Karma Akabane - 3D Print Material Possibly Chosen

So after doing some research, I think I will go with the company 'Shapeways' to produce my model of Karma Akabane from Assassination Classroom. It sounds like I will use this plastic in the end too, opting to print the model in smaller separate parts, and then paint them using spray paint base colours.

Shapeways Material 'Strong & Flexible Plastic'

The model is currently at the stage of creating the joints to bind the model together, however in doing so, it seems the high-res sculpt information may not work so well anymore in the end. This is due to the meshes being significantly different now, and so the re-projection will get a lot more things wrong and messed up. Essentially, the model should have been built this way from stage 1. Whether or not this proves too much work to be worth the end result at this stage is yet to be seen. I'm still in the stage of just getting the model set up, and I'll see what ZBrush says later on when the meshes are brought back in. 

I'm sure it will do that silly scaling bug it loves to do so much, and I'll never even get the meshes to go over one another again...

Karma Akabane - Final 3D Sculpt

Today I finished the first stage of sculpting Karma. This was then decimated using Decimation Master in ZBrush, then brought back into Maya for retopology. I soon figured that I could just speed most of this process up using ZRemesher in ZBrush, and bringing those models in too, which worked well for the most part. Then things stared to go wrong.

The final retopology would need to be built in a way that came apart, with the joints all modelled internally ready for 3D printing. This was already proving to be a lot of trouble to make properly, especially from a high res mesh. Then getting the original mesh to re-project its details onto the new geometry in ZBrush also didn't appear to be going as smoothly as I had hoped either. 

The upshot is that there is now a full, high resolution sculpt of Karma, all posed and set for good renders, but not suitable for 3D printing.

The downside is trying to figure out an efficient way of creating his internal structure while maintaining all of his sculpt information, and have every piece of the final mesh completely 'water-tight'. It can be done, but it looks like one hell of a lot more work than first anticipated, mostly probably down to the way I created him in the first place, which is unfortunate. If I continue down this path, it may mean having to re-sculpt a lot of his from scratch again.

For now, I will fight on to see where this goes. Until then, I at least have a perfectly renderable character, which could be basically coloured with some ease too.

Xiahou Ba Polypainting Clean-up & Detailing - Polypaint Artefacts

Now that Xiahou Ba has his final 'in-game' meshes with the high resolution sculpt and paint information projected down to them, I have started giving him any finishing touches he needs. in the process however, I have ran into a problem regarding Polypainting and the use of Layers in ZBrush.

I have fixed this issue now, but thought I had better post it here to show how to fix the issue for any fellow Googlers.

The top image shows the issue at hand; there are artefacts where I have tried to paint over already-existing paint. The paint can be hidden but only when using 100% pressure over it, which obviously is not what is wanted.

• The problem occurs because of the use of layers.
• When you make a new layer, it will say REC to the right of the layer, signifying it is now recording what you do to your sculpture to add it to that layer. When you are done or want to change layer, you click the REC symbol to make it close the layer.
• If you later decide you need to add more detail to an existing layer, this is where the problem occurs. Trying to paint over data that has already been laid out on that layer will cause artefacts because essentially there is an internal alpha map ZBrush is using to sort the layers of colour as efficiently as possible. This 'internal alpha map' is set up when the layer is closed, and only full pressure can add to it later.
• To fix the issue you can do one of two things:
• Bake all current layers down and don't use layers much if at all when polypainting.
• Or the better option; if you decide you need to add something else to an existing layer, make a new layer above the current one, adding your detail on here instead. Once you're finished, simply merge this new layer down with the one that you want the detail added to. Its a bit of a strange thing to have to do, but that's how it is for now at least.