Help me, Lazywebs.

[theweaselking]

harald387 tells me: "People have told me that there is software that can take game screenshots (such as from WoW or CoH) and render them into 3D models suitable for printing with 3D printers. I know this has been used with WoW, they made a big deal about it a couple of years ago with offers to 'print' your characters."

He can't find this software. Anyone got a line on it?

Comments

[dranon.livejournal.com]

The one I turned up is FigurePrints (http://www.figureprints.com/). I think they're probably the one your friend is thinking of, as they make a big deal about WoW.

Sadly, it seems that no one has City of Heroes support. If someone can find a place that does, I'd certainly be interested, as CoH is shutting down.

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the only one I know of is Figureprints, which as you mention is a service, not software.

Speaking of CoH, there's a standalone character creator. It came out around the same time the game launched so it only has the original costume stuff. I don't know if you're able to move current game files over to import them or whatever, nor if it will similarly support CoV stuff.

[kafziel.livejournal.com]

As re: CoH, I've heard talk of semi-successful efforts using OGLE to capture and Blender to refine.

[skreidle.livejournal.com]

I can't see how a single screenshot could be used to generate a 3D anything without significant user interaction delineating 3D perspective..

[argonel.livejournal.com]

A screen shot rendered out to an image file wouldn't be helpful. However a frozen snapshot in the image buffer or somewhere else in the image pipeline would have the depth information. Unfortunately there is probably a lot of manipulation needed to go from that information to something suitable for 3D printing.

Figure prints has a big leg up in that Blizzard was willing to work with/invest in them and provides the actual model data as a starting point. However some tweaking is still required to go from a screen ready 3d model to a printer ready 3d model.

It might be worth looking at Shapeways.com to get a feeling for what can be 3D printed and how much work it would take to make a game model usable for 3D printing.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I figured "screenshots, plural" - but I'd still never actually heard of someone doing it.

[skreidle.livejournal.com]

Well, I have heard of software taking a pair of radially offset images and calculating 3D positioning based on the differing measurements... which could then, theoretically, be used to to generate 3D models (of the parts that could be seen in the screenshots, anyhow.)

This comment in no appreciable way assists towards a solution. :)

[skiriki.livejournal.com]

Fudge, I know something that can turn a series of piccys into objects and which hasn't been mentioned yet... let me go a-diggin'. I've been messing with 3D objects since I'm thinking about career shift from sysadmin to arts...

AHA! What about this? Autodesk 123D Catch

[harald387.livejournal.com]

I think that one's going to do the job. Thanks so much for digging this up.

[skreidle.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's neat. :D

[jerril]

I have a thing at home that works with Direct X games to steal the 3D information out of the Direct X drivers. I never made it work, it hates my 64 bit system (I wanted stuff out of Overlord II).

Whether the figures snatched out of the game will then be watertight (which is needed for 3d printing) and textured (which you want for it to look any good) is a thing I don't know, but I'll look it up.