I can do a lot, but I cannot design this kind of models. The first thing I did was look for available models of any kind. The game models are downloaded from a to be disclosed source. I would love to say where, but I need to look it up. The models are unpossed and unfit for 3D printing.
For posing I needed a program called XNALara. It requires a ton of obsolete software to be installed on a system that no longer supports it, but with a load of patches I got it to run. In XNALara, I posed the Rathalos and Rathian in a way that seemed nice and exported the files to OBJ.
From here the models were imported into Maya to be repaired where needed. This mostly meant thickening the wings so they are printable. After this the model makes it's first stop in Netfab to repair the mesh. After the Netfab repair, the model was loaded into Maya again and split into smaller pieces more or less fit for 3D printing. Last, the models made a final stop into Netfab to repair the now split mesh again.
These models were printed on an UP! plus 1. UP!'s are the only printers I know capable of printing models with this kind of support, that would otherwise be impossible. The models were printed in ABS because this is the only thing that UP! printers properly support. Each wyvern consists of 10 pieces.
These models were glued using the solvent welding method. This left me with a more or less solid part, where the weld is probably stronger than the part itself. After this the whole parts were cleaned and roughly sanded. I could have done more sanding, but I was a bit short on time.
I 3D printed a base in black PLA and mounted the wyverns on there with brass tubes. The models do not include the mounting holes. This meant I had to do something quite unnerving. Drill into a finished 3D print. Luckily, nothing went wrong, and the 2 wyverns could be firmly mounted on a base.
After this, I got to try something I had never tried before. An airbrush. With 6 colors of airbrush paint: black, army green, brown, sand, old white and crimson I painted the Rathalos and Rathian in their respective colors. The pattern on the green wyvern, the Rathian, was done with the airbrush. The pattern on the red wyvern, the Rathalos, was done with a brush.
As a final precaution because this needs to sit on top of a cake too, I glued a plastic sheet to the bottom and cleaned it thoroughly with alcohol. A 3D printed surface would probably have been alright, but I wanted to be safe.
After a layer of clear coat the statue was done. All in all I am really pleased with it. I have to say this is one of the cooler things I have built so far. There are not that many photo's available, because I never intended this to be a full Ytec project, but I have been given permission to release the files, so I will in a while. Be aware that this is not a 3D printer optimized design. It is a repaired mesh that can be printed, but only on printers that are amazing with support material.
And now without further ado, photos:
- Rath statue 1.jpg (230.45 KiB) Viewed 65263 times
- Rath statue 2.jpg (218.51 KiB) Viewed 65263 times
- Rath statue 3.jpg (205.43 KiB) Viewed 65263 times
- Rath statue 4.jpg (242.13 KiB) Viewed 65263 times
- Rath statue 5.jpg (190.34 KiB) Viewed 65263 times
