Creating the 3D printable model - Photoshop Tutorial

So far the model in our scene is an intermediary model. It looks great in Photoshop but it hasn't been converted into a 3D print-ready model yet. In this video, I'll show you how to make this transition. So let's go to 3D and 3D Print Settings. Over here in the Properties tab after you make sure that you've got everything setup the way you want it, you want to go ahead and click on this icon. Now we've briefly done this before so that we could see how Photoshop was applying different effects. Remember, this process can take a few minutes because it's doing a lot. For example, it's fusing together any separate pieces. It's also making sure that the whole model meets the minimum thickness requirements for the material or the printer you choose. This is also when it generates support scaffolding if that option was activated. If you're printing to Shapeways, Photoshop will also estimate the cost of printing based on the material and volume. However, it might be a little different from the actual price you see on Shapeways. Okay, when this is done we get a little visualization of what this is going to look like. Now, you might notice that things are a little bit thicker. For example, the tips of the horns were a little bit thin so Photoshop went ahead and thickened those things up so that they'll survive the printing process. Let's also look at the back side. You can see that where the model was infinitely thin before, now it has thickness. Let's zoom in so we can see that. So this is a great little feature. It means we don't have to worry about manually creating thickness. All we have to do is cut out a hole with opacity maps and Photoshop does the rest. All right, let me zoom back out. Okay, if you're printing to a local printer that's plugged in through USB, all you have to do is hit Print and you're good to go. Otherwise you'll want to hit Export. I'll get into exporting to Shapeways in the next video. For now, I just wanted to show you how Photoshop is taking a 3D model and preparing it for 3D printing.