Issues with GamePrint

Succulent Fruit

I don't know if any of you guys are into 3d printing, but I've been using Daz Studio to design 3d printable miniatures for my wargaming hobbies. The gameprint plugin seems to be a fantastic way to convert your custom figures into functional and optimized 3d printable models, and so far the results have been pretty good. But lately, I've been having a serious issue with how they do business. So it costs 2 dollars per file you upload for them to process for you, which is fine. But the problem is, you can't see a preview of the settings you have control over, so you don't really know how the result will look, until it processes. I've ended up with about a dozen printable results that were not what I wanted, and were completely useless. 

Another bigger issue, which is making me very frustrated, is the fact that their website/processing system seems to be very buggy and poorly maintained. More than half of the files I've uploaded and paid for, are simply not processing. They start to process, then they freeze, stuck at 0% or some other random percentage. This prevents the product from being finished and released to me, causing me to pay for something that I don't ever recieve. 

 

It seems to be completely random when/if their server system decides to freeze up and stop processing my files. I got it to work 6 times today, out of 9 uploads. I sent two more just now, and both of them are frozen, one is stuck at 75%, and the other is stuck at 0%. The only way to deal with this that I've found is to submit a support ticket, which takes several days for them to respond to, in order to get a refund, so I can attempt it again. Its completely random whether or not my file will succeed or not, and that's pretty messed up when you're paying real money for this service. 

 

As far as I've seen, there are no other services like this that do nearly as good a job optimizing these models. The software available for manually repairing these files is downright horrible, most of it is unstable to the point of constant random crashes, and the few programs that do function don't do a good job with the repairs. I found one other company that offers to repair your files for you, but their automated system is terrible and produces absolute garbage models. 

 

Has anyone else had issues like this with GamePrint, and can you tell me how you solved it? Is this an issue that I can do anything about, or is this just how it is?

wsterdan

I've probably run about 150-200 items through them and overall I've been very happy. There are some things that caused me problem early on but those were things that are inherent in the system and in 3D printing in general and once I figured out how to set my files up correctly I've had very, very few issues. I haven't run anything through the system for a couple of months, but I did run a  larger batch file through and it seemed like it stopped but was actuallly just taking a real long time, and I wound up going back a day or so later and grabbing my finished file.

The two main issues early on were that they can't handle transparency; you can hide part of a model's geometry and it works fine, but you can't hide anything using transparently (e.g. hair), and what happens with scaling when you're going from a larger model to a smaller size for 3D printing -- thin materials disappear. For example, if you run your character through at 3" and then want to print a 28mm figure for gaming, clothing tends to disappear. I had one character with a jet back that looked fine in the slicer preview, but once he was scaled down his jet pack disappeared because the walls of the jets became too thin to print.

If I want to do a character destined to be a 28 o 32 millimeter end size, I calculate what fraction of 3" the character would be and I include a simple vertical rod as a gauge; if the character's final print size is going to be an inch tall, I'd make the rod three times the character's height and ask for 3" STL. Once I have the STL, I open it in a 3D program and remove the rod, then print the remaining STL and it's scaled perfectly. 

I don't know if that covers any of your issues, but if you have anything specific you'd like to ask, I'll let you know if I can help.'

-- Walt Sterdan

Succulent Fruit

Thanks for the reply Walt. You bring up some good points. My models are already prepared for scaling down, though. The models have no textures, just a matte brown shader that allows me to see the miniature as it will look when printed. There is no transparency either. I disabled all those textures, completely cleaning the shaders for all the models, leaving only normal/bump/displacement maps. The hair meshes are not from Daz, I sculpted them separately with 3d printing in mind. The same is true with most of the props and outfit addons, they were sculpted as manifold OBJ files and imported into Daz. The models themselves are not particularly complex, and the few that I managed to have processed correctly came out very nicely. All 5 different character poses I processed through GamePrint for a set of miniatures all came out perfectly fine, and my entire project is based on those 5 character bases, so I know the issue isn't with my models. 

simon_3872481

I have had a lot of difficulty with Gameprint. Sometimes it works fine but mostly it gets stuck in production. I have complained many times and a very helpful Faisal has replied and always refunds my money. But I just wih they would fix their servers and not have the constant breakdowns. Let's hope the service improves.

wsterdan

For what it's worth, I uploaded five toon characters last night aroung 11:00 PM (CST); I checked this morning about 6:30 AM  and three of them were ready to download, an hour or to later the fourth, and an hour or so later the fifth. Slow, yes, but compared to me trying to do it manuallly? Much faster and, more importantly, done correctly.

-- Walt Sterdan

 

Succulent Fruit

This service is completely moot, guys. The newest versions of Blender have fantastic tools for optimizing 3d printable miniatures, and Daz Studio natively exports to STL format. I've started optimizing my own prints myself, and it requires minimal knowledge of Blender to do. A few minutes of tutorials on youtube will have you able to easily prepare your Daz characters for 3d printing, and the results are WAY better than the ones from GamePrint. I've been using Daz to design a series of Warhammer 40k miniatures for my custom army, and the results are perfect. Honestly, if I were you, I'd avoid Gameprint entirely and spend the 15 minutes necessary to learn how to optimize your prints yourself. You'll get way better quality results, and you'll have complete control over how they come out- and its free.

wsterdan

Thanks for the info and suggestion, it's something I might look at after I retire. If you have a moment and could post some links to the best videos and show a couple of your samples, that would be much appreciated.

-- Walt Sterdan