====== Blender workflow for color printing ======

===== Create object in Blender: =====

  * Do your generic 3D print prep work
  * UV-Unwrap the object.
    * It's best to use a manual unwrapping method (mark edges) as the smart UV unwrap leaves visible marks on the texture. <wrap hi>(Although this might be solved when increasing the gap between islands)</wrap>
    * Make sure to have large gaps between islands <wrap hi>(can a safe minimum be calculated?)</wrap>
    * <wrap hi>Problem with visible seams in 3DPrint: is it because it's texture downsampling option?</wrap>
  * Open the texture and lay out the UV (or use Cycles to bake the 3D view to the texture)
    * A texture of 2048x2048px should work fine for medium sized objects. Alpha enabled, 32 bit float unchecked.
  * Save as a PNG file, so it's external to the project.
  * connect your texture to the **Principaled BSDF shader**, and the shader to the material surface output. This might look bad, but otherwise the texture is not linked in the exported .mtl file.
    * https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/149081/mtl-file-after-exporting-comes-without-texture-map-map-kd
  * Export as OBJ & set Path type: copy (blender copies texture file to destination folder)

===== Open object in 3D Sprint: =====

  * Open the OBJ file (the texture file will be automatically loaded)
  * Optionally make hollow, put in holes and perform pre-print checks
  * Export 3D model as VRML (.wrl) file. (The texture file will be exported as well)

===== Then open object in 3DPrint: =====

  * Open the exported .wrl file and check if the texture is present.
  * Place on the build platform (the back end is more stable)
  * Click 'Tools > Build Time Estimator' (button) to get info for the part cost excel file.
  * Start printing


Notes
  * The textures in 3DSprint might appear extremely low resolution. The VRML file however is exported in full resolution.
    * This is a render setting (purely visual). Go to settings to change to high quality texture rendering.
  * Blender: speckles on bake are caused by overlapping mesh geometry. Remesh and they should go away.
  * 3DPrint: visible seams: avoid using a large texture file. Keep it 2x2K. Allow more space between islands.
    * experiment with alpha or non-alpha