One Punch Man - 3D Modelling for Printing - Blender 3

I break down the process of making One Punch Man specifically for 3D printing. I go through how much detail you need, how to pose the model and much more.

Download the file here

Chapters
0:00 start
0:53 - Base Mesh
1:28 - Remesh
2:00 - Basic shape sculpt
2:25 - Making the boots - box modelling
3:20 - Detailed sculpt
4:03 - Modelling hands
4:35 - sculpting clothing - glove top
4:56 - Face
5:42 - Belt - mask extract
6:11 - Belt Buckle
6:23 - Multiresolution modifier and keeping detail
8:18 - Posing
9:15 - fine detail
10:45 - joining the mesh for 3d printing
12:35 - Sponsors message
13:06 - The Cape - general clothing tips
15:17 - tips for thickness of models
3:34 - The Base
16:24 - Vertex painting
16:46 - Prepare for export
19:12 - Slicer Programme - Ultimaker Cura - print settings
19:21 - 3D Printer
19:44 - end results (needs a bit of sanding)

Thanks to Nvidia & PC Specialist for sponsoring this channel.

Want a detailed course of the workflow in this video then try out:

Human Male Base Model

I use a graphics tablet to paint with and my recommendations are written below:

[jevlin]

The multires modif trick with the shrinkwrap modifier to get back the details is golden. I never thought of that! Thank you so much for sharing it, that's a life saver.

[QuiniansBudgetCrafts]

Modeling for printing is all I do with blender. Couple things that stood out to me:
You CAN have fingers, but they work best if it's a chunky glove, or do like you did where you just kinda do a mitten that has finger impressions.
How you did the boots was perfect. Probably the best way to do clothes and such really. You can always merge or send the whole thing over to 3D Builder to merge it when you're done.
Your details are looking good in 3d land but for print, everything has to be a little extra. The printer will always shave of just a hair of what detail you see in blender. It'll also smooth bits over so where you have places like the back of the glove it helps to use the crease brush and push the spot where the glove meets the arm into the glove just a bit.
It also depends a lot on what size you're modeling. If you're doing desk top sized models like 6" or taller like this one you can get away with some pretty fine details, but you also have to be more careful because you can't fudge as much. If you're doing 28mm like for DnD you gotta decide which details matter most and make them larger than you think they should be.

Over all though this was a great video. I hope you do more!

[lowaimnobrain]

Oh and I'd like to thank Grant for his amazing videos of the past years. Around 3 years ago his introduction to blender got me into 3d modelling, the journey has been amazing and his content really got me started. I reccomend it to anyone who's interested. His paid courses that I've tried have all been worth going through too.
I feel like a shill now, but I'm just genuinely thankful.

Cheers Grant, hope you are enjoying your work.

[lucasbittencourt]

YES!! Thank you so much, Grant!
Please post more content of sculpting for 3D printing, this was amazing!

[kristianhoff]

Thank you Grant for making a video like this :)

I do have a few 3d printers, both fdm and resin. Just now getting properly into blender 3 after a long break and I plan on making miniatures and statues like this.

I was hoping maybe you could make a video sometime where you show how to split up the model and add keyholes for assembly?

Also I will suggest for you to get into resin printing if you want to print models like this and if you have the space for it since it will most likely get messy. With a resin printer you’re able to get all those details due to resin printers being able to print at 0.05 mm layer height. If you want to get into it, just make sure that you get a printer with a monochrome screen and not lcd. Elegoo and Anycubic are two brands that will get you far :)

[samsandoval]

Now get into cutting and keying an STL file. The boots, head, base, and cape could be separated and printed individually. I wonder if the creases and folds would show up better with a resin printer.

[miksdickinson]

Thank you, Grant! I've been curious about this subject for a while. It's nice to hear insight from a trusted source. Extremely helpful content as always! Cheers!

[Stephen-T-Clark]

Hey, Grant, I know this is an older vid, but I wanted to point out that you can in fact sculpt on a posed mesh while retaining symmetry. You just gotta go to the properties panel with the rig selected and go to the rig settings and click the big "Rest Position" button in the settings. It will return the rig to that initial symmetrical pose while keeping the pose stored. You can sculpt this out and when you are ready to see your results posed you just go back into the properties panel with the rig selected, go to rig settings and then click the big button that says "Pose Position". You can do this throughout the process to see how your sculpt is looking in pose and when you are ready to break symmetry you just keep the model in the pose position and sculpt on it as it is. You could even use shape keys to sculpt out asymmetric details and keep the base model symmetric for re-use in different poses. I hope that helps your or anyone else out in the future! Of course, all that goes away if you remesh or dyntopo, so bear that in mind, but this base looked solid enough to pose and immediately go into multires.

