lol Morpheus Prototypes what a sad way to hijack a thread buisness not doing to good?
The print isnt bad but that paint job is pretty ugly lifeless and sloppy.
Compare them to desmondas. Maybe you should raise your turnaround times eh 
Awesomeness takes time 
It all depends on the scale of the piece you’re working on. A lot of guys don’t concern themselves with the scale until they export the piece and have the service bureau do it. I tend to have my base meshes already scaled before hand…not that it matters in Z…there’s currently no measuring tool. wink wink nudge nudge.
The best way that I’ve found to best preview your proportions are to turn off your perspective view, then lock to a default camera position. Since it’s an orthographic view, while you may lose the sense of perspective, you will be able to see the relative proportion. You can use the perspective view to get a general idea of it in the round…but you must keep your distance with the camera. The problem with using any digital perspective view is the fish-eye effect and it’s resulting distortion. You can play around with it all day, but you’ll continue to have to do so if you’re going between medium shots and close-ups…which is fine if that’s your goal. However, if your goal is to quickly know what you’re looking at and get it printed, the other method has never done us wrong.
One other issue to consider, somewhat related to your question, is making sure you’re using a material that accurately shows what your detail looks like. The nature of ZBrush is to show you smoothed normals, which can easily trick you into thinking your model is high enough res to print…you end up printing it and it looks like it’s made of Legos! I use a copper material that I tweaked out to show the true res of the surface, along with accurate portrayal of depth of my detail…it’s easy to do, and can be done with most any material…especially metallic ones or those that show your detail in a more harsh light. Overemphasize your details’ depth, no matter how high the advertised printer resolution is, you’re either going to end up with build lines (polyjet based systems, like the ProJet from 3DSystems, or SLA based ones, like the Xede from EnvisionTec) or the “powdered” look off of printers similar to those made by ZCorp. For now, sanding is a part of life, no matter how minor it may be…so mod your detail depth accordingly. 
Hopefully that helps…
Sorry… I’ve been sick! Got massive food poisoning. Explosive diarrhea and puking into bucket at the same time. Don’t worry… I washed my hands before going back to work 
Poboyross: Wow… you’re the lead of Digital at Sideshow? That’s awesomely crazy. Sorry, I didn’t mean to come out as bashing on Macfarlane or any of the big guns. My nose would have to grow a few inches if I didn’t admit that MacFarlane, Hot Toys, and Sideshow are daily inspirations for me and that I really am a big fan. I know how senior management can be. A lot of the time they inherit legacy looks or styles that they have to adhere to… not just because they want to… but because their customers have come to expect it. And then there’s so much money at stake that it’s not worth toying with something that isn’t broken.
At the same time… just want to let you Zbrushers know that the work you guys do rivals some of the output coming out of the big studios… so there’s a lot to be happy about.
The watertight, keying thing. We have 3 fulltime ZBrushers/CAD guys here at ownage that just sit here and do nothing but make things watertight and make perfect keys and putty-less joints. We do this for free b/c this is not a skill that you’ll need to worry about. Besides… from my experience… the worst casting happens when people make their own joints and we can’t touch the sculpt cause its already split =(. Even then… I feel bad… so I actually manually redo your joints using Polyester Resin or Avez Fixit Sculpt. It’s cause I know some of those are going straight into production and I wanna save you guys money on reprints or something silly that a few minutes with resin can fix.
Lol… if you want to ask some people (it was on the front page of autodesk something the other day)… I’ve literally spent 2 months displacement mapping and keying 100+ of armor pieces. For a 9" painted print that was only $500. I dunno how that works out financially… but it just doesn’t cross my mind when we’re working on it.
Max: Hey Man! Long time =D Yeah… the FOV thing is a tough nut. I remember when Grassetti and I were working on a headsculpt for a Korean Client that had to be dead-on. It was so hard trying to figure out our FOV issues. This just doesn’t come up in traditional sculpting. Some tips?
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Working with detail thats roughly on the same plane? Then what Poboyross suggests… going into ortho mode and holding shift to lock the object into top, right, bottom, etc mode is a good way to size up things.
