3D Print Steps

[leeper48]

Quote

" but the other is proving a little more resistant to gorilla glue."

 

I do not have great luck with Gorilla Glue and PLA plastic. I use it for my foam RC planes but its expansion properties don't work so well with my 3D prints. Superglue (Cyanoacrylate) bonds really well.

 

I like to use this instant activator which sets the glue up in 2 seconds. Or for a homemade activator:

Quote

I've discovered that you can make a version of cyanoacrylate (CA) glue accelerator at home. Just mix 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda into 1/4 cup of purified water. Brush it onto the “dry” half of the joint. The soda will neutralize the acid in CA glue, which is there to slow the curing time. https://www.woodworkersjournal.com/homemade-ca-glue-accelerator/#:~:text=I've discovered that you,to slow the curing time.

 

[Oklahoman]

2 hours ago, leeper48 said:

Superglue (Cyanoacrylate) bonds really well.

The Super Glue in my Junk Drawer™️did not work at all, and the gorilla glue worked on an elder wand I printed pretty good, but yeah... not so much here. Maybe what was in the Junk Drawer ™️was Great Value Sooper Gloo.

 

I'll see if I can find some with the fancy chemical name you mentioned. Gotta get some model paint anyway so I have a trip to the store in my future. Any recommendations on the paint?

[leeper48]

I've been using Apple Barrel / Folkart from Walmart and Craft Smart from Michaels, diluted half & half with 90% Rubbing Alcohol in my airbrush with good results. You can use a conventional brush too but work out the thinning ratio to your best results (definitely test on some scrap prints first). Priming the parts is a good suggestion too.

 

I know there are model-grade paints already out there but these inexpensive acrylics have worked well for me and come in a ton of colors, finishes, and even some metal flake (see below).

Supreme-Thunder

 

 

Edited March 24, 2022 by leeper48

[srmalloy]

On 3/24/2022 at 10:20 AM, leeper48 said:

I know there are model-grade paints already out there but these inexpensive acrylics have worked well for me and come in a ton of colors, finishes, and even some metal flake (see below).

The reason that model-grade paint costs more is that the pigment is more finely ground so that a layer of paint is in scale with the object being painted and doesn't obscure details. For this kind of painting, Apple Barrel and the other brands of craft paint is more than good enough for the application. You're not trying to put a recognizable expression on a face that's a quarter inch high, after all.

 

[SilentProtector]

I've tried to follow the steps with a few different characters and keep getting this error. I'm not sure what I am doing wrong or how to fix it. Any tips or suggestions would be appreciated.

[Oklahoman]

20 hours ago, SilentProtector said:

I've tried to follow the steps with a few different characters and keep getting this error. I'm not sure what I am doing wrong or how to fix it. Any tips or suggestions would be appreciated.

@leeper48 probably has a better answer, but for me this did not prevent me from printing the model. I just ignored it.

[leeper48]

On 4/21/2022 at 4:59 PM, SilentProtector said:

I've tried to follow the steps with a few different characters and keep getting this error. I'm not sure what I am doing wrong or how to fix it. Any tips or suggestions would be appreciated.

If you could share your OBJ and your STL files, I could take a look. Could be rogue planes from aura sprites or non-manifold (water tight) mesh. Feel free to zip and send it to me via DM.

 

[JoeWinko]

awesome tutorial! but just wondering, how do you rip the textures from the game with the model? 

is there a way you can do that? 

[wildfire405]

Hey! Thank you for helping a dream come true!

One problem though and I hope someone here can help:

When I bring the model over to Cura (or Tinkercad), I'm getting a gob of manifold errors and parts of the model are missing after being exported from Blender--particularly the joints where those collisions are happening. Any advice on this?

I may need to learn to use blender a bit more in depth to get in and drop spheres inside those joints to "fill in" those spaces space--and figure out how to make sure it's one manifolded shell instead of stuck together separate. shells.

