Short answer – rarely. But patching up the high poly game asset for print is not too difficult.
Detailed high poly game models are used for a few reasons in the game development pipeline. For “next gen” titles, the high poly models are used for normal, ambient occlusion and diffuse maps. They are also used for cinematics, or pre-visualization, or even box art.
High poly game models can have open, non “watertight”, single sided surfaces and still work for rendering and generation of normal maps. These open meshes are the major problem for the printing pipeline. To print successfully, a mesh needs to be a closed volume, all normals facing outward, and watertight.
High poly game models can also rely on their own displacement maps for rendering and normal map generation. If the displacement hasn’t been baked, and only comes into effect during rendering, obviously it will be non-existent during the printing process.
High poly game models are produced standing in a neutral “Vitruvian” pose, arms out, fingers spread, and completely symmetrical. Naturally, it’s rare for anyone to desire a print of an un-posed model… so rigging and posing and tweaking is required, as well as building a nice display base on occasion.
Those are the three major issues for a game developer to keep in mind when considering producing a collectible based on a high poly game asset. There are other, far more minor issue that crop up down the way, but we work very closely with the developers, to make sure that all the kinks are ironed out.
If you’d like to make your own line of toys, we’d love to help you get the ball rolling.
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