Okay, I thought of this yesterday. Bear in mind that this approach to modeling is not yet tested so I'm not saying it works. But I reckon I'll go ahead and write up the concept while the staging level application is cooling off on the stove B^) First, you need this stuff -- I know this part works because I've done it before: 2 cups flour 1/2 cup salt 2 cups water 2 tablespoons oil 1/4 cup cream of tartar Mix ingredients in a sauce pan. You will get something that looks like clam chowder. Cook, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon over low/medium heat until it solidifies and is no longer sticky. Allow to cool before use or you will burn your fingers. That's what I'm doing now. You just made nice smooth play-doh. Now model the shape you want. When you are done, take some thread, floss, or wire (or a cheese cutter!) and slice it into nice even thin pieces. As you seperate each piece, rub it with a little olive oil and place it back against the last piece removed in position (or close). Once the entire thing is sliced up evenly, scan in each slice and trace in Photoshop or Illustrator or CorelDraw or whatever (not in 3dSMax cause that's a pain). Use the same number of vertices for each even if you have to add unnecessary vertices in some of the simpler slices. Save out each slice with a sequential name like 'blob_01.ai' or whatever as Illustrator files. In 3DSMax (which is what I have, so your mileage may vary) import each spline in turn and arrange them back into position. Next, select the first spline and attach each spline in sequence to it. Make the entire thing into a spline cage (why you kept the same number of vertices) and surface it or turn the curves into NURBS curves and add a UV loft surface or don't attach them all, just run a line down the centre and mesh loft them. Anyway, I am going to try it in a little bit. I will post the results. I'd rather have modeling clay but payday isn't 'til tomorrow, I think, and I have three dollars and Michael's is closed anyway.

Just so you know, this is half a bug torso. No, it's not just a blue turd. This does look a lot like what I hastily made, though it's lumpy. I'm going to need to score calibration into stuff (another reason clay will work a lot better).

Interestingly, you can actually see my finger indentations in it. There's somehting kinda cool about that somehow.
I suppose it will help if was better at modeling play-dough. I'm better with clay.

Waitaminit.
That just gave me a brainstorm...

There's nothing to say I couldn't cast something and slice it up the same way and... and with a flat edge not have any problem calibrating the edges... all a casting is a real life object with inverted normals...

blinks

Holy god I think I just stumbled across a kickass idea.

well, chicken wire and furnace cement works real well, too. of course you need wire cutters for this operation. oooh, oooh, oooh, toothpicks and airplane glue....color the toothpicks first, loft them...using the glue...the glue will pick up the colors from the toothpicks.....build it up like a caramel basket....it can be beautiful. take newspaper....shred it and soak it. you can do this in batches and color them seperately....add flour until it is of a molding consistency....separate, and model. stupid tricks i learned getting a college education....damned, costly, too.

Not compared to teh cost of 3dSMax. I picked up about a kilo of super sculpey today and am going to see what I can do. The big thing is that itneeds to be slicable. Is slicable a word?

that itneeds to be slicable. Is slicable a word? it is to me, english is my second/errr...strike that, third, language.

Ahh. I've encountered a problem with this approach... I am 75% of the way done with a Cerebus the Aardvark head. It's looking good. I'm surprising myself. Only thing is, it's looking too good. I don't wanna slice it up. pouts I'm tempted to just make the rest of him and try and sell it at a comics con and buy more super sculpey.

I'm not too keen on slicing up Aardvark heads either ;) ~EA

I have thought of using a similar approach to modeling cars. Just buy a plastic model kit and build it, then slice it on a bandsaw, lay the pieces on the scanner and scan.

Modeling wax is easy enough to get at the local art store. Cuts nice too. Great idea.

I'm going with sculpey at the moment. If I don't bake it, it's reusable and if I do, I have a toy.

Interesting, but why? :o) I'm just really curious why you need to start from a real sculpted object, slice it up, then scan it? Wouldn't it be a lot less involved to do it straight in the 3D application. Or get something like Amorphium. But, it does look like you are having a lot of fun. Cheers! - M

Well, you do realise that the pros at ILM sculpt pretty nearly everything before they work on it. They don't slice it up as far as I know, but they make a prototype sculpture in clay or sculpey and often actually score the intended spline cage into the surface (or paint it on)

Ahhh. That is very true that they mainly used to do it that way. I believe that they reserve the sculpey technique for only major characters now and not for everything anymore. I admire your patience and perseverance here. Thanks for sharing your experiments. :o)

No worries! Another reason to try an approach like this: it gets very hard to keep track of the entire shape in 3DSMax if it's made out of multiple splines one at a time, because in two views you see just a line with vertices that could be on either side, and on another you see all of the vertices at once and it's hard to tell which spline they belong to. And, personally, I hate trying to work in the perspective view. Doing things like this, however, allows for a hands-on approach. I can make the piece and tweak it all I want and never get frustrated by resources dropping and not being able to see the persective view refresh. Besides, it's somehow just easier to make something 3-D in 3-D. As I said -- the major drawback I'm having is being unable to bring myself to chop 'good' stuff up so far, which are the things, naturally, that I should be chopping up. I keep looking at it saying I should, then rationalising that if I bake it and paint it I can sell if for a few hundred at a comics convention. L So cerebus and sits there beside a dragon head, looking surly and drunk and partially disembodied.

they cheat:| bastards have drum scanners and the point by point 3D scanners...that's just cheating!...i want to be rich so i can have cool toys :*(