Still on my (seemingly endless) quest to make every fun Guardians prop, there are a few that I've held off on because I wasn't sure how to do them with my current work methods. Most specifically, props that have 'organic' shapes and features- that is to say, things that look sculpted.
Making accurate replicas of Drax's knifes would be a challenge, because the shapes are (in practical terms) impossible to replicate perfectly because of their complexity, without casting an original. Still, I was determined to try.
I started tinkering around for a bit and consulted with some world-class 3D sculpting experts at work. An early test I did was using photogrammetry (photos used to automatically generate a 3d model), but it didn't work. Eventually, I fell back on using a variant of an old technique used in video games to add details in models. (I actually started testing it on Gamora's knife from Infinity War, which I'll be getting back to soon.)
Once I had the base structure of the knife modeled, I was able to extract data from images of the actual props and transfer them to the model, preserving the details very closely. Each part of the knife has to be done separately for the method to work.
Now, there were still a lot of things that had to be painstakingly tweaked 'by hand' but after a couple weeks of tweaking and changing, I finally have a print of the grip and hand-guard, with many details preserved from the originals. And the high resolution needed meant that the computer slowed to Molasses-Speed™ and would need to calculate each little change for sometimes minutes at a time.
Overall, I'm very pleased with how it's progressing so far. The next thing is to tackle the blade. Since resin is fragile when thin, I'm considering maybe printing it in flexible material, or printing it in hard resin and then casting in rubber. Casting would incur a major cost for only two blades (unless I decide to do many) but printing directly in flexible material runs the risk of warping and creates an issue of how to assemble the parts. (I'll be investing in a laser-cure setup soon, which may take care of the latter problem.)
I'll keep updating here as I go along if there's interest in seeing more.
Making accurate replicas of Drax's knifes would be a challenge, because the shapes are (in practical terms) impossible to replicate perfectly because of their complexity, without casting an original. Still, I was determined to try.
I started tinkering around for a bit and consulted with some world-class 3D sculpting experts at work. An early test I did was using photogrammetry (photos used to automatically generate a 3d model), but it didn't work. Eventually, I fell back on using a variant of an old technique used in video games to add details in models. (I actually started testing it on Gamora's knife from Infinity War, which I'll be getting back to soon.)
Once I had the base structure of the knife modeled, I was able to extract data from images of the actual props and transfer them to the model, preserving the details very closely. Each part of the knife has to be done separately for the method to work.
Now, there were still a lot of things that had to be painstakingly tweaked 'by hand' but after a couple weeks of tweaking and changing, I finally have a print of the grip and hand-guard, with many details preserved from the originals. And the high resolution needed meant that the computer slowed to Molasses-Speed™ and would need to calculate each little change for sometimes minutes at a time.
Overall, I'm very pleased with how it's progressing so far. The next thing is to tackle the blade. Since resin is fragile when thin, I'm considering maybe printing it in flexible material, or printing it in hard resin and then casting in rubber. Casting would incur a major cost for only two blades (unless I decide to do many) but printing directly in flexible material runs the risk of warping and creates an issue of how to assemble the parts. (I'll be investing in a laser-cure setup soon, which may take care of the latter problem.)
I'll keep updating here as I go along if there's interest in seeing more.