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An okay way to make FOV work for prints in any program… zbrush, maya, etc? Make a cube… then play with FOV till it looks “right.” There’s no math behind this… but in Zbrush… 50-54? The reason this works is cause you know if you 3d printed cube… it better come out a cube. haha. Plus I kinda eyeballed this with the figure prints I’ve done in the last year and it looks about right. The worst FOV issues are with faces… definitely. Then after this, if you zoom/pan your camera in zbrush so that the zbrush model is approximately the size that you want to print it (assuming this is a scale toy). You should have a good idea what its gonna look like for a print.
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If you’ve already sculpted a mesh and you need to fix it before print… you can do a lattice deformation in maya or 3dsmax to warp the model to counteract perspective problems.
disco… squid: thx =D
Scrybe: I know man… in all honesty… our prices have got higher maybe 30% (due to machine upgrades). But we really didn’t want to do it… but then our competitors started calling us to complain prices were too low. Okay… we can live with this. Then customer’s started telling us the prices were too low… so we were like… something wrong here… they started adding tips on top of their invoiced balances LOL!
Hmm… fully printed crystal prints… mm… I try to avoid it cause crystal prints are really hard to examine for detail (it’s like examining detail on an ice sculpture). But sometimes people do request it. Like the one attached (which was not painted by me… it was painted by one of my painting idols… Danno… who is the lead painter for Bowen Designs). I casted this in acrylic from the original prints. It turned out really cool! Sculpted by Jason Smith of Overwatch fame (you can buy this figure on sideshow i think). Lol… i had to handmake those transparent antennae on the 2inch tall version… nothing can 3d print or cast those (.3mm in diameter).
[attach=178034]painted ant man.jpg[/attach]
Okay… before whoever took over Morpheus’s Account jumps on me here. I assume its not Will. Morpheus did try to help me print one version of these. I guess the irony here is that I wanted Morpheus to make some money and do part of the prints… but the resolution was kinda missing… so i had to redo them on our own machines. Just wanted people to get fast perfect prints and sent almost all my customers your contact info (also so i wouldn’t have to do prints anymore… cause that wasn’t my initial focus)… then I had to feel bad when the prints came out kinda icky, and apologize, and pay for it myself and toss them and redo them myself. What more do I owe you guys? You guys do some great work and are extremely professional about shipdates and timelines.
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This is Will over at Morpheus, At no time have a said the work from Ownage.com was sloppy or bad. I simply asked intitially what machines are you using and why is the turnaround time so long. I do not want ownage and Jay out of business. I get plenty of business without a thread on Zbrush Central. I do think that there are major differences between Ownage and Morpheus’s clients. Morpheus Caters to the client that want a high resolution output of a model that can be used for master patterns for Mold, working prototypes etc. Our turnaround times are typically 3 business days on a normal job. Having this much in a job, will not be a $200 flat rate or whatever Jay is charging.
On the flipside, Ownage’s clients might not care if they wait 2-3 weeks for their model. In that case I would say that if my clients wanted to wait 2-3 weeks for their model, i would lower my prices.
Now if someone wants to bash a paintjob that was done in 24 hours, I would like to see their capabilities of painting. Our prints of sculptures will be on Display at WonderCon and Comic-Con this year as they were last year. If you would like to stop by and see what we are capable of first hand, then stop by.
All I asked was a question, I am done with this silly arguing. Jay nice work keep it up. I have parts to print!!
(And by the way: I print Adam’s pieces and yes he is one damn good Modeler!)
Oh, and Jay, give me a call. Our EnvisionTEC can print those Antennas for you, it can get down to 15 microns.
I truncated your post, hope you don’t mind
Don’t worry about slighting McFarlane. That’s the reason I left, they weren’t allowing me to push the digital envelope of what the software was capable of doing. It’s ironic, because that was what I was originally hired to do…build a cutting edge digital department. It didn’t have anything to do with sticking to a sculpting style, but a perception that digital wasn’t capable of achieving amazing results that were indiscernible from traditionally sculpted pieces. As they say, “I shook the dust from my shoes” and left for greener pastures. My old “Sweet Mary Jane” piece was a quick “proof of concept” piece that I did on personal time in attempts to push that envelope. It fell on deaf ears.
The FOV numbers you gave are correct, best of my recollection. I believe that both Max and Maya have those as their defaults now…or somewhere around that. Those are the settings that they found copied photography the most, but not the human eye. Using those numbers will get you something more familiar, but try and zoom in too much and it’ll most likely go fish-eye on you. Good call, though…I couldn’t remember those numbers until you mentioned them. Just checked (gosh it’s been so long since I rendered in Maya) the Angle of View is 54.43…
as far as price ,quality and end result paint job goes …i have had the best experience with Ownage. also i got high quality casts from them. my clients have tried other companies but till now ownage quality is the best! Des rocks!
