Ship Model Carvings and figureheads - Using AI for for making STL files for 3D printing...things are getting better every day.

[g8rfan]

Thanks Greg for the explanation. It was on Meshy 6. I'll give the Meshy 4 a try and see what happens. It's only $15 a month and they give you half off the first month, so cheap enough to try if Meshy 4 doesn't work. 

[KennyH78]

Switched gears and decided to try to tackle the figurehead for Confederacy.  I'm pretty happy with how it turned out and will be attempting to print it soon.  First I need to find some resin that is tan/wood colored.  All I have at the moment is gray and black.

 

I ended up using the picture of the figurehead from Chuck's tutorial on how to sculpt one using polymer clay (first pic).  The second pic is what meshy 6 had generated and the third pic is of the model in LycheeSlicer.  

[Kevin-the-lubber]

Really interesting thread, amazing how quickly Meshy has developed and I suspect it may allow me to duck the learning curve for Blender that I’ve been putting off since forever. The thread touches on many things relating to 3d and I hope my 2 cents worth around some of these are helpful;

 

I have several resin printers, all of them Elegoo. No particular reason other than price, consistently good reviews and good personal experience. Like you, Chuck, I have three machines constantly on the go. I now use the Saturn 3 Ultra because I don’t like the complexity or cost of the tilting vat of the ultra 4, but that’s not what I wanted to talk about. For those thinking of buying a printer, it’s worth looking on eBay for good used models, as a toe in the water. The qualitative difference in prints from my Mars bought 5 years back and my Saturn 3 Ultra’s is so negligible as to be largely irrelevant, and you can pick up a good used printer for £50. Don’t touch anything that needs a new screen, nor anything that has resin all over it. I use wash and cure machines to do a three-wash routine, and would recommend them, but each to their own. I absolutely don’t and won’t run resin printers in my office; they are in my workshop, where I have fume extraction etc. I learned that the hard way a few years back, hospitalised with pneumonia. A tip for those in colder climates: a heated cabinet is invaluable. Resin doesn’t print well below about 22/23 degrees C. 

 

Slicers: I mostly use the original Chitubox free version, because it gives me wireless connection to the printers, which the newer version doesn’t. But I also use free or included-with-purchase versions of Voxeldance, Lychee and Elegoo’s own slicer Satelite, as and when I think that’s the better tool. Some of these have Boolean functionality. I don’t use that because I’m fairly adept with F360. If you are using Boolean in a slicer, you can use the dimensions function and ‘move’ tool to position the objects precisely in relation to each other.
 

Does 3D printing turn it all into a ‘press the button and sit back’ thing? No. I’d bet my shirt that anyone reading this is not the type of person who buys a model kit and has it painted and assembled inside a month. We all like to bash, scratch, embellish, get creative. A 3D printer is just your own, personal, pseudo-injection-moulder. You’ve still got to make everything work as part of your build. The meshy outputs are a case in point. As impressive as they are, you could still spend hours and hours improving them, either on the software side or the printed output. Not so different to plastic kits. Besides which, I may be wrong but I don’t think it’s yet possible to generate an STL from meshy with the dimensional accuracy we mostly work to. So, it’s really, really good for organic shapes but perhaps less so for precision engineering.

[KennyH78]

Kevin, I have agree with 100%. I own 2 FDM printers (both from Elegoo) and 1 resin printer (Anycubic Photon Mono 4 the I received for X-mas last year). There is a learning curve on these machines as well as the periodic recalibration of the print beds and other settings. But on the flip side, 3d printing can become an addictive hobby on its own, and they can be invaluable tools for model ship making. 

[Kevin-the-lubber]

3D design and printing can certainly turn into a big rabbit hole, but I suspect you probably need to be inclined towards rabbit-holing anyway. I think the learning curve for resin is long and gentle, as you’ll get good prints right out of the box. Most of the learning is about making good prints great I.e designing for printing, object orientation, print supports, and using all those settings that are mostly ignored. Printers are marketed like sports cars, the emphasis is always on speed - but like many cars, printers perform better if you just slow down!

[Dziadeczek]

On 10/29/2025 at 9:23 PM, Dziadeczek said:

I played a little with this software and, for the experiment's sake I uploaded a drawing of a French naval officer from Mr. Boudriot's book on the 74 gun ship to see, what would develop...

