3D Printing Doctor Who - Print and paint your own 5.5" scale customs

[3DPrintingDoctorWho]

Still a bit on the shiny side. I need to airbrush some satin varnish over the top to bring him down to a more Character Options appropriate luster, but I couldn't be more proud of how this one turned out. Of course, I couldn't quite decide if I wanted to go with the darker brown cave coloring or the lighter surface green, so I figured "why not both?" and have a second one drip-drying on the printer now.

[3DPrintingDoctorWho]

Incredible bit of news. One of the guys in our facebook group bought one of the fancy next generation Revopoint Mini scanners, and graciously agreed to try scanning a few Eaglemoss figurines for me. He just shared the first one, the Gravis from Frontios, and the results are absolutely astonishing!





As far as I can tell, it's pretty close to a 1:1 reproduction, and any fine details it's lacking is mainly due to the Eaglemoss figurines being kinda light on surface detail to begin with, and nothing to do with the scanner not replicating what's there.

As good as this is, I'm still going to spend at least a week or two cleaning it up, adding in articulation, and improved the texturing, especially on the fur areas around the joints... But this is the very first scan I've ever seen that could be printed exactly as is, and still produce an amazing finished quality figure out of the gate.

Note that this particular Eaglemoss figurine was my first pick for a test scan precisely because I thought it'd produce the best results. It's one of the larger deluxe figurines that's very nearly 5.5" scale to begin with, and it doesn't have a lot of fiddly surface detail or tricky under-arm shadow areas to deal with. (Poor Gravis hardly even has arms, let alone underarms.) I don't want people jumping to the conclusion that all scanned figures will look this good and printer-ready, but it's a positive sign of what's possible, at least as far as non-humanoid aliens go.

The other three figures he'll be test scanning over the coming months are the Dragonfire Biomechanoid (also a larger nearly 5.5" figure, but with more complex organic surface detail) a Nightmare of Eden Mandrel (smaller 3.5" size figurine but one that's fairly low on surface detail or shadow areas, so I think it should work well) and a Full Circle Marshman (smaller 3.5" size, but surface details are mostly painted on so they're going to be very subtle if they get captured at all.)

Depending on how these three go, we might attempt to scan some of the more difficult ones. I've got about 30 more classic series figurines in my collection that have never had 5.5" figures made of them, but many have arms or legs fused to the body, limbs stretched out in funny positions, or cloaks or other costume elements that may make them tricky or impossible to scan or articulate. For those who are curious, I've arranged them into ranks depending on how successful I think scanning attempts would be.

• Rank 1 - Azal, Navarino, Mestor, Solonian Mutant, Drathro (though I'm working on this one free-form currently) Zarbi (I already have a homemade one up on the site, but it's one of my earlier figures and not particularly screen accurate) -- All of these are either oversized deluxe figures, or ones that are in poses that make them comparatively easy to scan and articulate. I have no doubt they would scan quite well.
  
• Rank 2 - Nimon, Monoid, Ambassador (of Death), Female Eldrad, Primord, Koquillion, Vervoid. -- I expect all of these are also scannable, but will require a bit more manipulation or clean up because they have less than ideal poses, unreachable shadow areas, or lack important surface detail, but nothing I cant work around. (For example, the Monoid has one fused arm, but because it's more or less symetrical, I think I can more or less construct the figure just from the left half.)
  
• Rank 3 - Omega, White Robot, Ainley Master (only if I can get a better scan of the face from a separate sculpt), Pirate Captain, Celestial Toymaker (likewise using an alternate Michael Gough head), Deadly Assassin Timelord robes, Tereleptil -- These should scan, but have tricky fused elements or lack important surface details in a way that would require significant cleanup to make useful at 5.5" scale.
  
• Rank 4 - The Destroyer, Ancient One, Borad, Ice Lord, Cheetah Person, Draconian, Tetrap, Chief Clown, Ogron, Eric Roberts Master -- All of these are either fused solid lumps, weird poses with cloaks in the way, or fairly low quality sculpts to begin with that may be more trouble than they're worth. A scan would be a timesaver compared to starting one of these figures completely from scratch... but would only be useful in bits and pieces or as an extremely rough guide.

It should be noted that I only really collect stuff from the classic series, so anybody hoping for a Dregg or Tzim Shaw shouldn't hold their breath unless they plan on doing it themselves. (Also modern HD television monsters have way too much surface detail, so even if the scan was perfect, they're still going to look lumpy and weird if you try to blow them up to 5.5" without doing a ton of fiddly resculpting... which I totally don't have the time or interest to work on)

There are also a handful of figures I haven't managed to obtain yet, like the Carnival Auton, Web of Fear Yeti, Dalek Battle Computer, Valeyard, Rani, and Styggron, that would probably be scannable, but are prohibitively expensive to purchase and ship to the Untied States, especially given that Eaglemoss closing up shop means that everybody is scrambling to complete their collections while supplies last.


