Eric Finley and Aaron Trocola rock! I am continually astounded by the helpfulness and kindness of the Shapeways community.

As you know we recently introduced color 3D printing. To upload and create a color 3D printed file you have to work with a texture map and the VRML file format. These are both unfamiliar to a lot of people. Aaron therefore spend a considerable amount of time making a clear and well illustrated tutorial explaining the texture mapping of VRML files. His tutorial shows you how you can use the free Google Sketchup tool combined with the free and open source tool Meshlab to easily make textures out of images. His example of a simple photo frame is clear and the tutorial is a huge help to our community.  I would like to thank Aaron so so much. You can check out the tutorial which will help 3D modelers from noobs to ninjas deal with texture maps here. Besides writing super tutorials Aaron is Aeron203 on Shapeways and has some really well designed items in his Shop.

Just having one person such as Aaron do something so helpful would be amazing but over the past weekend we had two. Eric Finley made his Shapeways Tools Script for Blender. This script integrates and builds upon the work of another awesome member Loonsbury. Loonsbury’s pricing script for Blender is now included in Eric’s Tools. This means that community members have now made tools for Blender as well as for 3D Max in the form of Virtox‘s excellent pricing script. 

Eric’s Shapeways Tools for Blender include a completely automatic wall thickness check. You are not dreaming. The script even color codes your wall thicknesses so you can see where your problems lie and just how problematic the walls are, right within Blender! Please help Eric by giving him feedback for his awesome app. You can check out his great fantasy Shop here.