(work in progress blog) I want to tell my experience and story about the creation of MELS 3D LABS Articulated Seahorse. Of all the Articulated designs, this has a unique story and place among them all. Early 2024, i was researching for an articulation no other designer has ever made. It should be an interesting creature as well, my research led me to seahorse, a beautiful creation of nature. THE SCULPTING My sculpting workflow evolved over the years, a systematic, hence its time consuming but foolproof approach to perfection. Typically i sculpt 2-3 days straight, mostly skipping breakfast as i get hyper obsessive. The sculpting path : Typically i could create a link and the body section, where then i can duplicate it, then scale it down and keep duplicating it up to the tail. That would save a lot of time and effort. But for the seahorse, This wasn’t the case. The body is curved, hence even after duplicating, each link has to be precisely sculpted to preserve th...
(work in progress blog)
I want to tell my experience and story about the creation of MELS 3D LABS Articulated Seahorse.
Of all the Articulated designs, this has a unique story and place among them all.
Early 2024, i was researching for an articulation no other designer has ever made. It should be an interesting creature as well, my research led me to seahorse, a beautiful creation of nature.
THE SCULPTING
My sculpting workflow evolved over the years, a systematic, hence its time consuming but foolproof approach to perfection. Typically i sculpt 2-3 days straight, mostly skipping breakfast as i get hyper obsessive.
The sculpting path :
Typically i could create a link and the body section, where then i can duplicate it, then scale it down and keep duplicating it up to the tail. That would save a lot of time and effort. But for the seahorse, This wasn’t the case. The body is curved, hence even after duplicating, each link has to be precisely sculpted to preserve the organic curvature shape of the Model, There are around 50-55 total pieces, giving 5 minutes per piece would take 4 hours straight.
MY WORKFLOW
As sown above, for an articulation, i start with a sculpture firts, creating multiple iterative editions, offering a backup at any given time for revert.
This also makes the process hardware intensive, I create all my files in high quality, where the source would be 4-10gb on average.
Once sculpting is done, i start creating articulation, making a new copy on each stage.
After the sculpting i typically take a day off, i go on a hike, mentally simulate and plan the steps of articulation styles and possibilities.
This time no matter what, i just cant find the perfect way to articulate it without sacrificing originality. I wanted it in a way where there is no flat base on the articulation.
It wasn't an easy idea, i spend days thinking a potential possible solution, eventually i gave up and settled for a seahorse sculpture that's buried in sand
THE BREAKTHROUGH
I don't know when exactly but one day it hit me! I can create a plug in system like the Articulated Dragonfly V3. Splitting the seahorse in half and plugging it post print, creating a fully intact articulation.
So i began the project, quickly it became storage intensive and lags began, i tried optimizing the pieces, meanwhile working on other designs by pushing the seahorse more of a long term side project.
Months passed and i came up with a brand new 360+180 link, which none ever tried and pushing the limits of my existing 360 links,
Most of my time was taken by manual aligning and finetuning pieces. While working on Flexi Rhino and Flexi Sheep, i thought it would be a good idea to create a traditional linked articulated seahorse with flat base,
Because creating such a complex 360 dual part version might not create an impact on the 3d printing community, but introducing a simple version and then gradually transitioning through V1 and V2 like the dragonfly will be more suitable. Hence i began creating the Articulated seahorse with a flat base,
THE LINKING CHALLENGE
Due to the nature of stacked scale links, creating a pole and hole link is impossible due to lack of space, so i deleted the project in sadness after 4 hours into designing and decided to passively work on non flat base in the coming months.
After a walk i thought, well i ruined the morning and i never start a new project afternoon, so lets try again, and with some music i gave it another shot, After hours of trial and error, i found the perfect linking pattern.
I double and triple checked because its more of a miracle!
After taking few backups, i spend the whole night, skipping dinner and staying late up to 4am.
Added Complexity
The body pieces are 50-55 in total,
Not including the links which would be 3 pieces per link, which would total to 150+ pieces. So in total 200ish pieces to work with, hoping there would be any fused sections or overhangs when printed. Now i want to make sure the model can be scaled down atleast upto 80%, that means scaling down everything and start adjusting everything over again, i spend at least 4 days doing this on a loop.
As you can see the release version including the source comes closer to 19GB, with over 15 Versions prior to release.
Why the blog and not a YouTube video?
I often get this question now.
I considered that option, but in-fact my beginning was through creating DIY videos
You can check out my YouTube if you look up Melvin George 3D.
There are two reasons why i am not doing videos on my sculpting and articulations,
One, storage, my design work is currently taking up all the drive, most of the time leaving just 50-100free space only. Screen recording for days for a timelapse will consume way more storage and ram during my work, adding more lag to the workflow,
Also i tried full time YouTube for 2 years and it never made it to monetizing as i never got 4000 watch hours,
Max i got was 3000.
Maybe ill get back to it in future.
The second reason is, I dont know when i get motivated to create and its a feeling that i love and i just wanna enjoy, by doing a video, it becomes stressful.
My Gf is a streamer, she play game few hours where she doesnt stream, she have it a separate stream schedule where she stream live! Its during those private sessions, we get so creative and polish the skills and invent new things.
Once i save enough money for better hardware and equipments, i will be doing livestream sculpting. Currently im full on resources and hopefully soon we can expand.
Back to the seahorse, by 5 am V1 exported and sent to test.
My test Team woke me up in the morning, saying its good except few fused links, i got up and as usual skipped breakfast, went on making links better and stronger and the next 2 days seen many test versions and eventually created 2 release versions,
One with a rigid tail and V5 Flexi tail.
You can support me by purchasing the model on cults or subscribing to my Patreon or MMF
IT WENT VIRAL!
I Posted the design on Bambu lab FB group, linking to cults3D, it made dozens of sales and made me so happy!
Dozens of sales is typically take weeks.
Hundreds of people reacted and commented, subscribing to Patreon and MMF, Cults featured it on their social and gave the best design trophy.
Multi Color 3D printing group featured the seahorse as the best design of the week.
@Wickedwinks on Instagram saw my design, featured it, gaining over 2 million views.
(Also shoutout to @moore3dcreations, @Howlprintcraft & @Crunchieprints for testing and featuring the seahorse.)
As a Designer this is the very first time i felt proud in what i do, when people values the work and support you.
Over the years i have made 407 designs and 150ish published and seahorse beats all of them in just a week. Becoming the most downloaded and printed MELS 3D LABS design.
Creating Articulation is a tedious workflow, it takes hundreds of hours of effort, insane amounts of hardware resources and test filaments and power. I consider this as an artistic profession rather than a business, The feeling of doing the once impossible ideas is a whole new level of excitement and satisfaction.
Tho i might not pump out designs on a weekly schedule, when i create, i make sure its insane.
I didn’t stop there, i wanted to make it better, so i spend another day and created a plug in fin, giving it that one final touch.
I intend to keep working on the 360 version in the future, but you know, as we create something, we discover something else and our todo list increases.
Hopefully somewhere in the future i can complete the 360 version.
Files are available on :
Cults
My mini factory
Commercial license available on mini Factory and Patreon.
If you like to support my work, you can tip me on PayPal as well :
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