Can 3DCP or 3D-Coat cut per painted surface?

[TobyCWood]

The hardest part about most design apps is you don't know what you don't know.

I'd like to be able to paint an object and then separate the painted area from the non painted area or paint it different colors and chop it up per colors. All so I can multi-material print.

Meshmixer does this fairly poorly. Chroma does it for Palettes (also poorly) and there's a subscription app that will soon be released that can do it (pretty well)... but I would not be surprised if 3D-Coat can already do it, but I just don't know how.

Anybody???

[digman]

Yes but a slightly different method.

First, I do not 3D print but was curious about the process. I looked at a MeshMixer video on the subject.

Disclaimer: Since I do not 3D print others who do, need to say whether this will work of not...

There is no border select to help to smooth the border cut off between the objects. Sounds like a feature request.

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Fasted Method:

Sculpt room in surface mode.

Simply use the Freeze tool in the sculpt room to divide the object into separate objects.

Freeze the area you want to separate

HIde freeze (Freeze Menu)

Object-ify Hidden (Under the Geometry Menu) Separates and creates a new object on it's own layer.

Rinse and  Repeat the above till you got the objects you want.

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Second Method: Paint with Color:

Model needs to be in surface mode.

Go to paint room making sure sculpt room model is shown

Create how many paint layers you need.

Paint the object with color divided by paint  layers.  Only paint, no depth or gloss.

Next you are going to use the Freeze painted pixels method. Look at the freeze menu in Paint room.

Hide all painted layers except the one you are going to freeze.

Freeze the painted layer.

Return to sculpt room

Under the Freeze menu hide the freeze.

Under the Geometry Menu

Object-ify Hidden. This will create a new object on a sculpt layer as stated above

Rinse and repeat till all painted areas are split into separate objects.  

Now, like I say there is no border select as in Meshmixer.  Might be a manual way to even the cut off between objects but not have tested for that yet.

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There might be a few other ways but that is my testing so far per your request... 

There might be other things you need to complete setting up for printing but this gives you a start and possible feature request.

There is a close hole feature, a thicken feature etc etc already in 3DC if needed and of course the other 3DC printing features.

EDIT: You can use the spline tools to fill large areas then finish up by brushing. Generally 3DC has more tools to cut by paint but lacks the select border feature to even out the transition between the model cuts. Maybe manually but I have not tried yet.

 

 

Edited October 8, 2020 by digman
More info

[digman]

The below process is for dividing up one object into separate objects for multiple material color 3D Printing.

As I thought about the process in 3DC for multiple material color 3D Printing, I came up with a method that gives a very fine color transition between the materials for the separate objects. 

This is shown in the picture and they are  two separate objects... 

It does require some extra steps but the end result is worth the time I believe. 

Steps but not a tutorial.

Create a retopo object. Autopo will work for more simple objects as the parrot.  Once the retopo object is created it can be tweaked where it is needed.

Use the UV path tool to separate the objects, Parrot and Stand following the curvature of the objects.

Put the parrot polygons on their own Retopo group layer and it's own uv set .

Do the same for the stand. 

Bake to the Paint room for Micro_Vertex painting. A displacement map is created.  4k texture or above to capture the details of the object / objects.

Paint room.:

File Menu:

Export a high Polygon object. In this case two objects will be exported in the obj file. The displacement details are created with real polygons, not a displacement map.

Shown in 2th picture is the export setting under the file menu.

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New 3DC scene.

Import the obj file with the two models into surface mode.

Vertex painting in the paint room for a color material example.

Fill each object with a separate color. 

You get a very clean color transition between the objects. No jaggies...