Cartoon Character Maker - A Customizable Avatar Builder

thingiverse

Updated: Now with Facial Hair! Inspired by the Nintendo Wii's "Mii", this thing is a 3D character maker - it allows the user to choose different facial features, hair, etc to make a custom 3D avatar. Hyper-realistic 3D scans are becoming more commonplace, and this is not an effort to compete - think of this more as the cartoon version of yourself, or make up a character altogether! Instructions UPDATES!! Thanks everyone for the encouragement and the feedback - this new version has a variety of small bug fixes, some reordered parameters, and a few big enhancements: -Facial hair! Now you can choose from a full beard, chin strap, goatee, stache, chops, or a soul patch. -Eyebrows! Models without glasses no longer have to leave the eyes all alone and unexpressive. -Custom hair length! You an now adjust the hair length for some hair styles at will -Dualstrusion! If you have a 2-color printer, you can now create models with hair, facial hair, glasses, and eyebrows in an alternate color. NOTE: This is a little buggy/experimental, so I'm posting a child to this design with dualstrusion contained. This model does not contain dualstrusion. First of all, this is a complex model and performance is an issue - please try to only make one change at a time, as Customizer gets a little confused if you change multiple things at a time. Please note that this thing is a work in progress - I've been working on it for a while, but if there's sufficient interest, I'll keep refining and would love some collaboration from the community! Outside of modifications, future improvements include new features in all categories as well as new categories like hats, accessories, and facial hair. Instruction: To make your custom character, start by making sure the resolution is set low - 5 to 8 - to improve rendering time. With resolution set low, just work your way through each of the selections, starting with head shape and moving into the facial features. You don't need to change the more advanced features towards the bottom, like sizes and placement of each feature, but you can use these to fine tune your model. Once you're happy with your character, adjust the head tilt to make your model printable. I've had the best success with a 40 degree tilt to minimize overhang, but have had successful prints at lower angles like 20. Lastly, increase the resolution to 15 - 25 and wait until the final rendering is complete. Save the STL and get to printing! Thanks to Tony Buser for his valuable advices.