Thanks to 3D scanning technology, sports equipment can be adapted based on the athlete’s body structure as well as their individual techniques. It can be produced with lightweight, affordable and sustainable materials that are both flexible and durable providing a perfect custom fit and better protection from injury. Here are some of the ways 3D printing is utilized to produce advanced sporting equipment.

Protective Gear Tailored to Your Body

Helmets

Helmets provide some of the most important protection when engaging in any physical activity and require extensive testing in shock absorption and shell deflection to meet safety standards. Customization can allow for better comfort, fit and safety for each individual.

Bicycle Helmets

Hexr, an English company, has specialized in making custom 3D printed bike helmets that use 3D scanning to perfectly fit the curvature of the wearer’s head. It features a highly breathable honeycomb structure (as opposed to a typical foam insulation) made from renewable materials and an interchangeable outer shell. According to Folksam’s bicycle helmet testing, it outperforms standard safety performances by 30%.

Football Helmets

In sports like American football, where head injuries can be more common, continuing to upgrade helmet safety to reduce this possibility is paramount. For an NFL helmet design competition to produce better head protection for players, many of the contestants and designers turned to 3D scanning and printing to create their version of the next best helmet. Each aimed to reduce concussions and create shock absorbent layers perfectly tailored to the player’s head contour. Similar to footwear, the customized padding used as a protective layer inside the helmets often feature a lattice structure that can be thicker in places where protection is more important. The NFL has said that the best and safest prototype, once it has proven to outperform current models, would be worn by players as early as July 2021.

Other Protective Gear

3D printing’s customization power paired with sturdy materials make it suitable for any number of other protective pieces to be made with this technology. Being able to scan a player’s face or body means that they can have their own personalized and perfectly fitted mouth guards, shin guards, protection masks and more. Austrian company Zweikampf has produced lightweight 3D printed shin guards that feature a Y structure that disperses shock across the entire guard instead of just one point and can be personalized with a player’s name and jersey number for added customization.

Ergonomic Customization for a Perfect Fit

Athletic Footwear

Comfort, ergonomics and performance are the most important aspects of an athlete’s footwear and the use of 3D scanning and printing emphasizes each of these by offering a completely custom fit.
            Instead of relying on mainstream half-integer measurements, 3D customized shoes can fit each of a person’s feet closer than ever before. By utilizing 3D scanning technology it is possible to capture the exact length, width and volume, arch contour, and toe spacing, as well as take into account the person’s body weight, and what kind of impact their particular sport or activity will be placing on the shoes.

            One of the ways 3D printing is integrated into footwear is through the creation of lattice midsoles. The midsoles are designed to fit a desired performance and printed according to the exact specifications of the 3D scan to fit the wearer’s feet perfectly. The density of the lattice structure can be altered to different levels throughout the shoe to create custom cushioning as needed to maximize shock absorption and rebound.

            Having a material that is lightweight, flexible and durable is crucial to creating the proper balance in athletic footwear. Versatile materials like TPU01 from BASF’s Forward AM material portfolio allow for complex geometries like lattice structures and provide impact absorption that prevents injury, making it an ideal choice for footwear.

Paralympic Equipment and Accessories

Prosthetics

We’ve seen how 3D printing has contributed to advancements in the comfort and fit of prosthetics, as well as increased affordability, and this includes adapted sports prosthetics as well. German paralympic cyclist Denise Schindler partnered with Autodesk to create a polycarbonate prosthetic customized to fit her perfectly and attach to the pedals of her bicycle. Paul Sohi, the product designer working on the prosthetic, used 3D scans of her residual limb to prototype several versions of the prosthetic to create the most aerodynamic version possible.

Wheelchair Sports Accessories

Equipment for wheelchair sports like seats and racing gloves benefit hugely from the ability to scan and customize with 3D printing technology as well. The first 3D printed wheelchair seats were available to players in the 2012 Paralympic wheelchair basketball games, developed by Loughborough University’s Sports Technology Institute. The players were scanned and their seats were customized based on their body’s specifications. A player with a spinal cord injury, for example, could have a seat with an attachment to support their lower back. As a bonus benefit, the 3D printed seats ended up weighing a kilo less than standard seats. Similarly, customized 3D printed wheelchair racing gloves, like those created by Ingenium, can provide improved ergonomics and durability.

