Lich King Resculpted (45mb)

cults3d

Sorry for the short story, but necessary. This tiny printed version is only 7cm tall. This high-res Lich King model shows how reverse-reverse engineering can create a game character mesh from scratch. If you're into making games, it's usually the other way around - the game engine handles fancy shading, modifiers and texture mapping to make a low poly model look good. A cruddy model can be smoothed out in real-time to avoid square edges, so if you've wondered why models from the warehouse look bad, this is often why - they were designed for games, not printing (some of them before 3D printing). I'm not a WoW player, never have been (a Star Wars Galaxies fan instead), but I love WoW artwork. Here's an original mesh file picture which was unprintable without fixing (this one from Google Warehouse). Mandun uploaded it, but his profile shows he has many game mesh rips - maybe he made the original or ripped it directly. So, I'll give credit to Blizzard for this base mesh. The model had errors and missing faces, so I fixed those first in Blender, then resculpted it, increased poly count and tried to smooth out rough areas. Finally, I moved it into Modo where I finished it off. I'm printing a 10cm high version now, which will take 3 hours with raft and support at 0% infill and 2 shells - yeah, that's a long print! It'll look awesome in resin. This is still a work in progress - the sword needs detailing and all those skulls, elbow joints... but it seems printable now.