely well done Witchblade figure that was about 12 inches tall, and as I recall it was in the $400+ range (not sure - but it was expensive!). He also had several Vallejo style fantasy figures, and a lot of scantily clad Anime figures.
The quality of the surface/finish on the DAZ 3D printed figures doesn't look nearly as good the high quality finished "garage kit" figures, but the price is pretty good in comparison. The plus with the DAZ 3D custom printed figures is that people will be able to create their own unique figure. That could be a huge draw for a brand new market with the figure collectors.
I just did a google search and clicked on this youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87hCsVbyfqE Obviously the collectible female/anime figure business isn’t just for the “40 year old virgin” crowd :bug:. If you start looking at related videos, it looks like there could be a very good market for DAZ 3D “e-doll” figures.
Hmmm ..... I guess I need to get out more too. PVC figures are now being made as well. They seem to be less expensive than the resin figures, but are also less detailed and evidently tend to "bend" over time more than the resin figures.
Diomede64,
I would not raise too much fuss over the broken arm..you may blow your chance to win the $1,000.
This is not a good omen..that DAZ is shipping out items that they anticipate may be damaged. They have a 3D program that needs attention and the effort goes into this. I hope they know what they are doing.. I don't want to see the company that makes a 3D program that I am invested in get into trouble. I have been wrong many times on products that I thought would not make it.. I hope I am wrong on this. After all, PT Barnum said (as best I remember) , "Nobody has gone broke under estimating the taste of Americans"
I would put my money on the well endowed female scarecrow..after all this is America,,
Starboardtack
Dustrider,
Were these figures from some years back cast figures or injection molded figures? After all figurines have been made in porcelain or china for years, are collectors items. The quality like you say can vary tremendously. I hope your right about their market potential, I would much sooner be wrong on this than right.
Thanks for the heads up information..
Starboardtack
Let's just hope there aren't suddenly hundreds of instagram/twitter accounts with fotos of DAZ printed figures with broken arms and legs... :) :)
Too bad they're not articulated like a bobble-head or one of those Hula dancer girls. That way, we could be subjected to hundreds of videos of V6s dancing on Instagram, not unlike when AniMate first came out, and we were subjected to hundreds of videos of dancing V4s in Studio.
;-)
OK, quick search for revenues related to resin kits confirms Dustrider's wisdom. The worldwide market is quite large, in the many millions of dollars, big factories taking on big orders seeking investment partners sense. I wish Daz well with this and I will treasure my original first-print V6 in a scifi suit, complete with broken arm. Well, unless someone offers me big bucks for it.
Yeah, I wish them well. Clearly they did a lot of market research years ago before they jumped into this venture. At least I hope they did :)
I just hope it doesn't go the same way the Gizmoz thing did....doesn't sound like that went anywhere after the initial hype in 2010 or whenever...maybe their batting average will improve this time... :) :)
Another quick note - If you open up DIM and type in 3D print you will see your shinny new G2F and G2M 3D Print Geo-graft is ready for download installation. This has to be the closed volume needed for the print (haven't looked at it yet).
I've occasionally lusted after some of those large, maybe 10-12 inch tall statuettes of sexy heroines that you see in the hobby/comic/collectibles stores. Well done, nicely painted, pretty cool. But very expensive.
If these are in the small, 3" tall range, I really have no interest. Too small for me. Kind of reminds me of when we're kids and you could buy a bag of molded plastic soldiers that you can arrange on a battlefield. Kind of cool at the time, but not anymore...
Now I do own a few real human statues in the 10-12 inch tall range made out of stone or bronze. More artwork than anything. I do love stuff like that. But me personally, the small stuff just doesn't interest me.
And it sounds like the most difficult thing is the final painting. That takes some skill and time.
It is about 6 inches high. The pose does not stand at full height, so the figure might be designed to stand 7-8 inches high? I'm guessing, but I bet the specs are announced somewhere.
If 3D printing takes off (which it very well could) you can expect that most everything we see today about the way it is done will change dramatically over the next few years making what we see today obsolete. Theoretically, human beings shouldn't be involved in the 3d rendering process, it should be entirely automated. Instead of a human hand doing the painting there should be a robotic arm, that reads the color and texture information and literally "prints" the image onto the surface instead of "painting" it at a detail and resolution far beyond what is humanly possible. If the idea is to be accurate to any degree, then hand painting will have to be set aside for something less subjective at some point down the line.
