3D print people figures

[Paul_in_Ricky]

Yes, I know, but its hard enough to get him in the space as it is. I can control the height but getting width and depth and in proportion and still look human is a problem.

You might try scaling in different directions. Some of the AI generated people seem quite stout by Victorian/Edwardian standards and a little slimming in thickness and width, if done in moderation, can still leave them looking realistic.

BTW those early photos of the F&B held by at National Library of Wales are a treasure trove of information.

Bridge and Tran Bach; Has a wonderful prototype for a garden railway bridge. Interesting that the terrace of houses in the background look to be still under construction.
https://viewer.library.wales/1127305#?x ... 850%2C4415

The shot of the train in Tan-Y-Manod is quite remarkable. It looks like taking that photo was a massive occasion, so many more people there than the train could accommodate.
Of particular relevance to this thread; Every man in the shot is wearing some sort of hat, but the tonal range of clothing is amazing. Some in dark clothes, some in almost white. The only women are those in the background in their gardens.
https://viewer.library.wales/1123808#?x ... 850%2C4415

[philipy]

Thanks Paul. Actually most of those Nat Lib pictures are in the book.

Anyway, I have been playing with the scaling, not in Meshy but SU & Blender. I think this is a bit better. The hat is still wrong of course, but as I said, I'll fettle that after printing.

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[Paul_in_Ricky]

That's better.

Still banging my head against Gemini's oddities and trying to get round them by editing the photo prompts more heavily in Photoshop first. What might seem a crude composite by general photographic standards the AI smooths off an makes quite acceptable models.
I notice that Meshy now has the option to generate a A or T pose, I don't remember seeing that before, it ought to make rigging possible on everything, but I still have reservations about big re-poses giving less optimal results.

I'm trying to build a stock of things that can be processed and downloaded in a one month trial later this year. Whilst trying to improve my painting skills.

[Durley]

Here’s my progress with my printed and painted Meshy created models. One thing that is obvious with all the models lined up like this is there is considerable variation in the relative sizes of features. Individually the models look fine but put together, the relative sizes of heads and hands in particular vary quite a bit, more so than I think would be seen in real life. Not a big issue, but something I will consider if grouping figures together (e.g. loco crews, passengers in the same carriage, line side figures standing together, etc.).

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[philipy]

They all generally look pretty good to me, although the fella on the left does look a bit unnatural. I guess he will stand at the back!

[Peter Butler]

They look amazing, should take all of the attention off those train things!

[Paul_in_Ricky]

Here’s my progress with my printed and painted Meshy created models. One thing that is obvious with all the models lined up like this is there is considerable variation in the relative sizes of features.

Not sure I'd agree. The three figures on the right in the photos all sit together very well, almost too similar in height if we're being picky.
The figure on the far left looks to have rather exaggerated features, the hands are a bit too large and the high forehead doesn't seem quite right. The way the contrast paint makes the edges of the lapels look so pale exaggerates the feature too.
That it looks rather like Farage would make me dislike it anyway.

[Durley]

The model on the left started out with this image of GVT driver James Hughes. His forehead is definitely a notable feature but the combination of Gemini and Meshy has exaggerated the size a bit!

[Paul_in_Ricky]

The model on the left started out with this image of GVT driver James Hughes. His forehead is definitely a notable feature but the combination of Gemini and Meshy has exaggerated the size a bit!

Given the distortion that can be seen in the track at the bottom of the photo, there's a lot of uncertain geometry in this image. I'd be inclined to reedit the photo and bring the hat lower on the forehead.

[philipy]

Did you start with a T pose for the figure to be repositioned in Blender, or is that not necessary?

OK a few answers/illustration of this subject.

The basic mode of operation is to build a bony skeleton inside your imported figure, by positioning the bones where they would really be. ie 2 collar bones, 2 upper arm bones, and 2 lower arm bones. Then you would move down the spine and pelvis and the legs. I generally put two bones in each foot, but actually one may be better. For hands I put a bone from wrist to palm and then three from there to the tip of each finger. However you could just put one bone in each finger or if you wanted you could put in half a dozen each - it's your choice.

