She looks great as an alabaster figurine.

It was commented in the past some of my renders look fairly plastic. So it generally works out pretty well with a similar result either way.

Exciting result.

Trying to push the limits to see what can be achieved, at least I've now got physical versions of my own characters. Something Shapeways wanted well over $200 for each. If I don't count costs of my own time, and the printer operation itself, they're actually quite reasonable in material cost.

Fantastic. 😃

Many of the poses were simply revisions of existing renders I have done in the past.

That was the goal to print without s and avoid significant refinishing. It did require some specific changes, the Lantern between her legs to strengthen the feet. Her arms and legs bent at a very specific angle, so that everything angles upward in a way. Her clothing touching her body and folds in a way to print upwards from the point. Her arms her wings, with the feather tips touching her arm just enough to them.

Her Hair was lengthened so that her ring touches her tail, the hanging hair within the ring was removed to be printable. her tail lifted and ed by a large gemstone until it was touching her hair. Invisible pockets and voids were filled to reduce material and print times. The area between her legs was reshaped to print at a reasonable overhang angle. not that such details are really visible in this material due to its translucency. A more opaque material would reveal far more hidden and subtle details. I'm going to try printing in cool white material next. There doesn't seem to be much demand for them, so Its best to avoid printing more than one extra.

Probably unintentional, but love how the light shines through her.

This was the PLA+ Warm White material, its more Translucent (Milk white). My next spool is Cool White that is far more Opaque and should show more of the surface detail.

You are getting very good finish and like consistency and whatnot between layers. Are you using a small nozzle and/or printing in really small layer heights? Whatever slicer you are using seems to be doing a great job of hiding the stop/start bits for each retraction too.

Standard Creality 0.4mm nozzle on a stock hot end. Upgraded Petsfang V2 Cooling and Triangle Labs BMG Extruder. Material is ESUN PLA+ at 210'C and 60'C Bed.

Layer Height was 0.12mm with 90mm/s Infill, 60mm/s inner walls and 30mm/s outside wall. Retraction rate was 3mm at 40mm/s

Man that looks great for using a standard nozzle, I was sure you were gonna say you went to smaller than a .4 for the detail.
.12 is a pretty small layer height (but, of course, that means more layers to have issues), and you aren't printing super slow or anything, so you must really have that Ender dialed in great!

Looks like you are getting good results out of that ESUN as well, I've only bought a few rolls from them, I mostly use prusament or hatchbox but I've been meaning to give a spool of that PLA+ a shot. Most companies aren't trying to push down to .03 for the dimensional accuracy.

Many PLA+ are not true PLA Pro material .. its just standard PLA covered in a bit of marketing wank..

But this material seems to be vastly more difficult to snap, break or even bend the small parts and test prints, especially compared to the roll of standard PLA I had before, where I could easily snap and delaminate the layers of any printed part with only my hands.

I did spend some extra time getting the calibration of the extruder setup, I was having filament grinding and clogging issues with so many retractions going on, now with this BMG extruder having dual gears, each retraction sounds sharp and quick with clean hum. The Orbiter with a direct drive will be my next upgrade choice if I have any issues, as it also has proper dual gear drive.

She looks great. Are you going to paint her?

absolutely lovely...

V.

WOW your work is amazing. Do you think you might open up custom work at some point?

It's complicated, a model takes quite a lot of hours of time, even selling my spare time for under $5/hour, it works out well over a thousand still.

I need to find a way to bring that down to an affordable level, and still motivate myself to complete the work started. Especially when fighting with the more difficult parts, like getting the face of a model looking acceptablely right 80+ hours in.

I had the flexibility of accepting my own Character's models as simply good enough at some point. Something that is even more difficult when facing a character that isn't your own.. trying to figure out when a model has an acceptable appearance, for the cost of time invested... Without spending hundreds of hours extra trying to achieve something that isn't working out.

I'm a bit worried the cost may still exceed the value for everyone involved. At least being able to offer a 3D figures along with a completed model, makes it all a bit more of a result for the project investment.

well I hate the idea of you selling your time so short (but I also understand what you mean about pricing). So if I am understanding correctly the main issue you are running into is the 3D modeling itself right? I am guessing you have some base models already setup so the main time sink is in the details? so if looking at your works so far I can see that you put a whole lot of work into them. However I would point out that you also might being a bit to critical of things though. as I can't see the work in progress I can't tell how amazingly over the top you went. I just hate to see your work not being open to more, but also don't want you to stress yourself over appeasing those that are to critical. Do you think you could maybe do a payment work plan? Like someone pays you 50-100 a month/week and after they pay you work a bit more on it give them an update and see how it works out. I would note that if you do that you need to have FULL understanding that things might change in your life or theirs. And if that happens things may have to be put on the back burner. I would also make a note for yourself and them about how you would feel about them paying a bit more as they can.

so the break down might look like this
total is 1200 at 100 per month means 12 months with you working no more than 15 hours a month. Then if they pay you like 200 one month you put in a bit more work?
anyways just a thought either way this is your work and your time it matters and you need to do what you are okay with.
either way I will happily continue to watch your work.

As each figure is unique, I have no bases to work from. Everything starts from a simple cube and is extruded outward from scratch.

I was thinking more towards breaking things into achievable and functional milestones for partial payments. About 20 hours each.

Base figure, face and body.
Details, hair, fur and clothing
Textures and colors
Rigging and controls
Posing and test renders
Final Polish and adjustments
Draft printable figure and test prints
Final adjustments and final prints
Optional scene building and lighting
Optional short animations or further scene renders.

well maybe you could do some base modeling?

That being said your idea sounds great so it would be (at the aweful rate of 5 an hour) about 100$ per stage of work?

I work normally as a Network Engineer. So $5 an hour is nearly volunteering my time.. but it's a side hobby to focus on something more casual, while still exerciseing a few technical skills.

But yes, likely about $100 per stage of work would be the basic costs, while still making at least something for the time invested.

That sounds good as long as you don't let yourself get talked down anymore than that and honestly I hope at some point you can start charging more and working less... like if you get better and faster at it. charging 100$ still but it only taking you 5 hours.... that still likely down the line some. Anyways do you know when you might start doing coms?

I think using sculpting workflow would be faster than the polygon extrusion method Im currently using. While my current method is best for high performance animation and games and complex internal or layerd features . A sculpting workflow is far faster for just getting overall character and
surface details in place.  ChunkerBuns uses sculpting workflow.

Well that does sound like a good way to look at it. Does this other method offer you the same "enjoyment" as what you do now? Also for like orders that don't care about getting all the bells and whistles can you use the faster method? (also could you trenfer between one to the other?)
So like if I wanted to get just some base model for like the 3D printer or just simple showing off could you use this other way? Then later if more is wanted would you have to start over or could you just drag what you started and make it better? just some question/food for thought. and before I really foot in mouth myself. I am not sure I would be getting anything right now. I just am trying to ask questions for future knowledge and to maybe help you get things started with questions you might not (though seems you have) thought about.

Game and movie models often use a combination, the body is generic, and the head is sculpted from the shoulders up with the seam hidden within the clothing collar. Fast animating body that can have a generic head inside of thay fancy sculpted one.. wearing the final head like a mask for the final animation rendered frames . Voice animation can then be done separately from the final body movements.

😖😖😖ACK my head hurts from that.... I dont fully understand the answer.... but thank you for trying

is an old post but can i the stl file somewhere ?