Prague-based software developer Additive Appearance has signed an agreement with stop-motion studio LAIKA to add its PrismSlicer renderer to the 3D printing tools available to the studio's artists. The software estimates how color and translucency will look in a PolyJet print before a part is produced, with the goal of a predictable match between the digital design and the physical object.
The agreement addresses a recurring problem in full-color 3D printing: what appears on screen does not always translate to the printed part, and each mismatch can mean another print. LAIKA prints hundreds of thousands of detailed faces for every film, so reducing those extra rounds affects both production time and quality assurance.
Simulating appearance before printing
PrismSlicer generates an initial preview of a model's color, translucency and surface appearance ahead of printing, including under LAIKA's custom studio lighting environments, with the aim of cutting the number of print iterations.
Robert Ducey, Technical Supervisor at LAIKA, said the software has the potential to give the studio's artists predictive previews of their digital designs in its custom studio lighting environments. He described this as a crucial advancement in the studio's capabilities that allows faster iterations when developing assets for full-color 3D printing, adding that reliable, fast renders have the potential to reduce development time significantly.
Initial projections cited by the companies indicate the visualizations could lower the number of print iterations and raise artist satisfaction through quicker feedback.
Seven-month trial measured against production criteria
The collaboration was framed around a seven-month trial assessed against production criteria. During that period, PrismSlicer gained a command-line interface to support automation, and its simulation backend received new features intended to make the renders more realistic.
Research roots at Charles University
Additive Appearance is a spin-off of Charles University in Prague, and its team is made up of engineers and researchers. The partnership with LAIKA builds on years of joint development and material research carried out with the university's Computer Graphics Group. That work addresses two problems: optically measuring the materials used in PolyJet 3D printing, and precisely matching photographs to renderings. The company says it designs its tools to work with a wide range of hardware platforms and for users across different industries.
Tobias Rittig, CTO at Additive Appearance, said LAIKA's trust validates the company's mission to make full-color 3D printing as predictable and expressive as 2D imaging.
Both teams expect the collaboration to lead to further work in full-color 3D printing, including new ways to combine digital and physical workflows in creative production.
Earlier efforts to match digital color with PolyJet output
LAIKA has worked on appearance fidelity in PolyJet printing before. For Missing Link, the studio combined Stratasys J750 printers with the Cuttlefish 3D printer driver from the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research (Fraunhofer IGD) to print more than 106,000 facial expressions. Brian McLean, LAIKA's Director of Rapid Prototype at the time, attributed that choice to the software's color consistency and geometric accuracy. Cuttlefish is a voxel-based driver that works with multiple printing materials at once and accounts for light dispersion, hue and surface texture to reproduce a model's appearance in the printed part.
Stratasys approached color mismatch from another direction in 2019, when its J735 and J750 PolyJet printers received Pantone validation. The Pantone Matching System was integrated into the printers' workflow so designers and product developers could select colors from a shared reference palette and avoid misinterpretation, shortening production time. That method standardizes color selection against a reference, whereas PrismSlicer renders how a specific model will look once printed.
LAIKA was founded in 2005 outside Portland, Oregon, and received a Scientific and Technology Oscar in 2016 for its work in 3D printing. Its newest feature, Wildwood, opens on October 23; the studio said it selected PrismSlicer with future productions in mind.