Fabbaloo, a really cool blog that covers all things related to 3D printing, makes an interesting point about the arrival of mesh in Second Life. Back in 2006 or so, there was some interest around 3D printing your SL avatar, but as a business opportunity, it didn't seem to go anywhere, probably because of the cost ($50-200, depending on complexity), and the inherent IP concerns. (To extract the avatar data for 3D printing, you basically had to use CopyBot-like technology.) Printing costs have likely gone down in the last five years, and with the arrival of mesh in Second Life, we now have SL objects which already have their data in COLLADA, an industry standard graphics format that's printer ready. Fabbaloo's General Fabb pictures the possibilities:
Now SL's mesh import will again make it possible to 3D print virtual world objects, except that those objects will have been created outside the virtual world. The bridge between the virtual world and the physical world is open once again.
What's your take, oh reader? Is there a business opportunity to 3D print mesh avatars and fashion, mesh buildings, and whatever metaverse mesh people want to make real?
Does this mean I could get a bobble-heah Cajsa?
Posted by: Cajsa Lilliehook | Thursday, September 01, 2011 at 10:45 AM
Can you export a mesh out of SL? If so, then the printing technology seems feasible. What happens if you have a no-mod shape, can you copy/export that?
Posted by: Taylor Schroeder | Thursday, September 01, 2011 at 11:52 AM
Linden Labs need to promote this technology for creators by implementing some sort of feature into the viewers.
Posted by: Tommy Rampal | Thursday, September 01, 2011 at 12:14 PM
Nope, the idea is still bollocks, mesh is just a fancy sculptie and after a while people will use it that way. Still avatars will be made out of multible single objects. The export performance gain is zero to nil, cost will not reduce at all.
Posted by: ra-ra-rasputin | Thursday, September 01, 2011 at 12:27 PM
@Taylor - the point of the article was that you can now (theoretically) have 3D prints of your SL stuff if created using mesh because the mesh is *already* outside of SL. That's where it's made. No need to export from SL. Of course, you'd have to have access to the Mesh file outside of SL, but that's a different problem.
Posted by: General Fabb | Thursday, September 01, 2011 at 01:43 PM
I think the copyright issues regarding whether or not the manufacturers can reproduce clothes, skins and even shapes, which the customer likely has no actual rights to reproduce, might kill this before it starts.
When Blizzard offered to do this with WoW toons a few years ago, it was easy for them to out source because it was their intellectual property that was being reproduced. Second Life avatars however, are a mish mash of ownerships. The only part of Myf for example, that I might reasonably make some kind of copyright claim on, would be the exact combination of numbers that make up her shape. Everything else was designed by someone else.
Posted by: Myf McMahon | Thursday, September 01, 2011 at 05:47 PM
The problems with this are unchanged and inherently linked - the legal one of being allowed to copy the combination of different clothes, hair, shoes & body parts that makes up our avatars and the logistical one of being able to pull these out of SL - something that is expressly forbidden in the ToS, so unlikely to be built into the viewer any time soon.
Posted by: Rob Danton | Friday, September 02, 2011 at 01:25 AM
If your character is 100% mesh (body, hair, clothes, etc) and you created all of it and have the source files, you could.
At that point, if I were interested I'd try to scrape together some capital, buy a 3D printer, and go into business with it. Depending on which printer you buy, at the current market rate for custom figures you could hit break-even with 30-50 orders.
Posted by: Arcadia Codesmith | Friday, September 02, 2011 at 07:17 AM
cost of materials....fail.
Posted by: bongo | Friday, September 02, 2011 at 11:01 AM
$1-$5 per unit, for small figures. fail fail.
Posted by: Arcadia Codesmith | Friday, September 02, 2011 at 01:23 PM