In preparation for the upcoming Age of Ashes Pathfinder campaign, I decided I could use my 3d printer to create some of the big bads of the story. Of course, I don’t have any of the details yet, but I know the adventure includes several dragons, and at least one major red dragon. So I have been using a model to create a print for a gigantic red dragon, to be painted and finished at a later date.
With my printer, this requires the model to be broken into several pieces just to fit in the print volume, then assembled after. Not a big deal for the printing, but the modelling is a bit challenging – the original file is a single mesh of several pieces, and I am not really good at the efficient way to separate them.
My solution was a bit of Tinkercad effort, selectively blocking out pieces with empty cubes, so isolate the model to the pieces I wanted. Then I would use Meshmixer to analyze and rotate the piece for the best printing orientation, before passing it through Simplify3D to generate the final gcode file. I am sure there are better tools, and possibly even options within my current tool set, so if you have any suggestions, feel free to leave a comment.
The model itself is from mz4250’s collection on Shapeways – https://www.shapeways.com/product/E6YPEGPSB/red-dragon-updated, so all credit to him and his fine modelling skills.
Further updates once the assembly is completed.
