Personal Face 3D Model, then 3D Print the person

martynball

Hey, I have had a thought for a while now, which was I have wanted to speed up and improve my character modelling and facial modelling. I also want to get hold of a good 3D Printer. 

So, for example I could make a 3D model of a person, facial and body, or even two people, for example a couple and then pose them, and then 3D print this. 

Is this something which I could make good money out of? I know there are services like this at the moment however it's all using automated scripts which use some photographs and to be honest I think a hand made model is more accurate and a generally better. 

Mr.Moose

I would just invest in a 3D scanner if you really wanted to make the "better than picture" versions. The SENSE isn't bad for its price. (3D scanners are expensive atm) Would save a lot of time instead of modeling. (Though modeling could be fine if its more hobby-oriented)

The other issue I would see is that the bed for an affordable 3D printer is quite small. So depending on the size you'd have to split them up into a ton of parts then epoxy them all together.

There's also the part where humans are very detailed, so if you're using a filament based printer than needs a lot of supports and has a higher chance of failing the more parts you have. IE if you did one person it might take a few tries before it prints, two people will take even more. 

When I printed a female on the Printbot 10x10x10 it took..ooh...about 17 hours? And I didn't even fill the bed entirely. It also failed twice mid way, before I made it work.

If you look at resin printers you'll have the same issue, Especially since most resin printers aren't as affordable and not as large even at the higher prices. You'll have issues with placing supports where you need them and then having a support fail which causes everything to stick to the buildplate or some other shenanigans.

All in all, doing custom prints like that can make some $$$ but I wouldn't say "good money" maybe as a side hobby. It'd be hard to compete with big businesses who are doing this using "industry" level printers (in the sense that they're not the household Filament based. Some use big ass ovens and shiet man its crazy)

Source - I work at a 3D printing lab

PS : I didn't mention makerbots because I have never had as much success with makerbots as I have with printrbots. Printrbots have been more user friendly when errors or thing you have to fix occur (Especially with breaking parts since its open source etc) Makerbot is just a basic printer dressed up all nice. Printrbot is just basic and shows it :P

2am here ignore any rambling that may have occured

martynball

Thanks for that information, I was only thinking for a bit of extra cash and maybe a hobby. I don't really like 3D Scanners, it's cheating  ! 

I do also want to do it to improve my modelling skills and speed as well. 

Thanks, I will take everything you said into account, and I do want a 3D printer so that helps in my choice of what to buy! 

Neox

cheating or not, i think the 3dscan/print services are already way too expensive. how do you want to compete with that on a price level? A scanned and printed figure costs around 200-300 USD, which I think is kinda the weirdest most expensive selfie possible, who would spend their money on that? and thats a small figure the prices ramp up like crazy. So how much time do you think you will spend on one of these and how much can you actually spend to make these 300 dollar profitable?