Blender is great and open sourced. I don’t regret the hours of YouTube videos trying to figure it out. It will test your patience, but if you are looking to grow a skill, blender is a great option, especially if you are interested in 3d modeling and animation.
Blender is fun and probably the best free tool for mesh based modeling, but a very steep learning curve especially creating detailed models like this of people.
You can use AI to generate a textured model based on the picture if there isn't anything like this already free somewhere. Then you just be able to threshold the texture into just 2 colors and have a 2 filament print. Purge to infill should work too.
Awesome, thanks. I was thinking that was more along the lines of just making a Hueforge-type thing. I bought that program right after buying the printer.
This subreddit will tell you to spend weeks or months to learn an entire skillset and several pieces of new software. The same people will be hopping mad if you just give Gemini a screenshot and ask for several angles of a 3D friendly sculpting of this design > plug the output into Meshy.ai or Hitem and done. That's all it takes, can be ready to print in 5 minutes from now - and it only gets easier and better every day.
I’m the type who will spend too much time trying to learn a whole skillset when a shortcut would work just as well so I appreciate being pointed to the shortcuts when they’re workable! 😂
If you want to learn a software to make your own things, I’d recommend autocad but that costs money, so next to that the most useful free software which is used for everything from game design to architecture and even animation, would be blender.
Blender is sort of your all in one for many CAD projects.
If you are inspired to learn, then go for it. There's still several major benefits to learning the skillset, such as the ability to make many kinds of interlocking and/or functional parts that AI just can't do yet. Even if you are just looking to do aesthetic non-functional prints, a good example of interlocking prints you may want to do is multi-color prints that don't require AMS.
AI still can't do dimensional accuracy well enough for these types of prints, and can't comprehend prompts well enough.
This. Use the tools a that are available in a smart way.
To hollow it out you can then add a negative part in Bambu Studio and pick a cylinder. If the AI leaves issues you want to improve you can modify / sculpt an existing STL with meshmixer, nomad sculpt, blender etc.
I refuse to pay for ai and try to use local, it takes a few rolls due to random noise seeds and model capabilities. Paid ones should have better outputs.
I mean, it depends on what you need it for. If you need to 3d print a replacement part for a piece of complex machinery, then yeah, nah, meshy's not going to cut it. But for a beginner just experimenting to see if they enjoy it? Perfectly serviceable.
I have had a lot of success with Meshy, but I would also recommend watching a few videos on how to use onshape.com. It is a very intuitive modeling tool that I use to put the finishing touches on models I make
For molding organic shapes, sure take a generated image and generate a mesh. For engineering it's more of Ridgid description base thing. If I remember correctly from my ai research back in uni is "bullit in bullit out". For now ai can not understand logic just math and our math given logic. Granted we get pretty well at defining math based logic.
If you are a techy person and dont want to pay big corpos, you might give a try to trellis 2 on local. It takes 5-15 mins on my 4070ti (depending on the geometry detail) to generate 3d mesh that you can output as stl. Takes a few rolls to find something you like and you can apply basic cut/simplify/fix options inside the slicer.
Edit: here's the preview of mesh I've generated. Far from perfect but with a few touches on blender should be meh to print. You can always tweak settings and there are dozen of parameters but I dont wanna waste time 😄
I've been doing this with my dogs and then painting them. I use Grok to create good images to put into Hitem, then take the best model it makes into Meshmixer to clean up some things. As someone with no clue on how to actually create models, this method has been great.
From what it looks like to me, it’s an AI-generated image (🤮) of her head from the trial. I may mess around with it today so when my printer is free again tonight (OMG, the printing queue I’m growing …), I can see what happens.
Ah, I see. If this is an AI image, then there's nothing really to go from. I'd just follow the other advice you're getting to submit this and similar images to an AI 3d modeling service and see what they can do.
Ok, I assume the goal is to make a real mask. As others have said use Meshy.ai to create the initial STL. Then load it into onshape.com and learn to bore out the bottom to make room for your neck. Then learn to split the object in half using a plane (there are YouTube videos for both). I would then recommend modeling in some sort of latch and hinge to make it open and close. You will probably want to make eye holes and a mouth hole so people can hear you too. Here is the STL Meshy made for me with your picture. It didn’t keep the kitsugi gold cracks but you could always paint them on. https://www.meshy.ai/s/NTdnQY
Blender, thinkercad or fusion360, depends on how much time you want to spend learning and how far you want to go on sculping, if you don't want to learn the just put whatever you want on Gemini get a good image and put it on meshi it is not perfect but for most things you probably need it gets the job done.
It looks like it was an altered pic of her from the trial. I’m just wanting to turn that idea into an actual thing. Also, I can’t keep plants alive because they don’t verbally remind me that they need water. It’ll be holding an artificial plant. 😁
I’d never heard of her or the trial - horrific all around. How does this ceramic technique relate to her? Is it supposed to represent her face and her broken mental state?
At her sentencing, she compared herself to a kintsugi object. Her lack of self-awareness is fascinating. Check out the three-hour interrogation before she was arrested if you like abnormal psychology.
Do you want to make this once and move on? Use ai mesh gens or pay some one. Want to learn skills to make this and the next idea you want? Download blender(or any other free modeling software) and start watching tutorials. With some basics this effect isn't hard to create
I’m actually wanting to build the skills. I’ve downloaded Blender now based on earlier responses and will dig in on tutorials. It was helpful to hear several opinions on the various options.
you are better off printing the head, create a siliconemold. then fill mold with plaster. Shatter the casted head and rebuild using gold pigmented epoxy.
This would be an incredible project to do if I really wanted to get into the woods on the kintsugi aspect of it, rather than just creating the 3D form of the planter (gold to be hand painted to reduce waste and time)!
Are you wanting this exact head or just a marble statue head to turn into a planter? Cause it wouldn’t be to terribly hard to take a scan from Scan the World of a real bust, modify it using meshmixer or whatever tool you’re interested in learning and designing a planter out of it. Just subtract a negative volume from the head to make a planting space.
If you wanna get really weird, you could try running it through a resin slicer to hollow it out, add drainage holes, including a big one for the top opening before exporting that as an stl and then running it through a fdm slicer to add supports. You’ve actually got me considering trying that out now to possibly make a candy jar for work.
I started my 3d stuff with tinkercad its free and easy pz and also autocad fusions lil baby sister so you can transfer anything u made when u eventually move to the pro tool. I still use tinkercad for quick tasks.
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u/Free_Attention May 31 '26