Thank you geniuses!

Cronus V2.blend

[leeper48]

On 5/14/2022 at 4:03 AM, JoeWinko said:

awesome tutorial! but just wondering, how do you rip the textures from the game with the model? 

is there a way you can do that? 

The good news is that the images/texture maps do export automatically into an images folder (Ex. C:\Games\Homecoming\bin\win64\live\Frame_095291\Images). The bad news is I haven't found a way to extract/create the UV map which is the vehicle the 3D model uses to map the texture to the proper quads/triangles on the mesh. If someone can solve that, they will be my hero.

[leeper48]

2 hours ago, wildfire405 said:

Hey! Thank you for helping a dream come true!

One problem though and I hope someone here can help:

When I bring the model over to Cura (or Tinkercad), I'm getting a gob of manifold errors and parts of the model are missing after being exported from Blender--particularly the joints where those collisions are happening. Any advice on this?

I may need to learn to use blender a bit more in depth to get in and drop spheres inside those joints to "fill in" those spaces space--and figure out how to make sure it's one manifolded shell instead of stuck together separate. shells.

Thank you geniuses!

Cronus V2.blend 936.99 kB · 0 downloads

I think I have it remedied for you. Here are the steps I took.

1. I opened your Blender file
2. Make sure the built-in 3D-Print add-on is turned on (Go Edit>Preferences>Add-ons>search for 3D-Print and make sure it is checked)
3. Pressed Tab and selected Faces
4. Pressed A for select all
5. Pressed M for Merge and then B for By distance. This welded a lot of loose polys together.
6. Then Tabbed back into Object mode
7. Pressed Ctrl 2 which applied a sub-surface smoothing. I like this as it takes out a fair amount of blockiness and matches the game engine better, I think.
8. Press N to bring up the add-on panel on the right side of your window
9. Look for Clean Up in the panel
10. Click Make Manifold
11. Then I exported the STL.
12. I loaded and scaled the STL in Cura.
13. I sliced it.
14. Then I go to the Preview tab at the top to see how it looks. I'm going to add this step to notes in the tutorial as it is a good step. 90% of the time if it looks good in the Preview tab (no ghosting, gaps, missing pieces, etc.) it will print fine.

 

Please give the files I attached a shot. Good luck!

Cronus V3.stl

Cronus V3.blend

Edited May 16, 2022 by leeper48

[leeper48]

FYI, I think I may not have pressed save on the last version of the Blender file so use this one, please.

 

Cronus V3.blend

[Kayeun]

Tried this and when I hit ctrl, shift, L no .obj file is made.  Not sure what is going wrong.

 

edit: fixed it

Edited May 19, 2022 by Kayeun

[QArkhan]

When I try these instructions, all goes well, but the ogle.obj file that is created is pretty much a "flat plane" or a couple of flat planes.  At no point do I see a version of my character.

 

 

Any idea what I might be doing wrong?

[leeper48]

Hi. I just tested in case the latest version broke something but it still worked for me. The screen/UI comes in as a giant plane along with your figure (your character may be almost microscopic in comparison).

Try scaling the imported model in Blender down by pressing S then .1

The character should be in the lower left of the giant plane.

You'll want to select everything but your character and delete it then doing a zoom all/Frame selecteed should wrap around the character.

I hope that helps. If not, send me your OBJ and I'll take a look.

Edited October 8, 2022 by leeper48

[QArkhan]

I have sent a message with my newest .obj and a .png image of what the screen looked like in game when I grabbed the .obj with CTRL-SHIFT-L.

Edited October 11, 2022 by QArkhan
UPDATED

[leeper48]

I hope this helps anyone wanting to capture and print their character. It would be good to have the written instructions handy at the start of the post and pay attention to my text in yellow during the video for important things to turn off when not capturing your character to return things to normal otherwise graphics will be low quality and stability will drop.

