At the end, it's a 500 mm tall figurine (19,7"), fully sculpted in ZBrush and printed with a Form2 and I invite you to discover its making of. Here is the result, before the painting job. Note: the dress color is just a quick Photoshop paint-over.
I had quite some stress with this figurine, especially for the 3D printing preparation because of its size, especially the dress which is massive. Because I decided to print it at a 1:5 scale, I had to find ways to make it fit the Form 2 build volume.
But before going into details, here is, a making of video. I added several comments through the subtitle system. Subtitles are available in English, you may have to manually select the language:
Original Illustration
This is the original illustration of this Demon Queen, by Nick Gan. Feel free to follow his work on ArtStation !
About the creation process
This is some extra information about how I created this figurine. I didn't cover everything in the video... or I did it too quickly.
Sculpt
As you may have seen it, the sculpting part is nothing fancy: a foundation in ZSpheres, quickly sculpted in DynaMesh before switching to subdivision surfaces. Then I do this back and forth between DynaMesh and Subdivision surfaces several times. For me this workflow is crucial as it allows me to easily change the global proportions at any time (SubD) while being able to add parts without a lot of constraints (DynaMesh). I really love working in subdivision surfaces while now I may replace a big part of the DynaMesh process with Sculptris Pro.
On the image above, you can see this evolution from the ZSphere Adaptive Skin to a quick sculpt in DynaMesh before the retopology with ZRemesher plus extra subdivision levels. If you watch closely in the video, you will notice that I worked on the head and the body separately and later I merged both parts through DynaMesh and then, redoing again this retopology + subdivision levels + reprojection of details.
About the dress creation, I originally wanted to create it with the Topology brush, but I finally did it with the classic ZSphere manual retopology tool. It is obviously an old tool, but it gives me the full control on the topology itself and its manipulation while Topology brush can be faster, it doesn’t allow you to easily edit your polygons while using the tool. Once the dress has been created, I edited the topology with the ZModeler brush to refine the flow of polygons and adding some edge loops...
Details creation is done in a very standard way, by using mainly these brushes: DamStandard, TSuperSpline (a brush close to DamStandard) and few brushes from Orb and Sakaki Kaoru. I tried to create quite contrasted details to compensate what will be lost during the 3D printing process and paint layers, but I have to say that it’s still not enough. Clearly, a 3D model for 3D printing is not the same as a model for illustration or games.
Printing pre-process
These steps are very technical, however they must be done. This is something that I appreciate as it requires a lot of thinking, but it brings also quite some stress: “Will the final assembly will work perfectly as expected?”. Because it’s only when your model has been printed that you can see if everything is working, that your assemblies are matching perfectly. And when you consider the time it takes, the associated costs (resins, time, etc.), you don’t want to screw up things.
Most of the time, I’m doing quick draft with FDM printers, but mostly to check the shape and proportions. When it comes to checking the keys and parts of your models to assembly, resin-based printers are the only way.
Above, the slicing plans. I’m trying to anticipate as soon as possible during my creation stage where I’ll separate my model parts, how I will deal with the keys/connectors. This model is a good candidate as I can hide parts quite easily, thanks to these separations on the original illustration. However, because it’s a massive model, some parts like the dress splits can’t be hidden or even the main part of the body is visible, then I’m trying to avoid extra splits. More splits mean more putty, sanding and stuff like that, making the post work more time consuming… and risky!
ZBrush Boolean operations and LiveBoolean mode are for me a game changer for such work as I can check in real time the keys, I can visually slice the model to check the overhangs, controlling the thickness of parts and more.
On the screenshot above, you can notice two things; the internal model which will be subtracted to create the thickness, by Boolean operations and the cylinders to create vents. The thickness is a must have as it will save quite some resin on such model. The thickness is approximately 3 mm, which is quite thick, but I prefer securing the model quality and strength tan saving few milliliters of resin.