If the price ever drops, I might use the proceeds of the next shelf-cleaning sale to try to offset the cost of purchasing ones of these scanners for myself, since looking at the results of just one scan, it's clearly infinitely superior to the previous generation POP 2 scanner I picked up only a year and a half ago. Unfortunately, I was in the process of losing my house at the time the Revopoint Mini Kickstarter was going on, and the retail price has now shot up to an insane $800 for just the scanner alone with none of the extras, so no matter how good the results are, it's not the sort of thing I can simply pop off and pick up as an impulse purchase.... especially now that I've got a mortgage and a fixer-upper house that sucks up most of my spare cash.

[3DPrintingDoctorWho]

Currently in the process of parting out the Gravis/Tractator. I wish TinkerCAD didn't reduce the mesh quality so much on import, but I keep telling myself I'm going to be going over it with a fine tooth comb anyways to try to increase the screen accuracy, so not to fret about it too much. It has to look messy before it can look good.

I believe we're going to have 5 or 6 points of articulation, and 4 swappable parts when this is all over. I've added in a movable lower jaw like I did for Aggedor, pop-in antennas that can be printed out of flexible resin or TPU that use the same connectors as the Wirrn legs and Silurian feet, and ball-joint hands similar to the Meddling Monk's shoulders that should allow the stubby arms to rotate and wiggle up and down a tiny bit... but not a whole lot.
He may get a 6th rotational pivot about halfway down the base simply because it's easier to clamshell around a large T plug and because if I make the base hollow, you can fill it full of sand or lead shot in order to make it heavier and help keep the top-heavy figure from falling over.

As for swappable parts, the Eaglemoss figurine this is scanned from is specifically the Gravis leader, which has several distinctive facial features that set him apart from the other Tractators (a more humanoid nose, different jowls, double chin, and massive comical Prince Charles ears). Once I have the whole thing parted out and the details added back in, I'll create an alternate face, jaw, and antennas that slot into the same spot, so you can print both the regular Tractator and Gravis variants using the same body base. (You can even do a third variant using the Gravis' straighter antenna and double chin on the regular Tractator upper head.)

Technically, the Gravis should be a tiny bit bigger than the other Tractator figures (it looks to be about 6 inches taller IRL, or 5mm in scale), but you can always increase the scale of all the parts by about 3 or 4% in your slicer software if you want that added little bit of costume accuracy.

The baleen on the inside of the mouth might also be it's own insert. You can probably print this fairly easily out of resin, but for filament, you're probably better off just collecting up the thin stringy bits from your nozzle test and gluing those inside by hand during assembly.

[BilliePiperFan]

These are really impressive

[3DPrintingDoctorWho]

Finally done with the TinkerCAD part of this figure. Now it's all about cleanup (some details are a bit rough and will be fixed in Meshmixer, like the cylinders at the base of the antenna) and adding back in hair and other fiddly surface details that TinkerCAD stripped out or were never there to begin with.

At any rate, progress on this figure has been delayed by lots of real-life events, but I'm hoping for a nice quiet Christmas weekend without any family drama so I can get him finished up and test printed before New Years. As soon as I know all the pieces fit together and the articulation works as planned, I'll do the regular Tractator variant with alternate antenna, face, jaw, and chest (which has an entirely different vein pattern). You should be able to mix and match parts between the two to create a 3rd variant if you're really into Tractator army building.

[3DPrintingDoctorWho]

Got the Gravis face about as good as it's going to get. It should really be a little taller and narrower, and the antenna should be higher up on the skull, but there's only so much I can change before it starts interfering with the articulation, plus it still has to be swappable with the regular Tractator face which is a little more pear-shaped. At least I've got the nose, mouth and jowls closer to their on-screen counterpart.



The "hotdog mouth" insert is a compromise that may or may not work since each is the baleen are 1mm wide, which is larger than they should be scale-wise but about the smallest you can theoretically print (assuming you're using a flexible resin so they don't instantaneously snap off). There's enough room up inside the pallet that you should be able to simply glue in thread, wire, or dental floss if the printed version doesn't work, or simply doesn't look as good.

[3DPrintingDoctorWho]

Here it is, the first new figure of 2023!
REMIX005 - Tractator and Gravis
Download Link and Print/Paint Instructions: https://www.3dprintingdoctorwho.com/gue ... M#Remix005


I had some support failures during test printing, so the grubby fellow is missing a few chunks around the edges, but it still turned out well enough that I can confirm all articulation points function exactly as intended, the surface detail turned out amazing, and he can even stand up unaided... which is always a plus if you're a Doctor Who monster!

Note that the back plate that locks the arms in place is not glued in, so they're a little looser in their sockets than they should be. And the one part that self-destructed completely was the insert that had all the mouth tendrils.




I can comfortably state that the Gravis part of this design is 100% complete and I look forward to starting work on the alternate Tractator face sculpt when I get back in town later next week.

[3DPrintingDoctorWho]

Right, so that's the Tractator and Gravis figures sorted. Time to get back to my own original creations. But wait... what's this sitting in my inbox? It's the 3D scans of the Dragonfire Biomechanoid and Alzarian Marshman!




