Womball the answer is yes, any model of any number of subtools of any character or form can be split and milled to what ever size you wish.
arbayne, we are getting into this more and more, using Zbrush and Rhino, carso, stl slicer, Tcpwin, right now, basicly using what we have from our flat cutting history, but are looking into others like Artcam, Tool path. Our cnc is still cutting things out in max. six inch thicknesses but we are looking into 5 axis and rotational milling machines, with tool changers that can handle larger blanks. right now we can stack as high as we want and cut any hole to slip over an armiture.
We have been coating with modeling clays and adding in the detail refferenced from the images exported from Zbrush, as per traditional aproaches.
We are now playing around with ZB’s ability to take high frequency details and create stamps, to make sheets of texture that can be milled out and used as a texture stamp to apply back onto the model, so your getting more of what you originally sculpted. ( still testing this out, but it looks promising) but some where you have to establish the line between getting your primary and secondary forms off the table and use other methods to achive the high frequency detail elements, alot of ideas, which we pull from our staffs fx makeup experience.
It is for the most part about bit size and step over, and how much time you can leave the model on the table in terms of achieving any surface finish smooth or textured, in a production atmosphere its knowing when to move on to the next step and for every client its different, as well knowing what not to send to the table, and what to build by hand, and we are still learning. i’m not a huge fan of any additive process over the foam because it softens form too much, so hard coat which we use, is never my first choice of finish, if you can mold you should, its just a better way to transfer your surface to a perminent form, and its repeatable. When we do add we are offsetting the mesh a desired thickness and milling that, anticipating the clays or coatings thickness, but it has its limitation. we have also started to build our armitures inside the digital model and extracting them for engineering and fabrication by our welding department.
LLLGuapo, its great to see your work, and see it large, I love the process work that you’ve done, do you have a rotaional milling maching or a hot wire machine. what ever your doing keep it going, thats some nice work.