The cylinders, when subtracted will create a large array of holes everywhere on the sliced areas. The goal is to let the resin flowing during the printing process and avoiding the creation of suction cups because of the hollowed model. This effect can make your part falling, supports breaking or having bubbles appearing, then you must be careful.
The dress has been a challenging part, because it’s way beyond the printer volume size. It’s 38cm/15” tall and 29cm/11.4” for the width. Form 2 build is 14.5x14.5x17.5cm (5.7x5.7x6.9“). Then I had to use several cutting plans with more fun with putty and sanding during the 3D printing post process stage.
As you can see on the right side of the image, on top of the part, some half sphere blue holes. I created these little keys to make the assembly easier. I also put numbers on the back to be sure that I’ll do the assembly without problems of each parts.
For the "horns", I did roughly the same process with cutting plans and cylinders to do the openings. Of course, I added these sliced pyramidal shapes to do the keys. Obviously, I could have print this model in less parts, but having more separate items gives more flexibility and freedom when it comes to support management. Like that you can try to orient the model in away to have your supports in areas which are easy to sand.
And here is the final model with all the separate pieces. Only 24 parts which is not that much compared to other figurines I already did, but most of these aprts are quite massive. After doing the print and a test assembly, I noticed that the base was totally useless as the dress was totally able to support the whole weight of the figurine.
3D Printing
Like the 3D printing pre-process (keys, splits, etc...), this part of the creation is quite time consuming. I printed some draft parts with the Slash+ from Uniz and I printed the final model with the Form2 from Formlabs. After more than a year using it, I still love this printer which a 100% print success.
Some statistics about this Demon Queen figurine:
- 0.76L of Gray Resin V4.
- 5 days, 18 hours and 41 minutes of printing (not including pre-heat, refilling time).
- 27,256 layers printed in 25 and 50 microns.
- 7L of IPA alcohol.
- A LT resin tank (still in good shape)
- A full roll of paper towel, tons of disposable gloves, few hours of UV curing, few hours of wife being upset with stuff everywhere, etc...
Above, all the prints I did, in Preform. As you can see, I tend to totally fill the resin platform to its limit, like the various dress parts. I hope the next Form"x" printer will be able to print bigger and faster!
Here is perfect example of support placement with quite a lot of them on the split area. Because of that, I will be able to sand these supports spots without being worry of preserving details.
However it is difficult or impossible to restrict supports placement to only connections areas, especially with large size models like the main body part. I tried to orient the model to have these supports located on the back of the model as this part is less visible in case of something would go wrong.
As you may have noticed, this model barely fit the printer build volume as you can see on the right part of the screenshot above: the blue rectangle is the limit of the model to print (its bounding box) and the gray one is the 3D printer maximum volume size. The margin between both is only 0.5mm...
3D printing post-process
I really appreciate this part of the creation while it's not where I'm very good at. It's where you switch from digital to the "real world", with something in your hands, that you can see with your eyes, not on a flat screen. Well, "real 3D"!
Here are the model straight out of the printer are very clean and mostly without visible layers. Less visible layers, less sanding!
This is now the stage which stress me a lot: the first assembly. This where you will see if you did a good job or not when creating the split/keys of your model... then starting to breath when you see that everything work fine... The Coca can is only here for size reference, when compared to the assembly.
The Form2 that you can see in the background was printing the Horns.
As you can see, this stage of the process is not very "clean", with putty, sanding sponges, resin dust, water, towel paper, remaining supports, etc. Well, a big mess.
Above the assemblied horns, with liquid putty on the connection of each parts. A lot of sanding, putty, sanding, putty stage.
I invite your looking at the top of the foot, on the left of the photo and you will notice this green paint. In fact, it a masking paint, kinda elastic material that you put on your model to protect it, from painting let's say. Then when paint is dray, you remove it and you will find your original resin unpainted, ready to receive the glue.
Photos
Please find below some photos of the finished prints with just a primer applied on it. If I had to do it again… I would do it again!
My current wallpaper:
