Blender Side Hustle #713: Cleaning up 3D print files

Here’s an idea for work you can do as a 3D artist, that’s fairly future-proof, in fact might even take advantage of the proliferation of AI content.

This is based on freelance experience I have from a few years ago. I had a client, who had a 3D scanning company. Super nice fellow. Often, 3D scanning and 3D printing people came to 3D from a different angle, bypassing all the fundamental knowledge of 3D art. In other words, they don’t know much about 3D models other than what they need to know for importing and exporting the files from their 3D scanners.

And 3D scans, even really good ones, tend to need a lot of cleanup work. I’m not even talking about retopology, just removing weird blobs, and holes, that were introduced for whatever reason during the scanning or photogrammetry process.

So if you’re fairly good at sculpting in ZBrush or Blender, it’s fun to “fix” those files and send them a cleaned up model. Which they can then 3D print (often for clients of their own).

Hands are usually tricky for 3D scanners. Because part of the hand is in shadow, the full shape doesn’t get resolved. So in that case, what I would do is just remove the bad part (using a Boolean cut), and bring in a good hand model, pose it and merge it with the scan, then just use sculpting techniques to make it all seamless. It’s challenging, but kind of fun also.

Do keep in mind that this requires good sculpting skills, as well as understanding of how to retopo geometry, and how to reproject detail onto new geometry. This is something you can do both in ZBrush and Blender. In Blender it’s an easier, more non-destructive process. But scans can be dense files, so ZBrush is still a good option.

Below is one of the more challenging jobs I did. Of course, a horse doesn’t stand perfectly still for a 3D scan, so no matter how fast it’s done, parts will be hard for the scanner to work out.

In this case, what I did was purchase a horse model from a 3D marketplace, and use that for the missing parts. Then I reprojected as much as possible the detail from the scan onto that new geometry, and sculpted extra detail where needed.

So if that’s the kind of work you’re interested in doing, make a couple of examples for your own portfolio, and then start sending them to 3D scanning companies. They’re probably looking for someone like you!

In the beginning I’d recommend working with an hourly wage (50 or 60 euro or so) and then once you’ve got a good efficient workflow, you can figure out a set price.

The reason I said it’s AI-proof, is that now a lot of people are getting into 3D printing out models they made using AI. Obviously, these have issues as well. Not the same kinds of issues as the 3D scans, but things they’d like you to change before 3D printing. The same skills apply.