Demersus Devlog #8 - Pipeline Test 2/3

Where We Left Of

At the end of the first Pipeline Test I decided to pivot my approach to a 3D sculpted and printed armature instead of using wire - as that proved quite problematic and unreliable. So I started by launching Blender .

The Dimples

As it turns out, clay doesn’t really like to stick to things, that’s why if you look up sculpting videos, people often cover whatever they use as base with aluminum foil to use it’s jaggedness as something for the clay to grab on to. The layers that FDM 3D printing introduces may or may not be enough to achieve that, therefore I decided to create configurable ‘dimples’ that should hopefully ensure that clay sticks well enough to the base.

To make this process easily reproducible and configurable my very first thought was using Blender’s Geometry Nodes (which turned out to be the right call). I opened up a new Blender project, added a UV Sphere as a stand in for a more ‘organic’ shape and got to work testing stuff out:

After fine tuning it a little bit and finding a happy medium, I ‘borrowed’ one of these low-poly human models from a set by @NygaardDesign at Printables:

I added my Geometry Node to it, exported the STL, imported it in to my slicer of choice (Bambu Studio), did some basic configuration and let the printer do it’s thing:

Result

After extracting the slightly trypophobia inducing low-poly human model from my 3D printer I tried covering it in clay, which worked very well:

Few hours later after checking up on it, I can report the clay dried up, stayed ‘glued’ to the base and (as of yet) didn’t even crack - looking good!

What’s Next?

Well, technically I’m supposed to be on break (as the last post would imply) but this seemed like a fun thing to play with (and indeed it was). The next steps are finishing the pipeline and taking care of the over-arching story / game direction + some milestone planning.