Thank you very much both of you, that was reeeaaaaly helpful.
I guys I made a survey for business and personal interests, Do you have any suggestions or questions that you feel are needed. The Survey is 10 questions and is for marketing and job networking.
Hi Medicinehorse,
I saw one of your other posts regarding rapid prototyping towards the end of monumental size pieces, is that correct? It looks like you may be interested in branching out, too.
I would add questions in there asking what tech is readily available (i.e. large scale foam mills…or any scale CNC mill for that fact, software, manpower, etc) as you want to make sure that you’re not contracting with someone who just farms the work out and gets a kickback for not having any real culpability or skin in the game.
I also wouldn’t pose questions regarding someone’s willingness to work on Native American subject matters, I would just state that up front. That way they don’t waste your time by getting to that question, convince themselves that they are interested in the subject matter, but really aren’t. The worst thing I have to deal with are people who only pretend to be into a subject matter to get a job, they almost always end up fouling up the project, missing deadlines, etc. Not to mention the dreaded arguments about not meeting expectations, deadlines, etc and still expecting full compensation, or beyond.
Perhaps it would help if you started up another thread, laying out what the full spectrum of products that you’re wanting to roll out, then we could better help direct your efforts and share our knowledge.
Either way, if you are planning on doing monumental sculpts, it’s a blast! One technique that has taken hold over the past several years is having a sculptor do the piece about 2-3 feet tall, have it 3d scanned in ultra high def, then having it cut out of high density foam on a CNC foam mill (think blocks of foam that are 8ft x 8ft! They then spray a coating of liquified chavant over it, where the artist then sharpens the detail. It’s all then molded for lost wax process and cast in bronze or whatever. Killer stuff!
Best of luck!
Proboyross,
Thank you for the response, I appreciate the insights, you have covered areas of consideration that are some things I haven’t thought of - the best of a good thoughtful person.
I will take your suggestions and make some improvements to my efforts, thank you.
Awesome, now I have a good idea of where I want to go to get things printed up when I am ready!
this is a really informative thread - thanks desmoda and poboyross for sharing your experiences! I’m working on a little project of mine I want to print soon and the tips are very useful
Any wip’s for Show more ???
300$ is not cheap
$300 IS cheap for the service offered here. Go look around at other places offering this type of service, and then come back and say that.
Yah… running 3d printing machines are a pain. If I could get the machines for free… then I’d charge like $100. But a typical objet machine will cost $120k. After the vendor financing and interest, paying about $150k USD over 2 years. So thats like $6250 a month just for the machine. Lucky to get out 20 models a month. So base cost… just to pay the lease on the machine… on those 20 models, not including material… you’re already looking at $312 + material. For a $300 model… I’m guessing material will run like $30-50. Plus labour, your salary (I don’t actually pay myself), rent… the price of 3d printing.
Hehe… thx everyone for getting my back lately. Just been SOOoooOoo busy. Opening factories in China. Buying more machines. Managing people~ The hardest part about running a business is the people part. Getting the right people doing the right things~
You can check out statueforum.com, do a lot of the digital prints over there~ but been meaning to update this thread for awhile. I’m gonna get back into the habit! Have a personal policy not to talk about prints until they’re released. These things are your babies~
But will make a habit of posting one new thing a week~
Here’s one a did for Sony awhile back~ Recently did a colored version for them. Hehe… its a sony exclusive… so you have to work for sony to actually get one. Katon Callaway is the zbrusher! I don’t paint all the pieces for ownage lately, but I did this one~ Thanks for the opportunity katonc! 
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[attach=199640]sm.jpg[/attach]
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Did they tell you what that character is from?
sorry :o
it just to mach for me
in few yers evry one here will have cheeper beter one at home
there was days USB 16MB cost over 200$
I’ve been reading people say that now for about 5 years now, and I’m sure 5 years FROM now I’ll be reading it again.
Too expensive for me as well, but that does not mean that for the price that value is outstanding.
Keep in mind, many companies are using this (and this vendor specifically) to produce masters for statues, and for toys as well.