Personalized Equipment that Suits Your Taste and Technique

Golf Clubs

Other sports equipment can be customized to improve weight distribution, grip and appearance to suit the player. Several golf companies have begun using additive manufacturing to make precise alterations to their clubs and other equipment. Grismont Paris offers custom golf club heads that can be finished in either gold, copper or metal to suit the player’s aesthetic preferences. Nike has also prototyped a golf ball in which the typical elastomeric inner core and rigid outer shell more seamlessly transitions with the use of 3D printing along with a new geometric configuration called a “void.”

Tennis Rackets

Unstrung Customs produces customizable racket pallets that allow customers to choose their grip size and pallet shape. Where usually players might have their grips sanded to achieve their desired shape, Unstrung Customs designs the perfect shape from the beginning.

3D Printed US Olympic Team Sled

The 3D printed sleds produced for the US Olympic team for the 23rd winter games in Pyeongchang were the result of many tested designs that ultimately came to fit the exact specifications of the athlete’s bodies creating a higher level of comfort, aerodynamics and performance. Chris Mazdzer secured the first US gold medal aboard one his own custom 3D printed sled.

The realm of possibilities that 3D printing technology allows for will change the game in any athletic arena. Customization is not just a matter of picking out favorite colors. It can radically improve athletic performance by providing better comfort and protection. It also means that tailor-made gear can be more affordable and accessible to all athletes of all experience levels. Want to learn more about how you can work with Shapeways to utilize this technology? Get in touch today.

The post Custom 3D Printed Athletic Gear Raises the Bar appeared first on Shapeways Blog.

Consumers in today’s market expect more and more for their products and experiences to be tailored to them, and to have more control over what they pay for. The challenge in meeting that demand for mass customization is having to switch from producing hundreds to millions of the same item to efficiently producing small batches of personalized items within a similarly short time frame without costs going up astronomically. Additive manufacturing helps maximize efficiency in making large-scale personalization more accessible.

Customer-Led Designs

Companies that use 3D printing for customization set up design interfaces to allow customers to make their own design choices in regards to color, texture, material or fit. For example, some automotive companies have given their customers the ability to choose their vehicle’s colors or include personalized lettering on the interiors. Any product can potentially be customized according to what suits the buyer: cars, furniture, fixtures, jewelry and more.

3D Scanning for a Perfect Fit

With 3D scanning software becoming more prominent and user-friendly, it is easier than ever for customers to contribute to the design process themselves. The footwear industry is making use of 3D printing technology, allowing customers to make aesthetic choices for their shoes and also to personalize their insoles based on their specific foot shape, weight or running style. Customization is also becoming a standard in the tabletop gaming industry, with more and more companies offering customizable game pieces.

A smart-phone app can take a scan of a person’s face or other body part and generate a 3D file that can be used to create a product that fits them perfectly. LuxMea has used this technology to produce face masks that are not only aesthetically customizable but also provide a perfect fit for the individual wearer, making them safer and more comfortable.

3D scans can be used to personalize earphones, shoe insoles, eyewear and many more products thanks to 3D printing technology. This ability to creatively participate in the design process boosts customer satisfaction, as the ability to have more say in what they spend money on makes the process more fun and efficient for the users.

Customization to Improve Lives

Advances in 3D scanning technology contribute heavily to the medical industry, an area where personalization can be crucial. With the ability to scan specific parts of the body, more accurate and patient-specific improvements can be made to someone’s health and wellbeing. 3D printing allows for more affordable and personalized prosthetics, implants and other aids ensuring a higher level of comfort and support. This is an area where perfect fit as well as timely delivery can be of the utmost importance to the success of medical devices and equipment. 3D printing is able to surpass the limits of traditional processes because of its ability to produce highly complex parts quicker. Customization also improves the instruments and supplies that physicians use, making them more efficient and comfortable and improving surgical outcomes.

Understanding Preferences and Trends

By allowing customers to make more of their own choices, the process provides key insights into trends and consumer preferences. Customers’ tastes can be used to help companies evolve their products and make product developments to fit the needs of their customers.

