Hello!

Me and my girlfriend is getting married in 3 weeks and we still need a wedding cake topper. My idea was to make it myself, with a 3d-printer. To do that I need 3d figure and I thought about using Sims3 for that.

My idea was: Make a 3D figure from Sims3 with two sims in wedding dress: groom and bride doing the backwards bend kiss. Save that somehow as a 3D model and get it 3D printed on my Uni. Is this possible?

First of all, congratulations!!!!

As for your question... Wellll.... It's possible, but it's not going to be easy. Using sims for this is going to be pretty tricky. The sims models are not even remotely set up for 3D printing, and getting them to work for it is not at all trivial. Hair is especially tricky because it's not really a solid "chunk" of parts usually but flat pieces, sort of like pieces of ribbon with hair texture applied. It really only works well with short hair styles. I've done it, with TS3 sim models, but I also really know my way around TS2/TS3 sim models, 3D modelling for 3D printing, and the actual 3D printing process itself, and even then it took quite a bit of work, not just to get the bits out of the game in the first place, but to make all the pieces of the sim into a closed "watertight" shape so that it could be printed at all. And that was just with the bust of one sim, pulled out of the game itself so I didn't have to pose it. I have my own 3D printer, and do 3D printing of human figures pretty much daily, and it still took me the better part of a full day just to prepare the model.

If you're already an accomplished 3D artist and know all about how to make manifold shapes and whatnot, then I think you've got a really realistic goal and would just need to know how to get the rigged models out of TS2. If you are not experienced with 3D modelling/printing, then I think you'd probably have too big a learning curve to climb in the time available unless you are exceptionally clever and a very fast learner. Without the prior experience necessary, I think you'd be better off going on Thingiverse and finding an existing cake topper and having that printed, or seeing if you can commission a 3D artist to do some posed figures for you - I know the forums on Shapeways have an area for just that sort of thing.

Thank you!

I thought it was easy just to use some sort of pose program for Sims 3 and put them in the desired pose, then save the model in some way and print it. I don't have any experience with 3D modeling at all (very little), and don't have the time for it now either, and I could get it printed free on my university, so paying money isn't really a subject, since we can just buy a figure in any other cake store. The make it yourself was the fun of it. But guess I'll have to try to make me a more simple figure or just buy one.

Can you recommend a program for 3D modeling?

I somehow missed that it was meant to be using TS3 models and you've quoted my post so editing it would be weird but in any case it's basically the same doing it for TS2 or TS3. Actually slightly more versatile for TS2 as you can get the actual sculpted sim's face out with relative ease vs. TS3 where it's damn near impossible. But either way, yeah still pretty tricky.

I know a lot of people use Google Sketchup, though I'm not sure about the way it exports files without paying for it. I personally use 3DS Max but it's pretty high-end, cost-wise. Other folks use Blender, which is free, but has a learning curve like a sheer cliff. Milkshape is a popular option among simmers (and probably good to have if you do decide to try it with sims, as it's the only thing with plugins that I know of that will get you a rigged sim rather than an un-poseable one).

You might also look into DAZ 3D, which is free and has poseable figures - you'll run into the same issues as with TS3 that they're not made for 3D printing, but they are a LOT easier to pose since that's the whole point of it. Would also want to get yourself a copy of Netfabb Basic (also free) which can somewhat auto-repair non-manifold models to make a non-printable model printable, but it won't be a replacement for doing it manually to get the worst of the holes/gaps/etc. taken care of.