My Husband The Action Figure. Complete With Redshirt And Tricorder

My friend Ellen in Germany saw a recent story about getting 3D printed action figures on her blog recently (see Creativ Zeit)

However, my brother-in-law Mitch and I had already conspired together to produce this masterpiece:

This came about because Mitch found a website that with a few photos could generate a Star Trek action figure of your choice with your head or the head of a loved one on it. He also found a website that could generate .OBJ files, which can be opened in Blender.

So I told David I was working on a weird “art project” for Second Life in Blender and told him I needed him to take my picture “in the round” so I could see if I could generate a 3D head in Blender… and then added, “let me take your picture too, so I have a couple of things to work with.”

Worked like a charm.

I ended up taking a shit-ton of photos of David, as he rotated around in an unused office chair upstairs in the guest bedroom, and I have a similar number of photos that he took of me. The results were only sort of okay looking in Blender; David’s head was malformed due to the website software having trouble differentiating between the pale wall behind him and the pale reflected light on the side of his head.

My 3D head image came out a bit better, but had an odd cast in the eye.

David didn’t want his 360-degree head getting out there in the wild, but he really likes his action figure. For the record, he’s Engineering, not a “redshirt.” And Mitch and I agreed that the tricorder was the prop of choice.