On-Demand Manufacturing

Another benefit of using 3D printing for customized products is a shift towards more on-demand production. By placing more emphasis on smaller personalized products instead of mass-produced products before orders are received, inventories can be reduced and a substantial amount of waste can be avoided. This can save money in material costs and create a more sustainable manufacturing process.

The 3D printing industry is growing at a very fast rate, and is making it easier to transition to using 3D printing over traditional mass production methods as time goes on. However, the transition can still be expensive and time consuming. 3D printing services like Shapeways can ease that transition by giving you access to high quality manufacturing as well as tailored e-commerce support. Let us know how we can help with your mass-customization needs.

The post Why 3D Printing Is Key For Mass Customizable Products appeared first on Shapeways Blog.

How do you capture a texture? As a kid you would grab a crayon and a white sheet of paper to reveal and replicate the surface. Today, you would probably snap a photo and fill your Instagram with the unique surface textures or patterns. But hold up, we live in the future and can create a real-life, wearable design out of those patterns and textures.

With photogrammetry you can scan your favorite item or texture and turn it into a ring. Accurately replicating a surface texture can be difficult to do through traditional 3D sculpting. Using 3D scanning, you can precisely capture the texture with ease.

In this guest tutorial, Bernat Cuni of Cunicode has tested and created a step-by-step instructional on how you can create your own textured ring. Using Autodesk Recap and an iPhone, Cuni was able to replicate the bark from a pine tree in the French Pyrenees.

With new applications, creating objects using photogrammetry has become easy and inexpensive. For those unfamiliar with the term, Photogrammetry is the process of stitching together multiple images from a real-world environment or object to then form a high-quality 3D model, map, measurement, or drawing. In our case, we will be using the technology to create a 3D model.

Before we begin the tutorial, let’s go over what you will need in order to create your textured ring.

1. Digital Camera 
   • You can use your phone, no need to go out and purchase an expensive camera.
2. Photogrammetry software 
   • Free: 3DF Zephir: Windows
   • Paid: Autodesk ReCap Photo: Windows
   • Paid: Agisoft Photoscan: Windows, Mac, Linux
   • RealityCapture: Windows
   • Open Source:Regard 3D: Windows, Mac
3. MeshLab & Meshmixer
   • Open source and free software for processing and editing 3D meshes. Works on Windows and Mac.
4. 3D Modeling Software
   • You can select your favorite modeling software to edit the ring to your specifications.

We’ll show you how to create this ring, which you can then print in any of Shapeways’ metals

Step 1: Select Your Texture or Object

In order to begin, select the object, texture, or pattern you would like replicate and use to create your ring. Bernat has selected a tree within the French Pyrenees.

It is best to avoid shiny or transparent objects as they are difficult to capture.

Step 2: Take Images of Your Texture or Object

To begin you will need a set of photos of the object to process them into a valid 3D model.

Using a digital camera (your phone will work), take images of the object. Make sure to get all angles of the object from the same or close to the same distance. Bernat went around the object 3 times (one at eye-level, one looking up, and one looking down) in order to ensure that every angle was captured. In total, Bernat took 56 photos at 2049 × 1537 pixels. You do not need this exact amount but it is helpful to understand that the more photos you have, the more data you have to work with.

Note: It is important to have consistent lighting conditions while you are shooting your object. If you are outside, it is best to shoot the images on a cloudy day to avoid shadows. If you are inside, bright lighting is necessary to receive the clearest photos with the most data. Do not edit the photos, as they should contain the EXIF data for better processing (lens used, shutter speed, etc).

Step 3: Upload and Process Photos

Upload your photos to the photogrammetry software you selected above. Bernat used Autodesk’s RecapPhoto and processed the 56 tree images he took. For the photogrammetry software you selected, follow its instructions on processing and stitching your photos. This can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours depending on the settings and photos you have chosen.

Step 4:  Clean Up & Cut Mesh

The mesh that was then revealed was larger than necessary and contained more data than for the object he was looking to create, including nearby trees and buildings. Bernat went ahead and cleaned the mesh using MeshLab. He selected the bark and tree he wanted to keep for his design and deleted the rest of the scan data.

The bark was now isolated and could be cut and brought to scale. You can then download the file from MeshLab and import the design into MeshMixer. From there use the PlaneCut tool to trim the mesh to the desired thickness. 

