Why Hollywood loves 3D printing
The movie industry is beginning to see how much value 3D printing offers, especially on effects-heavy films that are made with huge numbers of 3D digital models.
If you've seen "Iron Man 2," you've seen 3D printing in action at a very high level.
When director Jon Favreau and Paramount Pictures were making the hit 2010 film, they needed to find the best way to put together a physical Iron Man suit for certain scenes in the movie that couldn't be computer generated.
Rather than build models by hand, as was long the practice in Hollywood, the filmmakers turned to 3D printing, one of the hottest technologies around.
Indeed, in the film's scenes that were done in live-action -- as opposed to CGI (computer-generated imagery) -- its star, Robert Downey, Jr., can be seen wearing a suit that was first digitally modeled, then produced in pieces on a sophisticated 3D printer, and then painted.
Though it's not a technique that's much discussed outside the industry, 3D printing is increasingly being adopted as a way to help make movies more efficiently and quickly than ever, according to Jason Lopes, a system engineer at Legacy Effects, an Oscar-nominated effects studio. ...
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