Could Computational Hydrographic Printing Be Useful To Our Industry?
May 14, 2015 by brennon
It might sound like a mouthful but over on Engadget they have recently talked about the uses of Computational Hydrographic Printing and the uses that it might have with the everyday colouring of objects that we get 3D printing. Could we see a use for this within the market of tabletop gaming too?
What Is It?
Hydrographic Printing has existed before and is used in the mass colouring of objects. You can see an example of how it works above in the video demonstration as well as with this tiger face below...
Effectively in a very simplified form it allows you to wrap an image around an object quickly and easily. There are limitations however and it's never a clean fit because of the inaccuracies of the dipping.
However as they show in the video above they have used a rig and a 3D mapping tool (a Kinect from an Xbox) to help map points on the object as its dipped allowing for a more precises application and hopefully avoiding warping/stretching in the final design.
Applications For Our Industry?
When it comes to our industry however how could we implement this? Well, the immediate thought is that you could use it for mapping terrain with various images and designs without having to paint them. It's incredibly quick from the looks of it and the results are getting more and more interesting.
In the video they also show off more complex designs on more intricate models and so there's always the possibility that the technique could be used on miniatures too. I don't see this being as interesting a prospect compared to the applications for terrain but it's certainly something to consider when we think about pre-finished products for our industry.
If you want to learn more then you can check out the published article from Zheijiang University and Columbia University HERE.
What do you think could be its uses?
"They have used a rig and a 3D mapping tool (a Kinect from an Xbox) to help map points on the object as its dipped allowing for a more precises application..."
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Looks great! This could have a big impact on the pre painted stuff I think, would be nice to see what the companys could do with it. The examples they showed of were surely nicely done, but I think every single one of them looks horrible…
Oooo, that’s clever. The film distorts when applied, so digitally distort the film so that when it’s applied it wraps the model in proportion.
I thought the globe was the most impressive for a single immersion.
It’ll be fun to see what it looks like when they’ve gotten around the loss of colour depth by compression.
Pre basecoated minis, would work well for most plastic armies as long as alignment isn’t too off. Would be easy enough to wrap on the sprue. Would just be a matter of wash, do face, base and touch up sprue contact points. Would be great for hoards of cannon fodder that most people don’t invest massive amounts of time painting. Almost surprised GW don’t do this already.
this could make pe-painted / finished models a lot more common?
I’m sure there is some kind of limit when it comes to really small details on a miniature related to how water flows or the film material itself ( all of them will sure find a solution if a few years are put into it ). As some of you already said… for prebasecoat and general large surface this works amazing For terrain this is truly amazing, if the price is right many people will prefer to pay for fully plainted buildings and terrain rather than buy it and paint it them themselves. This can also work expectacular on Vehicles,… Read more »
I think if this ever gets used it will be used by the same people who are dealing with the super high end air brushes and are professional painters. I don’t think this will translate to the common hobbyist anytime soon. One thing games workshop is great for is tracking the over all progress of the hobby and seeing how people view the norms of the hobby, not too long ago they added textured paints that would help with cracked basing for sand and so on, they also added the grass tufts that had been out for years with other… Read more »
looks very impressive. just wonder how it could be used on such small and complex support that is your average space marine/ adventurer etc…
this is fantastic news, it has limitation but for tanks and other historical models, all cammo patrens vehicles etc its brilinat solution.