That isnt to say that I don't support the current approach, I just don't think the current human hand approach is practical for mass production, and the final results are somewhat dependent on the skill and accuracy of the artist who is texturing it. Sometimes the exact look you had in your screen is the exact thing you want to see in your figurine, and no human approximations will be acceptable.
I think 3d printing has a long way to go generally, not just here at Daz3D. Clearly, cutting out shapes in 3d is the first challenge, its just unfortunate that 3d printers cannot also apply color as they build the models, nor can these machines bake textures into place on the completed model, it seems they must be hand drawn for the time being. Figurines have been hand drawn since the beginning of time, so I don't doubt that there are people out there right now who will want their figurine today, hand painted or not.
I must say the dragon example showed really nice details and if the figurines were larger I bet it could be extremely impressive.
It's already big in many areas. the stop motion film industry was the first ones to take advantage of it, instead of making complicated heads with moveable eyes and mouth they make simple heads with replacement faces, then they print a few thousand different faces to make very fluid facial expressions, they just change the face for each frame (magnets)..
And yes, people ask why not go CGI instead, but stop motion is still much cheaper compared to CGI, about half the price.
3D printing itself is no problems, the problem is to mix different materials and the actual limit on the different materials that can be used for 3D printing.
Time is also a problem, it takes long time print things.
I am admittedly a clueless blockhead when it comes to recognizing the potential of new technologies....I never ever ever predicted the explosive growth and interest in things like social media, Facebook, Twitter, smart phones, tablets, even personal computers. I thought "who the heck really needs a personal computer in their home?" Well, nobody, but that doesn't mean they won't buy a smart phone, a tablet, a laptop, and a desktop... :) :)
So the potential of 3D printers has me baffled. Seems like the technology to convert digital files to "stuff", using many different materials, has existed for a very long time, just in a different form. Manufacturers have been doing it to manufacture parts and stuff for decades.
Anyway, we'll see. Maybe the coolness factor is all that's needed to make a big industry. Like with iPads.
I believe the size that DAZ gives is in centimeters, which I worked out to be just over 3" high. Diomede63 reeived one so he is better to comment on it than I am. What I found both interesting and disturbing is that they would ship out an item with the caveat that it might arrive broken and if so to glue it back together. Who would think that this was a good way to launch a new product. It just has the feel of desperation. A rush to get to market in fear of missing an opportunity which won't be there in a few more months or a year. I went to the links that Dustrider and Diomede64 listed and as far as I could tell they are products that are cast either by resin match plate molding or injection molding. In both cases multiply items can be produced from the same master quite cheaply. 3D printing by contrast is a slow one off method which is inherently expensive. I would think that this would restrict DAZ's product to a niche market - but what do I know. Also, in the resin pouring/injection molding products making a larger model is more or less a larger mold and more material..the time difference in manufacture is small, whereas in 3D printing the time to make a larger model, I would imagine increases geometrically. There is also another consideration. If 3" models are breaking in shipping, how will larger items survive the rigors of the delivery system. I suspect that one of the first changes that DAZ will have to make, will be to change the material used to make their product. Another off the wall thought, is that the models that were sent out by DAZ are a mass produced item that was a mold poured, therefore it explains the plaster of paris like brittleness. I am just grabbing at straws trying to explain why this product is so fragile.
A possible candidate for DAZ,s 3D model service would be a business that is already making resin molded models. Acquiring a good master from which to make the mold must be the bottleneck of the business. With some thoughts to draught so as to avoid air bubbles, they could have their design made on a 3D printer and use this to make the mold. But this is probably what they are doing already - why would they need DAZ. I am puzzled by this whole thing
I just hope that they have not expended too much effort into this venture and are now ready to get back to improving Carrara.
Starboardtack
Yes, now you can find the general specs through the 3DPrint links from the shop webpage. The ones you can order now are about half as tall as the collectible I received. (And I apologize for being flippant about it. I had no idea this 3DPrint experiment was going on, or that they really did just send out 1,000 of a limited run).
Here is a link I found over in the PC+ threads abotu the 1000 gifted ones
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/52032/