Interesting 3D Printing Service

There's a commercial 3D printing service online now - this could be interesting for 3D terrain?

http://www.shapeways.com/

wow this is so cool! Gonne dust off my copy of Sculptris now i think...

wow - super cool.. now I wanna learn 3D (again) :)

That is so stinking cool!
I believe I could create 3d with my hands but so far I think I suck at digital 3d. I should have been a potter I think.

If anyone has a desperate need to make a real 3D block from a height map then PM me and I can sort that out. Its not a cheap thing but easily doable.

i'm wondering what program to use for this. I learned som 3D studio Max about 10 years ago - but that program cost about as much as a trip to the moon. Are there any freeware programs (or cheap) that are easy to use and yet can produce good quality 3D ??

Wilbur ?

And you can create height maps from contours which I have done and semi-tutted a few times. Its hard to create really good terrain from hand drawn contours but you can use Wilbur to spruce them up a bit.

You can download height map DEM data which I do all the time like for my failed NY challenge entry or the Japan challenge etc. You can create it from existing reference material like what we do in the ME-DEM project for middle earth but thats hard. I write my free instant islands app to generate random noise terrain or you can synth up some Perlin or similar of which Su-Liam does here by using lib noise or something else.

Free good 3D app is Blender - but I would say good as in powerful but not necessarily easy to use... people have mixed feelings about that app - or should I say there are mixed opinions from people about it - yes probably the latter. There is sketchup as well though thats not really for doing the terrain part of 3D worlds.

If your dead set on using a 3D printer as opposed to some other method then you will almost certainly need a file format of STL - the stereo lithography format. Blender has that and I think there are sketchup converters for it. I expect that 3D studio and all the big guns have it too, plus POVray, but it might be less popular on light weight 3D apps as its more of a CAM format than a graphics format.

cool, thanks for that Redrobes, I wasn't thinking of terrain though, more generating 3D objects for all sorts of fun. My first thought were a nice present for my wife for her birthday, and even though she's a roleplayer, I'm guessing she don't want a mountain range *lol*

I'm not sure POVray can export STL (or anything much!) - it's generally a very "selfish" tool ! At this moment in time the povray site appears to be down so I can't check but...
Blender can export STL, so that's your best bet I think, but I can't speak from any experience.

Djespek talked about Blender too, and now you guys... I guess I better download it and have a look :)