Step 5: Create a Mesh Solid

This can be done with another modeling software of your choice. Bernat used Rhino to turn the surface into a solid, using the Mesh command. Once the design has been turned into a solid, you can then edit the design to create a ring. Cut a hole from the center of the solid and fillet the interior edges.

Step 9: Upload to Shapeways

Once you have scaled the design to your appropriate ring size, you can upload directly to Shapeways. You can upload multiple sizes to sell in your shop or print just for yourself.

You’re ready to print!

Watch Bernat’s explanation of the design process through his video below:

For more inspiration from Bernat Cuni, check out his MoonRing. where he created an accurate texture of the moon using scanning data.

Inspired? Print your design

The post Tutorial Tuesday 53: Create a Textured Unisex Ring With a Phone and Photogrammetry appeared first on Shapeways Blog.

As designers, how will you respond to changes to the form factor of the iPhone? We’ve always been in awe of your beautiful, functional iPhone cases, and we’re excited to see the creative ways you’ll work around the protruding camera, newly indispensable and larger power/”Home Bar” button (it now incorporates the functionality of the home button), and elongated 18.5:9 aspect ratio.

We’re equally excited to see what you’ll do with the iPhone X’s 3D scanning functionality. Most will just use this feature to unlock their phones using new facial recognition unlocking. But we know that this community will have much more interesting ideas.

So, we’re asking you to put your creativity to the test, and design, scan, and create amazing things for and with the iPhone X.

Tag your designs with @shapeways or #shapeways on Twitter or Instagram, and we’ll promote your work in a future Shapeways Magazine feature that will showcase how the Shapeways community is personalizing, remixing, and reimagining what the device can do.

Until then, happy making!

The post CALL FOR DESIGNS: The iPhone X Needs Your Smarts appeared first on Shapeways Blog.

Big Toy Is Not Thrilled About Your Desktop 3D Printer

Oh, the irony. Cheap desktop 3D printers, which are, for the most part, good for making low-resolution plastic toys, and are about the cost of toys, and, to people like us who work with industrial 3D printers, kind of ARE toys, are causing some discomfort among traditional toy manufacturers. Surely you must be thinking, “But, the more toys the merrier, right?” Well, as researchers from Michigan Technological University discovered, and QZ reported, “DIY 3D-printed toys are anywhere from 40%-90% cheaper than buying similar items at retail.” Of course, that could mean spending several hours to print a single Lego block, and kids do go preeeeetty crazy for That One Branded Franchise Toy every year. I think Mattel is safe — for now.

From Priceless Artifact to Pricey Print

The Rosetta Stone, inscribed in 196 BCE, unlocked the ancient lost language of heiroglyphs after it was discovered in 1799. It only took us 218 more years to 3D scan it, and now, it can be yours in 3D printed form. It’s pretty big, however, so think twice before printing it in a precious metal. And if you do, please, please send pics.

The post The Week in 3D Printing: Big Toy Gets Threatened, Veggies Get Printed, and 3D Printed Fashion Goes ‘Buy Now’ appeared first on Shapeways Blog.

We attended De Fabrik op Sontag, a Dutch maker fair that came to Den Bosch last month, to scan people with the Itseez3D app for iPad.

We have been using Itseez3D quite a lot recently and are very happy with the results.

In addition to the iPad camera, Itseez3D also requires an external camera: either the Structure Sensor (which we’ve written about before, in concert with Skanect, also from Occipital) or the Intel RealSense camera.

The Itseez3D app is free and does most of its work in the cloud —and you can create and view high-resolution 3D scans without having to pay for them. Exporting scans for 3D modeling or printing now costs $7 per model, and for power users and businesses Itseez3D offers paid monthly plans that come with a certain number of exports as well as support and priority processing.

It’s important to set up your scanning station in a place with good and even lighting. At the fair, we worked outside under a tent, with supplementary electric lights.

When you launch the Itseez3D app, you can choose between scanning an object, a bust, a full body, or part of a room.

After you select bust or full body, you’ll see a red oval frame. Line up the red oval with your subject’s face and follow the instructions on the bottom of the iPad screen.

Areas that have been thoroughly scanned will turn white, so you can see if you’ve missed any spots.

