Wow, still active? How to extract models for 3d printing

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Wow, still active? How to extract models for 3d printing

Admiral Alistair
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Post by Admiral Alistair » Mon Dec 14, 2020 12:42 am

Hi All, its great to see that this community is still alive and active after all of these years. It's amazing the amount of progress since the last time that I visited this site!

I recently got a 3d printer and was looking to start doing a few of my Star Wars vessels (mostly the fighters) and am not thrilled with the quality or accuracy of what is available elsewhere so I was figuring maybe I'd check in here. I have long since lost all memory of the editing tools, I see the OPT files, what 3d software is capable of reading those?
Admiral Alistair

Admiral Alistair
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Post by Admiral Alistair » Mon Dec 14, 2020 1:05 am

I should have looked a bit further on the site :) XWA OPT Editor to the rescue!
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Fliperr
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Post by Fliperr » Mon Dec 14, 2020 8:47 am

3D printers use .OBJ files, so you will need a program that transforms the .OPT files into .OBJ files for use with the 3D printer.
Surely in the download section there are some of the hooks that can do this function.
Good luck with your 3D projects and upload photos of the models you print so that we can enjoy those photos. :D :D
Cheers

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capitanguinea
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Post by capitanguinea » Wed Dec 16, 2020 7:31 pm

*follow with intense interest

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Driftwood
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Post by Driftwood » Thu Dec 17, 2020 12:41 am

I dont think most of the models are suitable to 3d printing since very few details are modeled onto the hulls past a certain point, nor are they configured or optimized for printing.

Assuming you don't already know the ins and outs of printing stuff.

That said Mel_Minatures on shapeways has most of the xwa ship designs printable and imo reasonably accurate and highly detailed and I have bought from him before, but I dunno if he shares the models directly or solely goes through the shapeways storefront.

jmarso
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Post by jmarso » Thu Dec 17, 2020 12:49 am

Mirroring what others have said, I'm not sure most OPT files have the poly count to translate to good models for 3D printing. Working the other way, downloading 3D print models to convert to OPTs, I've had to knock the vertex counts down considerably in order to make them useable in-game as OPTs. You can always try it, though! Some of them may well turn out good.

Admiral Alistair
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Post by Admiral Alistair » Sat Dec 19, 2020 5:04 am

I'm fairly well versed with 3d printing, but I'm doing these on my new Resin Printer which requires me to learn an entirely new suite of tools. With my filament printer what you see is what you get when printing though the resolution isn't high enough (in my opinion) for artsy stuff with fine details. That said I did make my first attempt at printing these using automatic settings. I'm not too concerned about how fine the details are on the models because I don't intend to print them very large at all.
2020-12-18.jpg
The X-Wing turned out fine, though the diameter of the weapons is such that I fully expect they will break over time or the first time somebody holds it other than me.

The TIE Defender model I need to inspect because I suspect there was a hollow shell for the cockpit that was too fine a detail to print. Other than that it turned out great.

The Missile boat clearly had a failure when slicing into the individual layers. You can see on the one missile tube its not the right length and has a strange surface coming out of it. Upon inspecting the raw file some odd platform got sliced and placed there. It'll require further investigation and this was the main ship I was unhappy with for the other models that are available elsewhere so hopefully I figure out where this is occurring as it isn't visible until I perform the slicing functionality and inspect layer by layer.

EDIT: To be clear when I say "raw file" I mean the converted file that the printer itself is using and not the model itself.
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Vince T
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Post by Vince T » Sat Dec 19, 2020 9:36 am

Still those look great, I've always entertained the thought of 3d-printing some of my own designs someday.

What printer model are you using?
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Admiral Alistair
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Post by Admiral Alistair » Sat Dec 19, 2020 1:19 pm

For these I was using my new Creality 3D LD-002H.
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