Jan 29, 2015 | By Simon
When it comes to some of the best applications for 3D printing, leave it up to those who are responsible for creating creature and robot concept designs that tell stories of fantasy and science fiction-based worlds...such as those that exist in video games.
To help celebrate the recently-released Sci-Fi video game Grey Goo, artists at Gentle Giant Studios (the entertainment division of 3D Systems) worked with Grey Goo game developers Grey Box to create one of the games characters; a seven-foot tall robot by the name of Singleton.
The robot, who was created by artist Stephen Lambert of Weta Workshop was designed as a dichotomous killer robot sworn to the vow “That Others May Live”. To highlight these character traits, Lambert designed the robot to keep its heart and mind visibly empty... and now Singleton doesn’t just exist in the two-dimensional game... it also exists in the real world thanks to 3D printing.
To bring Singleton to life into the real world, the artists at Gentle Giant Studios transformed the digital reference model used in the video game into a printable 3D model that featured over 70 individual pieces that were hand-crafted and hand-assembled over a three-month process. Since the detail of the digital version of Singleton was based off of texture maps, the Gentle Giant artists had to painstakingly go back and sculpt these details so that they were reflected in the full-sized robot. To do this, the artists retopologized all of Singleton’s surfaces and re-engineered the assemblies so that he could support himself in the real world. Additionally, smaller statuettes were made as collectible figures for diehard Grey Goo fans.
While all of the models were printed in SLA, the life-size model was printed on the larger ProX 800 3D printer while the quarter-scale versions were printed on the smaller ProJet 6000 3D printer. The printers were chosen both for the size of their build trays as well as the high-quality output and accuracy to make Singleton as true-to-life as physically possible. In a fun twist, the grey material used by the printers closely matched the “grey goo” seen within the game... which is also how the Sci-Fi adventure earned its name.
Perhaps the most complicated part of the process though was assembling all of the parts into a final and finished-quality robot. To do this, the artists printed a 1:1 graphic that charted each of the parts as they finished coming off of the printer. After finishing the surfaces of each of the parts, the parts were then molded in fiberglass, reinforced with steel structuring and hand-painted by the artists at Gentle Giant Studios.
Could this be the start of creating on-demand high-quality 3D prints based off of video game characters?
Posted in 3D Printing Applications
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