MikeTrice

No, I thought I would use it initially but ended up modifying the MakeHuman generated forms in Blender.

Made some changes to poses which together with mirroring the model in the slicer gives a number of variations. Hopefully careful painting will give more variety: Some additional cleanup would not go amiss. I think I have as many as I need so if anyone fancies having a go here are the stl files. Figures are low resolution. Basic Female Sitting Cross Legged.stl Basic Female Sitting Looking Ahead.stl Basic Female Sitting Looking Right.stl Basic Male Sitting Looking Ahead.stl Basic Male Sitting Looking Right.stl

Thanks. As far as modelling the base figure and rescanning I hit problems with getting the epoxy putty thin enough to add things like shoes so I ended up with a rethink. In the end I added a 1930's hairstyle and dress to the original MakeHuman generated stl. Good enough for 4mm: In reality the figures are bare foot, but I suspect on painting it will not be obvious.

There is an upgrade kit from my Shapeways shop (see link in signature). Referred to here:

Easily done.

Yes, more supports, however if you have printed them before then perhaps they are OK.

Before using, investigate whether it is prudent to fit a screen protector. Mono screens do not tend to have a protective glass layer on top.

My gut feeling is the chimneys need more supports.

Would be interesting to hear what they advise. I assume you have the latest firmware installed.

There are some comments on the polarising film and the Mars Pro 2 here:

I am hoping a Mars 2 Pro owner might chip in here but I have a bad feeling that the layer you have removed is the top Polarising Filter not just a protective cover. The Mono screens are very prone to damage and ideally should have an additional screen protector applied to protect it. If you go back a few pages in this topic you will see how I did it on my Mono X. So I think you need to source and fit a new polarising screen, without it your prints will not work. Try Elegoo support as I believe they are very helpful albeit outside of my experience. You will eventually need to relevel your build plate and having done so reset Z=0. Note that Z=0 is not the same setting the printer goes to when pressing the "Home" button". Hope this helps.

The Mars 2 Pro is a mono screen I believe. When you said earlier you had removed the protective film from the screen I assume that you did not remove any polarizing film? Unlike the earlier machines the monos are not protected by an outer glass layer and as you discovered it is very easy to damage the screens. When you removed the protective film did you relevel and reset Z=0? Sorry if some of these questions are a bit basic but we need to rule out the obvious first.

Did the FEP film have a protective layer on it that you remembered to remove? What model of Mars are we talking about here?

A few observations if I may? I assume the printer has worked correctly previously. If so what has changed (I am thinking something like a new version of the slicer, updated firmware, replaced FEP etc)? What slicer are you using? Do you have something that has printed correctly in the past, such as the tower test piece, that you can print without reslicing? Is there a later version of the firmware available or later release for the slicer program?

Not brilliant but by the time it is reduced to 4mm it should be ok.

Continuing the experiment I have modified the initial pose of the female figure slightly and printed it off on the Mono X. Slightly bigger than I envisaged but should make it easier to rescan: Next job is to start hair styling and dressing in late 30's style. Will be using this as a reference:

I wanted to ivestigate the possibility of 3D Printing, in quantity, some 4mm scale passengers for a coach. There are some collections of .stl models available for a price which I am too mean to consider. Trying to model them from scratch was also deemed too much effort. A search of the internet led me to this article: https://www.16mm.org.uk/2021/01/01/january-2021-3d-printed-passengers-for-open-coaches/ Inspired by that article I downloaded MakeHuman and started to have a play. The range of clothing is fairly limited as are hairstyles, however when adding them and then exporting to .stl for printing they were badly non-manifold. MakeHuman comes with a number of predefined poses which are what I used, however it also has the ability for the figures to be imported into Blender and posed there. In the end, as an experiment, I exported the unclothed figures and spent time trying to resize them then printed them on my Anycubic Mono X with 0.02 layer height: I thought that these might make a useful starting point so my plan at present is to print them several times larger, modify them with Milliput, then use photogrammetry to scan them back in, resize and print. Another option worth investigating is a piece of software called MB-Lab which does something similar.