Itseez offers two viewing modes. A low-resolution Local Preview will take less than a minute to generate, but the results are not representative of the full capabilities of Itseez3D. When you have access to wifi, select Cloud Processing, and in 15 minutes you’ll have a stunning high-definition render.

People are always in awe when they see themselves on the screen in 3D.

Here is a preview of a scanned model in 3D:

You can rotate it yourself on Itseez3D.

Before downloading a file, Itseez lets you hollow out your 3D model in one click, place a pedestal underneath the bust or feet, and upload your model to Sketchfab for free.

We are big fans of Itseez3D and will continue to use it.

Have you tried scanning yourself or someone else with Itseez3D? Tell us how it went in the comments.

Or do you have any questions about how to get started? Leave us a comment; we’re happy to help!

The post Scanning Stories: Making 3D Selfies with Itseez3D for iPad appeared first on Shapeways Blog.

As the Verge reports, Adidas will make 5,000 pairs of its Futurecraft 4D sneakers available this year, with plans to sell 100,000 pairs by the end of 2018. The midsole, printed using Carbon‘s revolutionary continuous liquid interface production (CLIP) process, is more robust and flexible than an injection-molded part.

Adidas gave its first version of the Futurecraft 4D to some winning athletes at the 2016 Olympics in Rio.

Nike used 3D printing to prototype track shoes for the Rio games, but they were manufactured through traditional methods. While Nike has been a little slow to release 3D printed footwear to the masses, they have a new partnership with the French 3D printing company Prodways. According to Footwear News, Prodways’ TPU outsoles, midsoles, and insoles will greatly decrease Nike’s production time, with the added benefit of creating more form-fitting, comfortable shoes.

New Balance introduced the Zante Generate, featuring a midsole designed by Nervous System and 3D printed by 3D Systems, last year. New Balance just signed on to produce more 3D printed sneakers using Form Cell, Formlabs’ recently announced small-scale manufacturing system that links up to five Form 2 3D printers with Form Wash + Form Cure machines.

According to Esquire, Reebok created 300 pairs of its Liquid Speed sneakers using its Liquid Factory system. The outsole is 3D printed and wraps around the sneaker as a flexible cage. This allows the sneaker to mold to the foot and give extra return energy to runners with every step. Last month, at the RAPID + TCT additive manufacturing expo, I saw Under Armour’s new “super hybrid” trainer, designed using generative design and 3D printing for everything from running to weightlifting. Sneaker News reports that the next version of the cross trainer, the ArchiTech Futurist, is due out this week.

Not all 3D printed footwear is for elite athletes and runners. Feetz takes a different approach, offering custom-fit shoes through their FeetzApp. Customers take photos of their feet and the app processes it into a 3D model. Recently, Feetz formed a partnership with retailer DSW, with Feetz@DSW pop-up shops in NYC and San Francisco, according to 3DPrint.com.

Wiivv prints custom insoles and recently had a successful Kickstarter for recyclable 3D printed sandals with interchangeable and custom toe-thong placement. As with Feetz, users take photos of their feet with an app.

Brunel University London student Faisal Tayan is creating customizable shoes for refugees, 3DPrint.com recently reported. Rather than using a 3D printer to create bespoke shoes, Tayan used a 3D printed mechanism that lets his Shoe4All expand from size 6 to 11. For each pair he sells, Tayan plans to donate one pair of shoes to a person in need.

So 3D printed footwear looks and sounds sexy, but is it really the wave of the future — or is it just hype? Shapeways’ Lauren Slowik recently shared her opinion. I’m more optimistic than Lauren, and tend to think that 3D printing has a wide range of applications and will appeal to consumers’ desires for better fit, comfort, and customization.

What do you think? Are you wearing 3D printed shoes yet? Will your next pair of kicks be 3D printed, or is it a novelty that will go the way of the way of the shoe phone?

The post One Step Beyond: Sneaker Brands, Others Race Ahead With New 3D Printed Shoes appeared first on Shapeways Blog.

We’ll focus on the top three issues that can arise with meshes: having too many triangles (too fine a mesh), having triangles that are oriented incorrectly or inconsistently, and having triangles that intersect with bad geometry. MeshLab has a dizzying array of menu items with long names, but if you know just which ones to choose then you can repair these three types of issues very quickly. Let us know in the comments if you have other mesh-repair techniques to share!

