Shapeways? Miniature printing

[Furyofaseraph]

Has anyone had any experience with Shapeways?
For those who don't know its a 3d Print on demand service.
I'm thinking about modeling a few starship designs and having them printed up.

The only problem is I've never made unified or manifold models, which is required for this kind of thing. Not to mention detail work >.<

[Villain]

unified/manifold meshes are easy, just use a boolean tool and double-check verts.

I've actually been looking for something like this, as I want to immortalize a character I play in a game. (Took a lot of work to duplicate!) Looks pretty cheap too. I'll definitely be looking into it, but what exactly were you curious about?

[Furyofaseraph]

I'm curious about quality, really. How much detail does it retain? How easily can it be painted? etc.

I'm building a connie as we speak. I'm even going to model in windows and hatches (not gridlines though). If push comes to shove I'll just submit a model and see how much detail gets retained in the printing process.

[Villain]

http://www.shapeways.com/shops/raycreation http://www.shapeways.com/model/91420/dd_ar_kopbak.html Here's some decent examples. Looks to retain a lot of quality. That material also seems the cheapest, and seems quite commonly used. As for painting, I don't see why it wouldn't do so well. Most of these models are made by their creators with the intent of giving them proper colour. (Especially the Model Train shells, my grandfather used to have a few with a very similar bare look.

I'd wager no harder than the plastic 40k kits.

[Furyofaseraph]

Here's the high-res connie model that I will be using to submit to shapeways - I'm going to submit it as a test to see how much detail it retains in the model making process.

This is actually my first attempt at a detailed model >.<.

[ACES_HIGH]

ooh, how big is it going to be?

[Furyofaseraph]

Probably about 2 inches long.

[Villain]

Can't wait to hear how you go with it!

[angryandorian]

On a forum I frequent, a member did make a physical model of his starship with shapeways, and it came out rather nice.

http://flare.solareclipse.net/ultimatebb.php/topic/7/1749.html

[limey BSc.]

If you wanted to make it bigger, you could always get it printed in sections instead of as a whole.

[Furyofaseraph]

My issues with scale isn't so much that, but rather if I make a game scale Connie and a game scale Sovereign, the connie might come out to be 7-ish cm where as the sov would be 16cm.