I was pleasantly surprised to find out that their 3D rendition turned out sooo good! - see the pic (it is only a 2D screenshot from a full 3D conversion, which turned out nearly perfectly, certainly good enough for me! 

I am thinking about 3D printing of a dozen or so small figurines (about 3.5 - 4 cm long, which is about 1.5 in.) to populate my 74 gun ship model I recently finished building.

The problem with this free version of Meshy 6, I see, is that you can only upload your pic (photo or drawing) and convert it into a 3D sculpture, but you cannot further download this 3D sculpture elsewhere, to print it. To do that, you'd have to sign in for it and pay a minimum 8 dollars/month for a subscription (despite the statement from Meshy, that you can do it for a free trial - just to see how it goes (and if it satisfies you, then you can pay them and do your projects).

So, that is this limitation..., unless I missed something..   🤔

 

 

I managed to 'color' this image (texturize) in Meshy6 - that's how far I was allowed to go there free of charge.

 

Edited Sunday at 05:23 AM by Dziadeczek

[moreplovac]

Thank you Chuck..

Here is my Meshy work so far... hardly can wait to see the resin printouts..

 

 

 

Cheers

 

 

[Chuck]

Wonderful example of how well it works.  I get that they have moved to a pay format for downloads.  Everybody needs to earn a living.

 

For those that wont or dont want pay I would suggest you can try doing so anyway.  Its very cheap for a month…and after you sign up they charge you each month.  So you can cancel soon after finishing your downloads.  It would cost you about $15.  
 

can you imagine paying a CAD guy to

design those figures you have shown?  
 

You wont get that quality for $15.

 

Chuck

[moreplovac]

Yes, everyone has to make for a living but if I compare their monthly charge with an average fast-food meal, I think it is worth paying..

 

 

[Chuck]

I agree…100%

[KennyH78]

I have been playing around with meshy as well and think that I have come up with a better figurehead than the white metal one suppled by Model Shipways for the Confederacy kit.  I did a test print and am happy with the results so far. although I need to make him a little taller.  The final print will be done in a beige/tan color.  I may also try to model in the indention for the stem before doing the final print.

As you can see, the meshy product is 10 times better than the kit supplied one.

[Pirate adam]

Kenny yours really looks like it has spent a lot more time in the weight room than the kit version 😀

[Chuck]

Here is one for you...

 

I just made it with my original drawing.

 

Warrior_Statue.stl

 

[JohnB40]

Hi Chuck, If you ever produce the Confederacy figurehead I would certainly purchase one.

[KennyH78]

23 minutes ago, Chuck said:

Here is one for you...

 

I just made it with my original drawing.

 

I will print yours as well Chuck and compare the 2.  But I'm willing to bet that yours will come out nicer.

[Chuck]

I wish I could....I no longer have the plans for confederacy so I can extract the correct stem shape.  If someone can scan the bow plan with the drawing of the figurehead I can absolutely size it to fit and create the stem slot.   

[KennyH78]

4 minutes ago, Chuck said:

I wish I could....I no longer have the plans for confederacy so I can extract the correct stem shape.  If someone can scan the bow plan with the drawing of the figurehead I can absolutely size it to fit and create the stem slot.   

I can send you a scan of the plan.  I just need to take it somewhere to have it scanned.  I plan to try to size it as well and create a stem slot.  Lots to learn since I mainly just buy and download stl files.  I have never attempted to make my own or modify files until now.

[Chuck]

I just found a copy on CD....So I took care of it.  I believe this one is sized properly with a cut out for the stem

 

Config.stl

[KennyH78]

Chuck, thanks for providing the file; I know that you are a busy man.  I will print it later this week.  I still need to teach myself how to do all of this.

[manning16]

6 hours ago, KennyH78 said:

Chuck, thanks for providing the file; I know that you are a busy man.  I will print it later this week.  I still need to teach myself how to do all of this.

Hey Kenny ..Following your and Chuck's  3 d discussion..   I am too old and  ignorant to do that stuff, but the dream would be to  scratch build some thing with Ancre ,Taubman or what ever plans, then get the 3d carvings in that scale  stateside ..also figures for my (formerly yours!)  Winnie and Confederacy in resin..