inkblot
Active Member
Some months ago, I decided I'd model my own version of the Diablo 3 Royal Ring of Grandeur, which is used by most (all?) of the classes in the game to reduce the number of set items needed to use specific set-specific effects. Since I've had a number of things printed recently via Shapeways using plastic, but only recently got my hands on their basic materials samples, which made me really want to try my hand at metal.
I started by modelling the basic shapes in Blender, then transferred certain parts (the band and the ring top) to ZBrush in order to take advantage of the sculpting and symmetry tools it offers. Everything got assembled and re-sized back in Blender, then sent to Shapeways for processing.
It took easily a dozen tries to get what I'd modelled accepted by the automated service, but the first design came back with errors after manual check and the job was cancelled due to details being too thin.
A couple weeks later, I decided to have a closer look at the reference material and re-worked the top of the ring quite a bit; I removed the swirls around the 'stone' entirely, replacing them with straight bands that are more accurate to the amulet that matches the ring (the ring reference is really tiny) and redid the hexagonal faces so the detail wasn't so thin and abrupt. Six pieces were also added to border each hexagonal face.
The model passed inspection and was sent out some time last week - and I just got it today.
It's a bit rougher than I expected; I think in the future I would at least want to have it polished a bit so the curvy bits show up better and the piece as a whole doesn't look so busy(It would be marginally more expensive to print that way too). Alternatively, I'd be up for trying it with their detail plastic, although it would be considerably more brittle.
With that said, I did end up adding a wash of dirty airbrush acrylic that I keep around for aging things, so here it is with some darker paint dried in the recessed areas:
I started by modelling the basic shapes in Blender, then transferred certain parts (the band and the ring top) to ZBrush in order to take advantage of the sculpting and symmetry tools it offers. Everything got assembled and re-sized back in Blender, then sent to Shapeways for processing.
It took easily a dozen tries to get what I'd modelled accepted by the automated service, but the first design came back with errors after manual check and the job was cancelled due to details being too thin.
A couple weeks later, I decided to have a closer look at the reference material and re-worked the top of the ring quite a bit; I removed the swirls around the 'stone' entirely, replacing them with straight bands that are more accurate to the amulet that matches the ring (the ring reference is really tiny) and redid the hexagonal faces so the detail wasn't so thin and abrupt. Six pieces were also added to border each hexagonal face.
The model passed inspection and was sent out some time last week - and I just got it today.
It's a bit rougher than I expected; I think in the future I would at least want to have it polished a bit so the curvy bits show up better and the piece as a whole doesn't look so busy(It would be marginally more expensive to print that way too). Alternatively, I'd be up for trying it with their detail plastic, although it would be considerably more brittle.
With that said, I did end up adding a wash of dirty airbrush acrylic that I keep around for aging things, so here it is with some darker paint dried in the recessed areas:
