Mesh processing for better perceptual quality 3D printed relief

Abstract

Making art craft is one of the most important application areas of 3D printing. But due to the limited 3D printer resolution, the perceptual quality of the printing result is always low, especially when the input mesh is a relief. To solve this problem, we only operate the geometrical shape of the input triangle mesh so there is no need to change existing 3D printing technology. We provide an integrated mesh processing to make a better perceptual quality print, consists of feature extraction, 3D print preview, feature preservation test, and shape enhancement. It can locate features that need to be enhanced for adaptive enhancement without large-scale deformation. And there is a user interface visualizes the intermediate processes to improve ease of use. The processed triangle meshes are printed out in order to judge our method. The effectiveness of our approach is confirmed by comparing the photographs of original and enhanced 3D prints.