Prague-based software developer Additive Appearance has signed an agreement with stop-motion studio LAIKA to make its PrismSlicer renderer part of the 3D printing toolset available to the studio's artists. The software estimates how color and translucency will look in a PolyJet print before the part is produced, with the stated goal of a predictable match between a digital design and the physical object.
The arrangement targets a recurring problem in full-color 3D printing: what appears on screen does not always carry over to the printed part, and each mismatch can mean another print round. LAIKA produces hundreds of thousands of detailed faces for every film, so trimming those extra rounds bears on both production time and quality assurance.
According to the two companies, PrismSlicer generates an initial preview of a model's color, translucency and surface appearance ahead of printing, including within LAIKA's custom studio lighting environments. The aim is to reduce the number of print iterations.
"PrismSlicer has the potential to give our artists predictive previews of their digital designs in our custom studio lighting environments," said Robert Ducey, Technical Supervisor at LAIKA. He described reliable, fast renders as a way to allow faster iteration when developing assets for full-color 3D printing and to cut development time significantly.
Initial projections from the companies indicate the visualizations could lower the number of print iterations and raise artist satisfaction through quicker feedback. These are expectations rather than measured outcomes.
A seven-month trial against production criteria
The agreement follows a seven-month trial assessed against production criteria. During that period PrismSlicer gained a command-line interface to support automation, and its simulation backend received new features intended to make the renders more realistic.
Research roots at Charles University
Additive Appearance is a spin-off of Charles University in Prague, and its team is made up of engineers and researchers. The LAIKA partnership builds on years of joint development and material research carried out with the university's Computer Graphics Group. That work addresses two problems: optically measuring the materials used in PolyJet 3D printing, and precisely matching photographs to renderings. The company says its tools are designed to work with a wide range of hardware platforms and for users across different industries.
"Their trust validates our mission to make full-color 3D printing as predictable and expressive as 2D imaging," said Tobias Rittig, CTO at Additive Appearance.
Both teams expect the collaboration to lead to further work in full-color 3D printing, including new ways of combining digital and physical workflows in creative production.
Earlier efforts to match digital color with PolyJet output
LAIKA has worked on appearance fidelity in PolyJet printing before. For Missing Link, the studio combined Stratasys J750 printers with the Cuttlefish 3D printer driver from the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research (Fraunhofer IGD) to print more than 106,000 facial expressions. Brian McLean, LAIKA's Director of Rapid Prototype at the time, attributed that choice to the software's color consistency and geometric accuracy. Cuttlefish is a voxel-based driver that works with multiple printing materials at once and accounts for light dispersion, hue and surface texture.
Stratasys approached color mismatch from another direction in 2019, when its J735 and J750 PolyJet printers received Pantone validation. The Pantone Matching System was integrated into the printers' workflow so designers and product developers could pick colors from a shared reference palette. Where that method standardizes color selection against a reference, PrismSlicer instead renders how a specific model is expected to look once printed.
LAIKA was founded in 2005 outside Portland, Oregon, and received a Scientific and Technology Oscar in 2016 for its work in 3D printing. Its newest feature, Wildwood, opens on October 23, and the studio said it selected PrismSlicer with future productions in mind. With the tool, LAIKA adds a simulation step ahead of printing to a face production process that has previously drawn on specialized appearance software.