So, AFAIK you can import any configuration of figure into Blender, but inserting bones into realistic locations in the body is much easier if it is in a fairly straight pose, whether T or A. The important thing is that the arms and legs are not touching anything else, because for instance moving the arms will drag part of the body as well with extremely weird results! There is a way of 'painting' the part you want to move separately, but it is complicated and when I tried it I found it unsatisfactory, but that may just be me.

Can Blender reshape hands or do you need to have the hand shape pre-determined (open hand, gripping, etc.)?

Well as I explained above, you can have as many bones as you want. However each one can then be positioned in any direction and adjusted as many times a you like until you are satisfied.
This is a screen shot of the fireman in Blender with his bones outlined in orange:

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So by way of illustration, these are shots of the driver and fireman for my F &B 0-4-2, both figures started as T-poses from Gemini & Meshy:

First a close up of the fireman's hands :

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He holds a shovel and will be crouched in the cab doorway.

IMG_0055.jpg (383.89 KiB) Viewed 10592 times

Similarly the drivers hands

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One on the regulator handle and one holding the side sheets whilst he peers forward.

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In position.

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Hope this helps.

[Paul_in_Ricky]

To add to that; Trying to position the bones in the body can seem quite tricky at first. I've found the easiest way is to use the X Y Z views and just work on one limb at a time, switching between the plan (Z), profile (X) and elevation (Y) views until each bone is correctly located within the body. The angled views can be really confusing, as can adding too many bones to start with.
If you edit the mesh at all to cope with any deformations you'll have to relink the armature to the mesh again after the edit.

Some notes on starting off a one off month subscription with Meshy;
First build as many Meshy 6 previews as you can with the free account to have figures ready to download once you subscribe. That way you'll save some credits for later in the month as downloads are free.
When you're ready to start a subscription go through the payment options, but bail out at the last stage of clicking 'buy' and leave the site. Soon after you'll get an offer for an additional free 500 credits if you subscribe in the next 12 hours!
Probably worth asking here for invites as there's a referral program that gives reciprocal bonuses for new memberships.

Do remember to download any figure before a, free, retry. You can't undo and go back to a previous version, but it's worth getting all the possible variations as they sometimes have subtle variations that might make printing difficult that aren't always obvious at first look.
Also use the 'resize' option when downloading a figure to make sure it's at your preferred size as it's easier not to have deal with resizing in Blender if you want to repose a figure.

Rigging in Meshy doesn't seem to work as I'd expect (ie not at all) on the models I've tried so far, so may not be worth the credits.

[Lonsdaler]

I'm speechless at what you've all been able to create. Rather than clutter this thread I've started a new one in this section.

[Paul_in_Ricky]

Further notes having been using Meshy intensely for a few weeks. My plan being to make as many suitable 3D models within the half price ‘first month’ that will fulfil any needs for a very long time and I can drop the subscription after that.
Playing their system and taking all the opportunities to add more free credits gives you the possibility of 150+ generations and 4 retries of each.

Probably the most frustrating aspect of using Meshy is the inability to correct it’s errors.
An example was spending a lot of time working on a photo prompt of a engine driver with magnificent sideburns for Meshy to just add a full beard on every try. Whilst not so important on 16mm, maybe 7/8th modellers might find that it’s lack of facial accuracy a little annoying. Plus the occasion extra, or missing, hand or foot.

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It seems not worth using text prompts for credible models as they can tend towards cartoonish style character generation or just fantasy. I find it best to stick to photo prompts (often optimised via other AI as previously described here). An example of text prompt failure is that you might expect that if you specified it to create postman with beside an octagonal British post box it might get it roughly right, but no, three rounds ones and two square ones, result = credits wasted.

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Every model has had manifold errors and needed repairing. Running the models immediately through MS 3D Builder is an easy way to fix this. It’s also quite an easy bit of software to use for deleting the occasional spurious element(s) in the Meshy files before further work.