Reducing Triangle Count

Shapeways can accept 3D models with up to one million triangles, but it’s surprisingly easy to go over that threshold, especially if you’re working with 3D scans or a sculpting program. To reduce the overall number of triangles in your model, open the model in MeshLab and from the Filters menu select “Remeshing, Simplification, and Reconstruction” and then “Simplification: Quadric Edge Collapse Decimation.” For more detailed information, see the Shapeways Tutorial Polygon Reduction with MeshLab as well as Mister P.’s video Mesh Processing: Decimation.

P. S. to MeshLab veterans: Good news! MeshLab updated to a long-awaited new version in late 2016, and in the new version you can perform “QECD” multiple times in a row without crashing the program! There’s still no “undo” in MeshLab though, alas. :/

Orienting Normals

If some of your model appears “inside out” (like the black area in the image below), then you should select and flip any reversed normals using the method outlined in the recipe Using MeshLab for fixing normals in the 3D Printing with RepRap Cookbook.

Or, try a quick overall fix in MeshLab by selecting “Normals, Curvature, and Orientation” from the Filters menu, then choosing the “Re-orient all faces coherently” tool.

Removing Non-Manifold Edges

If the mesh of your model has faces that meet together in geometrically unpleasant ways, then you’ll need to repair it before 3D printing; see the Shapeways article Fixing Non-Manifold Models. “Non-manifold” edges and vertices look those like the ones shown below from Martin Sälzle at PCL Developer’s Blog.

You can identify and select non-manifold elements from the Filter/Selection menu in MeshLab; look at the bottom of the view window for a count of the number of bad faces. To repair any bad geometry, use the method from the MakerHome article Shrinking and Remeshing the Fidget Cube: from the Filters menu, choose “Cleaning and Repairing”, and then try some combination of the tools “Remove Duplicate Faces”, “Remove Duplicated Vertex”, “Remove Faces From Non Manifold Edges”, and/or “Remove T-Vertices by Edge Flip”.

What are your favorite fast fixes for repairing and simplifying meshes? Let us know in the comments so we can all learn how to handle mesh problems quickly and get back to designing and creating!

The post Tutorial Tuesday 5: Quick Fixes With MeshLab appeared first on Shapeways Blog.

Take a (3D) selfie

Appleinsider brought us some pretty serious-sounding speculation that Apple will roll out a 3D scanner with its iPhones 8. Some see an opportunity for scanning and printing almost anything, others see an opportunity for Snapchat to get even creepier.

Back it up now

Some people love to wait. Take Raphael Vangelis. Aside from having a preeeetty awesome name, the director/animator also appreciates the art of loading screens — enough to take them from digital to analog format, creating stop-motion animations with his own special twists, as The Verge reported. Now, hurry up and wait:

Analogue Loaders from Raphael Vangelis on Vimeo.

You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll kiss back pain goodbye

Printing in space got even more interesting somehow this week when the Made In Space printer aboard the International Space Station produced a “laugh” (a print of a 3D model of sound waves emitted during laughter, natch). Get all of the laughs on Space.com. MEANWHILE IN SYRIA, Vice brought us the moving story of Ibrahim Mohammad, a refugee who’s working to bring relief to Syrian and Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon — in the form of 3D printed limbs. Read the whole beautiful, harrowing tale here. Less dramatic, but no less useful was the revelation that 3D printing is a better way to produce pills, as reported by 3Dprint.com. And, in an even more stunning innovation for 3D printing, a woman in India received 3D printed titanium vertebrae implants, and was pain-free 12 days after the 10-hour, life-threatening surgery that this entailed. Slow clap.

Image courtesy flickr user Vagawi

Ride a dino

As TheHindu.com reported, Paleontologists in New South Wales are using 3D printing to recreate a dinosaur they’re quickly digging up. Combined with a planned VR experience, they’ll use the model they’re making to immerse people in an encounter with a dino. Just don’t get too friendly… or get any ideas about cloning extinct dinosaurs for inclusion in a theme park-like setting.

Get that (3D) model body

Most of us know David Barton gyms as body-conscious places where people go to “tighten things up” to the beats of a hired DJ (really). Now, as CBSNewYork tells it, members have a chance to drill down on what exactly that weight loss routine is doing, thanks to 3D scanning and a personalized 3D model you can use to “sculpt” a new you. Now, we can all have a model body.

