Demonstration of Adobe Photoshop 3D printing
Mike Scrutton shows us how it is done.
At the start of this year we, as members of the press, received a parcel from Stratasys inside were swatches and examples of the Stratasys new Objet500 Connex3 as impressive as they were it has taken until the penultimate month for that potential to be realised.
That potential was brought to our attention on the Stratasys stand at EuroMold by Mike Scrutton of Adobe. Via a live demonstration of a preview version of an upcoming Photoshop CC Mike was able to show just how the flagship software package is making design for full colour 3D printing easy.
Previously, as you may have seen from examples of prints the Stratays system was only able to select shells, of which a specific colour is to be selected and although Stratays assured us that blending of colours were on their way it wasn’t until this demonstration by Mike that we’ve been able to see the Connex 3 in full flow.
Mike picked an aeroplane stl model and imported that into Photoshop, it appeared in the plain grey like it would in any 3D modelling software but it was the ease of
Plane design
Using photoshop's texture packages to overlay a tiger print onto the 3D model.
what came next that made this editor sit up and take note.
If you’re familiar with Photoshop and how one would edit a 2D graphic the steps aren’t that much different for 3D models.
First to turn the model a different colour (a nice Stratasys orange in this case – Mike’s good like that) Mike displays a splayed out version of the airplane comparing it to a dissected biology class frog. This then allows you to overlay a colour to that splayed out model and hey presto! When you’re back in the 3D view you have an orange plane, Stellios eat your heart out.
You don’t just have to have orange though, you can pick another colour, pick a second colour and run a gradient side to side, essentially anything you can do with Photoshop and a 2D colour you can do with 3D models.
The next trick of Photoshop CC was to take the Stratasys logo, which appears like a normal 2D layer but once merged down it is projected onto the model in exactly the way you want, a nice big Stratasys logo on the side of the plane.
Not content with the easyjet inspired plane Mike was able to switch back to the splayed out texture map and add a tiger print. This process really was as simple as designing in 2D and Mike went as far as telling us that he believes this will be the key to unlocking 3D printing's full design potential.
"If you think of small design companies who are thinking about venturing into 3D printing, they may not be able to afford the other professional CAD packages or train people up on them but with the Photoshop CC solution they can transfer existing skills into 3D design without using another design package."
It certainly inspired this editor to have a go of the 3D modelling functions available on the Adobe package seeing how simple the design was. The resulting 3D print of the design (one they made earlier in true Blue Peter style) is exactly as it appears on screen and was printed by IPF (you ca see their logo on the back of the plane) on an Objet Connex3.
Tiger Plane
The finished 3D print from Photoshop design
