Sharper AI 3D model textures, fewer defects, cleaner colors

Three things got better in GrandpaCAD's organic models, the sculpted ones like characters, creatures and figurines:

• Fewer defects in the surface
• Improved textures, on every side of the model
• Better color segmentation for multi-color prints

Fewer defects

Smooth surfaces used to come out with dents and holes now and then. Out of 60 test models, 9 had them. Now 5 of those come out clean, and across all 9 the median share of broken surface went from 35% to 3%.

The shape itself now comes from IDOL, a newer image-to-3D model that came out sharper and closer to the picture in its authors' benchmark.

Improved textures

Your picture shows one side of a thing. GrandpaCAD used to paint that side sharp and guess the rest: great from the angle you drew, a half-melted toy from anywhere else. Now it redraws the sides and back too. Move your mouse to look around this griffin, or drag it on a phone:

Its picture showed its right side, so its left eye was never in it. Before, that eye was a greenish smudge. Now it's an eye:

On the characters I tested, the share of the surface with real detail went from 24% to 64%. Game assets and render models both get it.

2K or 4K textures?

Render models get a 2K texture (2048 × 2048), and game assets get 1K with a normal map. You can ask the agent for 4K, but for now it isn't worth it: the engine underneath often doesn't produce the fine detail that 4K would show. On the griffin, 4K took the detailed surface from 77% to 78%, took 78 seconds longer and made the file more than twice as big.

Better color segmentation

Models for 3D printing come as a 3MF painted in your filaments, four unless you say otherwise, so Bambu Studio, OrcaSlicer and PrusaSlicer assign them without asking. Small parts used to get lost when the colors were split up: the robot lost its face, the fox an eye, the knight its gems and visor slits. Now they keep their own color, and the borders between colors come out as smooth lines.

On all 8 test models, every eye, slit and gem made it into the print, and none had a speck of stray color smaller than 1 mm². Converting the same textured models in Bambu Studio left up to 162 of those specks. The multi-color 3D printing post has more on printing them.