Low Poly Human Male derived from a 3D PD model, by GDJ

The post The Week in 3D Printing appeared first on Shapeways Blog.

In our most recent Scanning Stories post, we talked about making your full-body Skanect Structure Sensor 3D scans better using MeshLab and Meshmixer. In this fourth entry in the series, we’ll show you four steps between a full-body scan and printing that you’ll want to take to make sure your 3D selfies are true-to-life.

Step 1: Exporting your scans

Today, we’ll start by taking you through the process of exporting your Skanect scans as OBJ files. OBJ is a file format that contains 3D coordinates (polygon lines and points), texture maps, and other object info. By exporting your scans as OBJ files, you will get both a texture file AND a mesh file, as well as a file containing all data. This will help you better edit specific parts of your scan’s shape and appearance.

Start by exporting your Skanect scan file (for more info on creating scans, see this past post and this tutorial by Skanect) as an OBJ file.

Once you’ve exported the OBJ file, you’ll notice that Skanect has made three files for you: an OBJ, an MTL, and a PNG.

The MTL file contains all data, the OBJ is the actual mesh (the polyhedral version of your scanned object), and the PNG is the texture map, or surface detail file.

As a pro tip, the colors in the texture file tend to be a little too dark once printed so we we’ll show you how to lighten it up.

You can do this in programs like Photoshop or Lightroom.

Step 2: Compare textures before and after editing

If you look below, these textures look incomprehensible, but don’t worry, the computer understands how to read them. These are the colors that are what the computer is referencing to give texture to the print. The only problem is that the colors in the scan might not be vibrant enough once put onto the 3D model. Just like any form of photography we may need to do some image manipulation to make the colors look the best possible. Therefore, we’re going to bring this texture map into Lightroom and make some adjustments so they’re brighter and will look better.

The textures before lightning up

After lightning up

While editing the images, keep an eye on the details — they can be sharpened if needed. The settings we use in Lightroom are below:

Step 3: Editing the mesh and texture in ZBrush

When you scan with a hand scanner (like the Structure Sensor from Occipital that we use), you sometimes end up with a file that is not as sharp, complete, or accurate as you would like. You might have holes in the model that shouldn’t be there, or the texture might have flaws that need to be edited. You can make files like this printable using ZBrush or any other 3D program that can handle 3D files with textures like 3DMax, Blender, etc.

Here’s a super helpful tutorial for editing scans in ZBrush:

Zbrush tutorial to repair 3d scanned models

Other tutorials that might be helpful to you:

Pixologic ZBrush YouTube channel

Blender tutorial to repair 3D scanned models

How to Make Your 3D Scanned Models Look Amazing – Beginner Blender Tutorial

Step 4: Replacing the base of the scan

When you create a scan of a person, cleaning up the scan can often mean adding a platform, or base, on which the 3D print will stand. We generally remove the original base from the scan (which is either the ground, the floor, or a temporary platform the person was on) and replace it with a nice, freshly modeled platform because it will look much cleaner and stand upright.

To do this, follow the steps below:

1. Remember to always export the edited file in ZBrush as a VRML file. You’ll have something like this when you’re finished in ZBrush:

2. Make a platform. You can make a platform in any 3D modeling program. We made this simple platform in Solidworks. We made ours by drawing a square, extruding it to have thickness and then filleting the edges to make them less sharp. Once we were pleased with the platform we exported it as an STL file:

We then use Netfabb to merge the two files together. For us this is handy because our printers are set to work with Netfabb. Netfabb has a free version for you to experiment with.

3. Import the mesh AND your platform into Netfabb. Scale your model and/or your platform to a desired height/width. Place the platform underneath the model file (be sure they overlap, because if they don’t the finished file will end up as two separate parts and won’t merge during printing). Select both files and merge them together. Export the final file as a VRML.

4. Finally, create a zip file containing both the texture map PNG and the VRML model file and upload this to Shapeways.com.

The result is always a perfect finished product that can stand on its own.

Happy scanning and editing!

Brigitte & Astrid

The post Scanning Stories: 4 Steps to a Perfectly Printable 3D Selfie appeared first on Shapeways Blog.