No actually I'm not, and I don't pick on you, you demand unreasonable things from me.
Heavy statuettes revealed
- Thread starter YM
- Start date
No actually I'm not, and I don't pick on you, you demand unreasonable things from me.
eyefork
L3: Member
- Oct 27, 2008
- 130
- 186
Yeah, the materials and printing are expensive, as well as the hand assembly and painting. I like how people assume the employees are underpaid simply because they're Asian. Oh yeah, and that's totally a sweatshop
Pc_Madness
L4: Comfortable Member
- Aug 31, 2009
- 164
- 51
*bump* No shipping yet?
WastedMeerkat
L3: Member
- Aug 15, 2009
- 144
- 142
Valve time is infectious.
Follow their facebook thing, you'll get regular updates. (by that I mean roughly once a month)
They're currently in quality control and will ship in ~3 weeks. Then you've got to wait at least another 3 weeks for their big ol' boat (the one you can see in granary) to get to your country, then another week for it to actually get to you.
The answer I got about if the staff ones were in this bunch was a little vague, but I believe they are. So I won't have to wait any longer for mine.
As for being charged, you'll get charged as soon as they actually ship, so make sure that money is in your account!
- Sep 12, 2008
- 1,272
- 1,142
HHH (Headless Horseless Heavy) spotted as well
...Just ask the Black Mesa team.
Dragonstorm24
L4: Comfortable Member
- Nov 16, 2009
- 196
- 66
It's like the terracotta warriors, I wonder if that's what the medic would be buried with
Mariner
L2: Junior Member
- Jan 16, 2011
- 59
- 20
The sad thing is that, at least in my experience, Asian laborers are capable of exquisite craftsmanship.
My mother ordered a porcelain teacup and lid (now discontinued) from the Republic of Tea. This thing felt like it was made of glass because it was less than 1/8" thick, and featured an exquisite raised dragon and flower motif, all hand glazed and immaculately ivory white. Shipped from and made in China, packed in recycled perforated-cardboard, and broken by us in about two weeks by dropping the thing from 5 feet off the floor. :blushing:
The funny thing is, although it was being discontinued, it was still incredibly cheap, especially for how well it was made. When ever companies use outsourced labor to create poorly made products, it's not always the fault of the workers. It's simply what the company tells them to make.
As for the proportion problems and the idea of using 3D printers, from what I understand, it's a matter of scale and material. Even large objects often require hand-polishing and remolding depending on how fine the base material's grain is.
Also, if you directly imported the in-game geometry into the printer, it would look terrible, and no matter how you sand it, it would never look like the normal mapped and smoothing grouped model as rendered through the engine. I'm sure Valve has the original, high-poly reference mesh that they took normal maps from, but it's possible that it's proportions differ quite a bit from the game model due to poly reduction.
In the end, a traditional sculptor may actually be more effective at translating the in-game appearance of the character models than a direct printing, though obviously you still have the issue of quality control and proportions, the latter of which we might not have an accurate gauge of due to lens distortion.
My mother ordered a porcelain teacup and lid (now discontinued) from the Republic of Tea. This thing felt like it was made of glass because it was less than 1/8" thick, and featured an exquisite raised dragon and flower motif, all hand glazed and immaculately ivory white. Shipped from and made in China, packed in recycled perforated-cardboard, and broken by us in about two weeks by dropping the thing from 5 feet off the floor. :blushing:
The funny thing is, although it was being discontinued, it was still incredibly cheap, especially for how well it was made. When ever companies use outsourced labor to create poorly made products, it's not always the fault of the workers. It's simply what the company tells them to make.
As for the proportion problems and the idea of using 3D printers, from what I understand, it's a matter of scale and material. Even large objects often require hand-polishing and remolding depending on how fine the base material's grain is.
Also, if you directly imported the in-game geometry into the printer, it would look terrible, and no matter how you sand it, it would never look like the normal mapped and smoothing grouped model as rendered through the engine. I'm sure Valve has the original, high-poly reference mesh that they took normal maps from, but it's possible that it's proportions differ quite a bit from the game model due to poly reduction.
In the end, a traditional sculptor may actually be more effective at translating the in-game appearance of the character models than a direct printing, though obviously you still have the issue of quality control and proportions, the latter of which we might not have an accurate gauge of due to lens distortion.