The process of printing
The actual process of ordering a printed version of my statue was really simple. I had to set up an account on Shapeways, of course, but everything else was point-and-click. One nice feature is that you can rescale your object right from the print dialog. That way, if you are on a limited budget and need to make your item smaller, or if you just never bothered to accurately dimension it in the first place, you can rescale it as needed. To keep it within my $100, I shrunk the Buddha down until it was about three inches tall.
As long as you’re happy with the model once you’ve printed it, you’re all set. However, one drawback of using Photoshop to work on 3D models is that they can no longer be exported back to their native format. You can save them as PSD or TIFF files from Photoshop, and keep all the 3D information, but not save them out in a model format like STL.
Using a 3D printer as a copying machine
Once I had successfully printed my Buddha, I decided to push the envelope by seeing how well I could build a model of my printed Buddha that would allow me to copy it — essentially using my computer plus a 3D printing service as an object copying machine. Obviously, since my Buddha was a model I could just reprint it, but I wanted to see if I could use 123D Catch from Autodesk to create a 3D model of it as a demonstration of making copies of small — or perhaps scale models of large — objects. Catch allows you to take photographs of an object from all different angles and then merge them into a 3D model. The application is still pretty glitchy, but with perseverance I was able to upload images and generate a model.
My first attempt to simply walk around the Buddha clicking away yielded terrible results. The stitching was off and the model had parts in the wrong places. It’s pretty clear that you couldn’t use this technology to snap away at a statue in a museum, for example, and build your own scale model of it. When I repeated the process, but this time placing my camera in a fixed position and slowly rotating the statue — all against a solid color background — the results were much better. Everything except the top of its head looked great. However, when I tried to fill in the missing pieces with additional shots from above, Catch got very confused. Using a camera and 3D printer to copy objects is clearly still in its infancy, at least with consumer products.
The bottom line
If you’re already a Photoshop user, and partake in 3D printing, the new capabilities in Photoshop CC will make your life a lot easier. In particular, if you’re using a personal printer that requires you to add your own supports to your models before printing, that one feature alone will save you time and the expense of failed prints. If you’re lucky enough to have access to a color 3D printer, then Photoshop adds even more value, as you can use its extensive painting tools on your items. However, since you can’t actually do full 3D modeling in Photoshop, unless you only download models from the web, it won’t replace a 3D modeling tool like Blender, SketchUp or Solidworks in your workflow.
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