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Awesome work Hauk and Lawrence! You have set me up nicely for success. It seems like this is taking off in the MRR world as well. I see that Doug over at Foscale models has released his first figures. I suspect using this exact same method in his "Humanity to Scale" series.

https://fosscalemodels.com/collections/humanity-to-scale

Also Bernard over at miniprints offers a 3D figure from a photo which I am sure uses meshy.

Things are moving pretty fast in this AI space.

Hi Hauk

Based on your last reference image, Meshy delivered the attached. It took longer to sort the images for this post and write it than it did to produce the models! Each model is 17-18MB, and nearly 400,000 polygons, so plenty of data. At 1:64 they would be great.  I think they would be good in larger scales too. More detailed than many offerings, but some of the artefacts might be more obvious.

The first view is in my slicing software, which doesn't always render smoothly.  The other two images are the same figures in another viewer.

As you can see each try differs a bit.  The software seems to struggle with headgear and the caps could do with some some additional sculpting.

Experience suggests that these would print well.  They generally look better too as these viewers tend to distort the perspective a fair bit.

I'm happy to share the models if they are useful to you.

Hi Hauk, you've latched on to my latest approach.

I've subscribed to ChatGPT and Meshy, which does open up possibilities and speed things up quite a lot.

My broad approach now for a specific figure is as follows (and close to yours) - but it does vary a bit case by case. For generic figures it can be better to give the software more free rein as you get a smoother result with less artifacts.

• Find a reference image
• Use ChatGPT to isolate the figure, repose and generate multiple views.  Multiple views may not always be needed, but where the unseen side is not obvious from the original image, additional images may provide the data.
• Use the references in Meshy. Try a single view first, or the multi (paid option) view if needed
• Meshy gives you 4 free retries.  This is useful as they differ a bit and one is generally superior to the others for my purposes
• Export stl without resize (important to preserve poly count)
• Tweak in Blender if required.  Typically adding a bit of additional depth to feet is useful and some simple sculpting to touch up details if needed.

I ran out of files, but as you can see, the Overalls of the worker has turned into a jacket during the prosess. Here is a screen dump of the .stl:



So I went back to ChatGPT to make a better starting image. I will look more into this workflow, but It seems like the best route is to ma a set of images in ChatGPT that shows the figure from more sides. For now, I had only time to make the overalls more detailed:



What a weird time to be a modeller...

A very interesting thread!

I think a hybrid approch would be the way to go for me. I need figures for my workshop diorama. I have some period images that I can use as a starting point. This fella has the right outfit, but the pose is a bit passive:



Then I used ChatGPT to get him working on the lathe:



Clothing and details seems to have preserved pretty well. Regarding the lathe, I feel that ChatGPT is not yet up to the task...

I played a little with my Hitem3D free credits during my lunch, break and things indeed look promseing:



All in all this little excercise took under 30minutes, including writing this post. With a little tweaking both of the images and the 3D model, this could really be something.

But really bad news for companies for Modelu...

Quote from: lab-dad on February 19, 2026, 03:16:53 PMThanks guys!
I like the walnut for its color.
Doesn't need much to look good.

Russ, what can we build you?😜

Mj

At his age a rocking chair!!!! 

Jerry

Thanks guys!
I like the walnut for its color.
Doesn't need much to look good.

Russ, what can we build you?😜

Mj

Thank you for what is becoming a very useful clinic on AI for modeling. -- Russ

Outstanding woodwork. But what else would we expect from the creator of custom wood furniture? -- Russ

Looks like you used walnut.  A pretty up-scale turntable!

Stuart