Sarah's Jenner

[valcrow 145]

Hey Ultimakers,

So I made a Mechwarrior atlas on here somewhere that I made a few months back. (still on the front of this page! )

But since then I was asked by NGNG to make a special one, Sarah's Jenner. It's called Sarah's Jenner because it was created specifically for 5 year old fan Sarah who played MWO with her father lost the battle to cancer. MWO decided to hold a charity event in her honor by collecting a 10 dollar donation for the canadian cancer society for a unique Jenner to use in the game. The response was overwhelming, getting 10x the estimated donations from the community.

So, we made a physical one, and shipped it out to her father last week. And one to the game devs. so without risk of ruining the surprise... pics to follow!

Top one is the virtual game one, bottom one is replaced with the real physical one.

Hand painted.

for scale.

You can see some of the print lines here. But they're small. Hearts are ~1mm.

I made 3 of them. 1 was a prototype. 2 were shipped off.

Turntable of the Jenner.. I also printed the turntable. and wound it by hand.

You can check out more pics & full story here:

http://www.redicubricks.com/sarahs-jenner/

As for printing stats:

I printed on the ultimaker 1, All parts at 0.12 mm layer height except for the head, which was at 0.08mm.

-Required no supports to be printed

-no unwanted seams (no halved parts to glue together)

-39 parts + pins

-You could snap the whole thing together and it would hold by friction. Just need a few drops of super glue after painting to solidify everything.

-Articulating joints, thighs are balljoints

-roughly 20 hours of print time per Jenner

-about 100 grams

-150mm tall

-Optimized for surface quality, pretty much all of the external exposed surfaces are on the X and Z axis on the print bed for a nicer finish. Almost all of the top and bottom surfaces are hidden (because top surfaces aren't that nice...)

Unlike the atlas, I haven't heard ANY complaints about print quality... Some comments seem to assume it's printed on a professional level printer. So kudos to you ultimaker guys, and all the print quality advice from the people here! Cura made such a huge difference from this one vs. the atlas.

 

[owen 19]

Awesome Valcrow. Well done mate.

 

[cyclone 0]

I'm surprised you aren't interested in taking more donations for the printable files. I'd pay.

 

[ji11 3]

I was wondering how you generated the cad files.

Am i right, that you "only" exported the files out of the video game? Or did you do this design yourself (or even for the videogame)?

Sorry to be so rude... i am of course impressed about the work you did(especially on the color!!! Aswell as on the joints!!)

I myself already managed to print some files out of Half-Life 2 due to reading the graphic-card memory. it would be interesting to see what you did!

Anyway what you did, what where u using?

Keep it up!

Ji

[valcrow 145]

It's not directly sanctioned by the game company, though I've done stuff in the past where they didn't mind so I'll keep doing it.

 

I was wondering how you generated the cad files.

Am i right, that you "only" exported the files out of the video game? Or did you do this design yourself (or even for the videogame)?

Sorry to be so rude... i am of course impressed about the work you did(especially on the color!!! Aswell as on the joints!!)

I myself already managed to print some files out of Half-Life 2 due to reading the graphic-card memory. it would be interesting to see what you did!

Anyway what you did, what where u using?

 

It's kind of half half, I started with the game assets, but if you've used game assets before, they're usually fairly poly efficient, which also means they're terrible for printing since they have holes everywhere. They're also not usually mechanically thought out because clipping is fine and dandy in a game. not so much in real life.

So with that, a lot of the 3D process is to clean everything up, fill all the holes and combine what needs to be combined. Then I have to break everything down into pieces that mechanically work together, design the joints and how it comes together. After that, a lot of the model's detail comes from the normal map.. which doesn't translate into printing details so I modeled a lot of the normal map details into the mesh itself.

Once that's complete, there's headscratching process of figuring out how to print the parts with the greatest accuracy/detail without supports. This is kinda what adds a lot of parts onto the build.. some parts I split up just so I wouldn't need to print with supports, or so the top surface is hidden since it's usually not that nice.

Once all that's said and done I print a prototype. Fix up all of the tolerances and then print the actual one. I've had pretty good luck so far I didn't have to really re-print much. The prototype looks almost as good as the real one. (the one without antanas)

It is a very model dependent process. HL models are probably a lot lower poly than mechs and have less moving joints. Though I imagine you would have to go through a similar process.

The mech design itself is from the game, from the exterior, it is like 99% accurate. mesh wise, very different.

 

[valcrow 145]

Here's what my 3D looks like by the time I finish cleanup, breaking everything apart, designing joints. etc.

 

[valcrow 145]

I've posted up the making of on my site now TONS of pictures for those interested in the process.

http://www.redicubricks.com/sarahs-jenner-the-making-of/

 

[illuminarti 18]

This is really cool! Great job!!

 

[alluvian 0]

I am new to 3d modeling, and have some 3d models I really want to break apart, add connections, etc...

Is there any free tools that are good at this sort of thing?

Right now I am looking at blender and meshmixer. I like 123d Design for making new mechanical parts, but it does not see to do that well for taking existing models apart.

Also, maybe I have not searched for the right things yet, but it seems really hard to handle assemblies in blender. I feel like there should be a way to make custom snap-to points so I can take objects apart, fiddle, and then snap them perfectly back together. I can break them apart in blender, but then fitting them perfectly back together as separate objects seems super fiddly, especially when I want to design linkages for them, etc... Maybe it is just the wrong tool for the job.

 

[valcrow 145]

If you're talking about taking apart existing game models, your best bet is probably blender as it's more in line with artist 3d software rather than Cad, the cad group of software generally aren't as compatible with poly objects used in games.

Although I don't use blender myself, I'm almost certain it is capable of separating models, adding joints, and modeling linkages as you described. Most of that just requires the basic functions of any 3D package.

These programs are so vast and complex in general that I often take the approach that anything is possible, you just need to find out where the best tool is within the program to accomplish any given task.

The 3D breakdown pictured above should give you a good indication of how I decided to break pieces apart and connect them with joints. The red objects are subtracting objects and the blue objects are additive.