Am I the only one thinking this kinda takes the art out of it?
Lockon13
If you're the type of person that thinks you can put together a pep file, / harden it, / sand it a little, / & then paint it, and think you have a finished piece in your hands that you're happy with, than the answer for you would be YES. And many people do just that. 3D printing takes the pep stage out of the game and many of the inaccuracies associated with it. However it brings a new set of challenges to the table as well. I still have well over 150 hours of hand sculpting into this in order to get the details the way I wanted them along with removing all the unwanted visuals associated with the 3D printer. The 3D printer is another tool that can help you build better. My finishing processes are the same with a pep-ed piece as with a 3d printed base. I guess it all comes down to what level of finshed quailty it is that you personally find to be "good enough".
I think he's talking more about using the 3D printer to add in all the detail rather than adding in all the detail by hand. It's all give and take. Yeah, you get a pretty high level of detail right off the printer when 3D printing, but there's still a lot of preparation and finish work involved with 3D printing, especially if your printing area is smaller than the model to be printed (ie. you have to digitally break down the model in to logical pieces to be able to assemble them later on). That falls in the same line with preparing a pep for print; you have to logically break the model down into parts that fit onto a sheet of paper in order to easily assemble them later on. The difference is the type and quality of material.
Obviously there was a lot of dedicated work involved to transform this...
into this...
Just like there was a lot of dedicated work to turn this...
into this...
If you ask me, it can be argued that Pepakura itself takes some of the art out of the craft, since it gives you a base shape to start with, and sometimes a very detailed base shape.