[FowaDeLuz]

Fantastic video! I've been designing printable hard surface models for years but needed to start doing some character sculpts as well, so this was perfect!

You mentioned that 3d printers don't like overlaps, and while that's true of single mesh objects, Blender really isn't fussy about exporting multiple meshes overlapping at all. You can easily export multiple overlapping meshes so long as their normals are all facing the same way, and the slicer software will treat it as one solid object. In fact, you can use a mesh with flipped normals inside of another mesh to create a cavity in your model when you slice it.

Thanks again for posting these, and keep up the great work!

[simoncodrington]

Fascinating video mate. Really liked this, it's great to show the process from base mesh all the way to completion.

I think choosing when to box model something VS sculpting is one of the trickier ones (especially later on when you do texture painting and want really nice sharp edges between colours)

[thearcanegearsmith]

Love the videos. I am just learning Blender, But I am heavily involved in the Resin 3D Printing space/Community and that is what I want to do. For Resin 3D printing, even for small 32mm scale models ( like for use with Dungeons and Dragons or other Tabletop RPG's like Warhammer or whatever) you need MUCH higher detail on Resin vs. FDM Printing. I run an Etsy store selling these prints. The resolution these printers can render are getting quite impressive. Most newer printers in the last 2 years can print between 50 - 25 Microns (lower the better). Details like Belt buckles, hair, and skin texturing (like dragons or lizard men for example) look amazing, and painting them brings out even the subtle details. I hope this was helpful. Thanks again for all the Videos and your hard work. :)

[pedroffline]

Can't thank you enough, that's exactly the type of workflow I was looking for, for this exactly reason.
I feel there's alot of contet out there focusing on animation but blender is also a free alternative for sculpting for 3d printing, so this kind of processes is much apreciated!

[TonyStark-ikem]

Thank you Grant, your tuts are constantly of such high quality, it's so much fun to follow along. About detail level for printing, there already is a big difference between FDM and SLA prints. The first 8K SLAs are popping up and development speed in the space is blazing so for many it may be better to go full detail. I guess, if you're as versatile and lightning fast as you it may be more efficient to exactly model for the actual printer you use.

[patsam]

I love this tutorial Grant! I'm new to 3D printing and love Blender, so this is fantastic. As always, thank you for sharing your knowledge!

[TheAndzhik]

Hi, Grant! I'd like to ask you to suggest a workflow or even a tutorial for the following: there is an MMD model (obviously not meant for 3D printing) in T-pose with the armature, and I need to turn it into a 3d printable stl.
I understand that I need 1) pose the model; 2) turn thin geometry to something printable; 3) emboss patterns on clothing based on the textures for easy painting.
... and now unclear steps: 4) remesh to truly merge geometry; 5) split the model into better printable and paintable parts.
More things to think about: let's say I want to prepare as much as possible (deal with thin geometry, embossing patterns) before posing so I reuse several steps for the model in different poses. how do you think the steps above can be rearranged?
Also, I have some issues with clothes, there is no physics so things look broken after posing.

btw, cool videos and your full-scale courses are even better. I like how you explain things. Thanks!

[tanvirhasan]

I am a simple man. I see Grant abbit's new video, I watch it & love it.

[hax-dev]

Awesome video, was wondering about this process!

[Nihilp]

thank you, wish to see more 3D printing videos of human figures maybe also with more detailed quality printers, this video was really helpful, even if i understend we are discovering much of the process on the go and after the actual printing. thank again for your effort in this topic, it was illuminating

[macewen]

There are hundreds of creators making 28 and 32 mm miniatures with fingers and very fine fiddly bits that print out perfectly well.

[lowaimnobrain]

The trick to removing supports from fragile parts like fingers, sticking out tongues etc, is simply to make sure the resin is WARM. 25c minimum, you'll notice insane improvements every degree higher you go. At 30c they should really be falling off by themselves. Also, smaller details can have lighter than typical "light" supports. 0.2 instead of 0.3mm for example. I recently printed a batch of 20 models all with tongues around 3mm long and less than 1mm thick and removed supports fine.

The other most important tip for 3d print specific sculpting. Avoid downward facing detail, favour upward facing detail. Don't let this rule override your artstyle, but if you can get the visual results you want, whilst avoiding downward detail, you'll need less supports. Less post processing any accidental support marks and so on.

Hope this helps someone.