As you can see, the Biomechanoid in particular turned out amazing!
Just like the Gravis, this was another higher quality "deluxe" Eaglemoss figurine that was nearly 5.5" scale to begin with, so while there's definitely going to be some clean-up required, the scan managed to capture nearly 100% of what was present in the original sculpt, and it's more or less printable right out of the gate.

The Marshman turned out significantly rougher, but that was to be expected given that it's one of the standard 3.75" figurines and wasn't terribly detailed to begin with. While the face and hands are nearly unusable, it still turned out good enough that I can use it as a "butter sculpture" framework to get the basic proportions right for a ground-up resculpt similar to what I did for the Silurian.


We still have the Nightmare of Eden Mandrell left to do from the first group of figurines I sent off, but I think that moving forward this is a pretty good indicator that even though the new Revopoint Mini runs circles around the previous generation of scanners, it's still not a magic "insert figurine, pull out 5.5 inch figure" machine, and works best with the larger full body suit aliens without too much in the way of facial detail. Depending on how things go and what John feels up to, I expect we'll scan at least one more group of figurines consisting of the Mutt, Mestor, Nimon, and an Ambassador of Death, all of which should scan fairly well, and then maybe Koquillion, Vervoid, Azal, and a Navarino. But after that we start getting into the land of diminishing returns, where scans can still be a useful starting point but are going to take considerable effort to turn into a finished CO-quality figure.

At any rate, after the Tractators, I need a little bit of a break from super complex organic sculpts, so I'm not going to dive into either of these two remixes immediately, but the Biomechanoid will definitely be coming up sooner rather than later on my to-do list after I finish up a couple of original pieces, the motorized version of the 5th Doctor Console, and the remix of the Cailleach, which is still having articulation issues.

[3DPrintingDoctorWho]

I ended up sitting around for about 10 hours today waiting for somebody from Home Depot to show up and finish installing our washer and dryer. They never did... but the afternoon wasn't a complete waste, since I spent the time working on a brand new figure:
Arcturus from The Curse of Peladon!




The exterior robotic shell is mostly complete aside from a few rivets and pipe flanges. Now it's mostly a matter of finishing up the organic sculpts for the head and spindly twig-like arms... which is tricky, because we never get a particularly good look at him during the episode and there are no behind the scenes or exhibit photos that show the puppet in any detail. I'm not even 100% sure how many "arms" he has.




Of course, in terms of articulation, he has to have the removable front chest panel, life support control circuit, and an extending blaster. There's also plenty of room inside the base to add Lego wheel mounts and LED string lights if you want to make his tubes and internal power source light up. And I'm pretty sure I know how to make Arcturus figure rotate left or right inside his sealed bubble when you pivot a small concealed lever on the back, but as always, it's a balancing act, and I have to make any mechanical elements fit inside the chest cavity.

This is going to be a fairly large figure, about the same size as a Cleaner Robot when fully assembled, but he's also got a number of special transparent pieces. That means that everything has to fit on a standard smaller-sized resin printer build plate, so I'll do my best to part everything out in such a way that it can be printed on a regular Anycubic Photon or Elegoo Mars.

For those who don't have access to a resin printer, I'm hoping that the transparent parts will be similar enough in size to off-the-shelf items that you can flub those parts using a standard vending machine toy bubble for the upper dome and plastic bendy straws for the goo pipes.

[3DPrintingDoctorWho]

Arcturus should be finished and ready for test printing in another day or two. The basic design is done, and I'm pretty much just down to adding in the extendable blaster, removable life support circuit, Lego wheel mounts, and some final surface rivets.




I've already incorporated the holes and mount for a LED string-light (standard switch style) so you'll be able to light up the four yellow fluid pipes from the top and bottom and the orange light inside the chest cavity. I've also created an internal lever mechanism that sticks out the back directly behind under the cape that will let you rotate Arcturus inside his bubble after you've sealed him up.



I had to make his arms a little shorter and stubbier than screen accurate so that they're thick enough to print and don't overlap with the glass dome for those that aren't printing out of a flexible material. Hopefully, if you do print Arcturus out of flexible resin or TPU, they'll sag a bit due to gravity which will put them in contact with the dome, so that rotating him will also make his limbs flail angrily.

Of course, to print this guy I'm going to have to use my smaller Anycubic Photon to do the clear parts and black body, which means fitting together the more permanent exhaust system I've been avoiding mucking about with for the last three months since I haven't printed anything that needed it. So even though the Beta version of the files will probably be released this Sunday or Monday it may be a few weeks before I have a fully printed prototype to show off.



I also shrunk everything down a bit so that it would be in proper scale next to a Pertwee figure. That means that the dome is now a slightly unusual size of 44.30 mm (or 1.744 inches) in diameter. That means that a standard 2" vending machine capsule won't fit in the groove that would normally hold the 3D printed one in place, but can be glued in place directly outside it, and it shouldn't look too far off.
In fact, this round style of capsule would probably work perfectly: https://smile.amazon.com/Vending-Machin ... 0895P2LCL/