Hallo,
The process of printing a coloured object in shapeways , the online printing service that allows your object to be beamed to the physical world using SLS ( powder of any material thinkable and laser ) allowing colourprints, has presented me with some difficulties that I hope some forum users may help me clarifying.
I am using Photogrammetry to obtain a textured object, that is a sculpture of two people on a couch in a nice theatre dress. I am very happy that the scan turned out well ( Using my livingroom as a studio ) despite it being only midres ( due to memory restrictions ) and that meaning the texture is also midres, because the program ( "photoscan", a nice application built in Russia ) projects the texture on the faces.
It is possible to import this sculpture in 3DCoat, I found out after some trouble ( the object only imports right when you select "voxels" although you should import it as surface to get the colours with it. )
The object is a shell full of holes because the backside is not scanned; my room is too small to go all around.
I import the shell using import with thickness. This is very limited because the thickness is added randomly and affects the delcately obtained features of the model, putting polygons inthe front , while ideally it would add them only in the back of the shell without affecting the defining surface.
I cannot find a way to add mass to the sculpture ( a prerequisite for printing, the shapeways machine won't accept very thin shells) preserving the skin of the complex surface.
Is there a possibility masking the front? It could be filling in my sculpture with "clay" without affecting the outside?
I am struggling with this problem for a long time so I would be thankful if anyone knows an answer to this problem ( which is probably easy if you know more than the basics of CGI like me ).