Well I was all ready to do some prints on the Photon this morning but suddenly had an epiphany moment. I was expecting far too much of anti-aliasing. I will try to explain but it will largely be words, any attempt at photography is not proving helpful. So lets start with how anti-aliasing works. Without AA a voxel, which is a rectangular prism defined in size as being 1 pixel of the screen * the layer height, is the smallest printable unit. When printing a sphere, as in my test piece, the angle of the sides varies around the sphere with the equator being as near as possible to 90 degrees to the horizontal and the poles being near 0 degrees. When printing, as that angle moves from 90 degrees to 0, the stepping becomes more pronounced. Enter anti-aliasing. When enabled the slicer software generates images that enable printing of halftones (sort of). When a halftone is encountered by the printer it exposes that voxel for a shorter period of time which resulting a in bubble forming adjacent to an already printed voxel effectively pushing the voxel out in the horizontal direction. Vertical height is controlled by the distance between the build plate and the last layer of the print so AA can only impact horizontally. The AA setting determines how many halftones are created and applied so given an AA setting of 8 means the bubble can expand from 0 to 7/8ths of a voxel. Still with me? So basically anti-aliasing can only adjust the width of a voxel to a limited degree. So what does ths mean to our sphere? Well the top layering that is very evident is more of less unaffected by AA as a fraction of a voxel difference has minimal visible effect when the step is several voxels in width. It is only when we look nearer to the sphere's equator can some form of difference be seen and only then under magnification. So it appears AA is working but I was setting my expectations way too high. As @jcl observed some of the artifacts on the sides of the sphere printed smoother which fits in with my new found theory. Thinking this through further AA will be most noticable with the angle being between roughly (it really depends on layer height) 45 and 90 degrees to the horizontal which is why when I was comparing the stepping on the top of the sphere I could not see any difference. Sphere on left has been printed at 0.04mm layer height with no anti-aliasing the one on the right with an anti-aliasing value of 4 using chitubox 1.8.1. Depending on where you get visible stepping it might be that the only option is to print at a lower layer height with the consequence that print times will increase. Alternatively find a position on the test sphere with minimum layering and angle your print to correspond.

What I should really do is print the test piece on my original Photon.

I would agree. The printing is very fine and I think you will find with no AA the same result. As you say hard to see with the naked eye. What is interesting, and useful with the test piece, is seeing how the stepping changes around the circumference which might help determine printing angles in relation to "Z"

Sure is.

He is the only person I have heard of that claims it works, many others find it does not. Irrespective of Anti Aliasing I believe there was a print quality improvement when 3.4.7 was released which Eilte Geek is mistaking for AA working. What he does not do is compare a non AA print under 3.4.7 with an AA enabled print under 3.4.7.

Hover over his avatar with the mouse (assuming you are using one) and you will see "Message".

I have now finished printing samples using both Lychee and Photon Workshop all with anti-aliasing settings. As with the earlier examples there are no dicernable differences which leads me to conclude that firmware version 3.4.7 does NOT restore the missing anti-aliasing functionality despite assurances to the contrary.

I mentioned earlier having to resort to using the supplied metal scraper to get a flat-on-the-bed moulding off and the possible damage to the build plate it caused. Following recommendations on the various support groups I have purchased some scrapers fitted with plastic razor blades like this one: They work brilliantly and do not cause any damage, so a good investment. There have been reports of Anti Aliasing not working on the Mono X. In spite of updating the firmware to 3.4.7 as suggested I could not find any evidence that it was working. As it was something I used with my OG Photon it was proving frustrating. First off I needed a simple test piece that I could try the various settings on: The test piece (attached) is a simple hollow sphere 3cm in diameter that is printed flat on the build plate. There is a vent hole to avoid any suction issues and act as a handy visual reference as to the sphere's orientation on the build plate. Being spherical the impact of any stepping of the print can be examined and the impact at different positions assessed allowing for a good educated guess at the best orientation of any future component. Various prints were done at 0.040 layer thickness ranging from no anti-aliasing enabled to 2, 4 and 8. The last test was with blur set to 8: There is no physical difference in the quality of the prints, so either anti-aliasing is not working in firmware 3.4.7 or not working in Chitubox 1.8.0 and 1.8.1. I am currently trying a print using lychee and I guess I should also do one with the Photon Workshop. The only physical difference, unsurprisingly, was printing the test piece with a lower layer height, in this case 0.020 (0.040 on left) : Anti_Alias.stl