NEW Video Walk-thru

https://youtu.be/vVlmudp2KfU

[JennyZenith]

I got this to work but it was a steep learning curve.

 

Renaming the folder worked fine, but the OGLE ini file has to be renamed before putting it in use.

 

You have to rename it to gliConfig.ini

 

Also, the hot keys for the capture is not control-shift-L it is Control-Shift-F

 

If you have GeForce whatever installed you'll have to change the key binding so it doesn't pop up when you hit Alt-Z.  It isn't hard, but it is absolutely necessary that Alt-Z works in Blender.

 

After importing the OGLE.obj file into blender, the first thing you need to do is move the character to the origin.

 

After that, you need to delete all the rest of the scene.  That is why ALT-Z is so important.  You need to got into EDIT mode and select just the vertices that are in your character.  But there is a huge scene that is also there as part of the same 'object'.

 

Alt-z (x-ray mode) lets you draw a box around your char and all the verts are selected.  Without x-ray mode, it would only select the vertices that you can see.  With x-ray on, you get all the verts in the whole character model.

 

Then you go to Select and invert.  This selects all the vertices in the rest of the object (the game world) that you want to delete.  All the verts EXCEPT your character.

 

Once that other stuff is delete you can focus on your char.

 

You are in edit mode.  You go to mesh MERGE and choose by distance.  This is very important.

 

Also you need to recalculated your normals.   Recalculate OUTSIDE. 

 

If you want to see the normals, you can look for the little blob at the top called Overlays.   You have to set the size to 0.1 or something to see them and turn them on to see them.

 

Once your normals are square away, the Subsurface Modifier will work.  It is available through the wrench on the right.

 

Tip:  You can render the image from the camera via the Render:Render Image menu.  You need to move the camera around to see your char properly.  But that's a great way to make sure your Subsurface Modifier is working.

 

NOTE: when you export to .STL, make sure you have the include Modifiers checkbox set, and also only include selection. 

 

I use Prusa Slicer.  It is free and makes great supports for SLA printing.  Then I export with the supports and read it into Chitubox with the supports.  Then I slice and print.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[JennyZenith]

Oh yes I forgot to mention that there is a line in the gliConfig file that looks like this:

 

  BaseDir = "C:\Program Files\GLIntercept_1_3_2\Plugins";

 

 

That has to be fixed because GLIntercept is at version 1_3_4

 

All the ducks have to be in a row for this to work.

 

[SteelRat70]

This is brilliant, thank you for taking the time to detail the process.  Definitely something I'll be having a play with!

 

I'm assuming it should be possible to create a copy of the CoH game files in a different folder, make the necessary .dll file changes and then create a short cut on the desktop to the cityofheroes.exe in that folder that includes the launch parameters so that you haven't got to make changes and revert them between when you want to make a capture and not?  Of course should the game update, you'd need to duplicate the folder again.

[Skywise]

First of all, thank you, thank you, thank you for working out this process.  I have a 3D printer and often print and paint stl files from the internet.  I have Blender but I use Lychee Slicer instead of Cura but I think all the mechanics will work the same.  That said, I can't get your system to work. I ran through all the steps several times and didn't get it to work.  Then I ran Hero-Ogler and BOOM!, IT WORKED!!!  This has been a holy grail for me ever since I got my 3D printer.  Thanks heros!

Edited January 20, 2023 by Skywise
Update

[leeper48]

Glad you got it to work. I just recently got a couple of resin printers and switched to Lychee myself (it is nice they also added filament printers recently, too). Good luck and be sure to post any pics of prints you make.

[DamienTheCat]

On 5/18/2022 at 6:47 PM, Kayeun said:

Tried this and when I hit ctrl, shift, L no .obj file is made.  Not sure what is going wrong.

 

edit: fixed it

I know this is a year or so after the fact but how did you fix it?  I just saw this thread and am having the same problem of shift+ctrl+L doing nothing.