The free retries are definitely worth getting (don’t forget to save each version as you can’t go back). Sometimes retries are worse, sometimes significantly different and better.

‘A’ poses are a good option if you’re confident to repose figures via Blender. First time I tried it took ages to understand, but with practice you can ‘rig’ a figure in a few minutes and that greatly open the options for models.

Having started to generate some decent STL files, I’ve pushed the A1 to 0.05mm layer height and think I’m getting some decent results now.

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[philipy]

Good work, Paul.
I keep trying with Meshy but generating figures within it from text prompts is hopeless, and even photo prompts are a bit random, as you've described. I tried to use a photo of two good friends to create a 3d as a "thank you" to them for something they did for us. What came out of Meshy was totally unrecognisable as them.

[Paul_in_Ricky]

A word of caution;
I just had a bad experience printing a Meshy figure.
I put a figure that I'd run through MS 3D Builder and repaired it's errors into my slicer and sent it to print 8hrs.
I failed to do a full check of the sliced model before sending it to print. If I had done I should have noticed that the STL wasn't solid, but hollow. This meant the FDM print was a single line wall thickness with no infill inside and disintegrated as the supports were removed.

With some detailed examination it seems there were some tiny, really tiny, gaps in the surface making the slicer think they're hollow spaces. Not the sort of issue that's easily spotted when looking at the STL in a viewer. It also seem to be on a very small percentage of the models I've downloaded.
So far I haven't found any software that can highlight these 'flaws', probably because in some cases they would be the intended design. Similarly trying to fix them seems horribly complex.

So a reminder to double check how the slicing has been done before committing to a long print.

[Durley]

Thanks Paul, that’s useful to know and something I’ll watch out for with Meshy created models.

[Paul_in_Ricky]

I’ve now finished a month’s half price subscription to Meshy and dropped back to a free membership.
I’ve downloaded the best part of 700 STLs, of which, realistically, about 100 will be useful after the retries have been discounted. A few will benefit from some editing in Blender as Meshy sometimes has a tendency to put unrealistic amounts of folds into clothing.

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Once I’d got enough figures I moved on to other other things;
Converting some cartoons into photorealistic people was an entertainment, Jones the steam, Dai the station etc from Ivor the engine made interesting realistic figures.
Besides people it’s also good for creating livestock which could be used as scenery or even rolling stock loads. (Although I might taking this all too seriously when I spend time trying to work out how best to print a 16mm scale chicken !)

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Also worth trying out for non-geometrical scenic items like slate or stone work. Whilst making walls via 3D printing can be slow, it could also give you masters for making moulds to cast items in different materials.
In particular getting realistic stacks of roofing slate, for scenery and loads, proved remarkably difficult. AI seems to have real problems with roofing slates, both refining photos to use as prompts and in Meshy. One photo of a pile of roofing slates proved to be the one thing Meshy couldn’t deliver and failed generation multiple times, until some photo editing found a solution.

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It’s also worth considering that the models you build in Meshy can be broken down in software and reused in other models. For example I now have an example of every British type of men’s headwear and footwear that can used elsewhere, think ‘Mr Potato head’ in 16mm. You could also extend that to swapping hands, feet even heads.

Was it worth it ? Undoubtedly, I spent a lot of time on the month’s endeavour and now have a huge resource pool to use in future projects. Now to get to grips with painting them well.

[philipy]

That is dedication to your art!

[Durley]

Great summary Paul. I have found quite a few uses for Meshy for things other than figures. I couldn’t persuade Meshy to create a slate stack that looked realistic so my effort was produced by getting Meshy to create an individual roof slate that I then flipped and mirrored a few times before randomly combing multiple copies into one STL.

I’ve also used it to produce a horse.

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A picture frame for a miniature painting.

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And my most satisfying result, a realistic looking seat cushion for some coaches. I’ve had been trying various ways to make a buttoned seat cushion with varied and unsatisfactory results. Meshy gave me just what I wanted on the first try.

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[philipy]

That seat cushion is impressive. In the past I've tried to draw one but never got anything satisfactory.