Youtuber Make Anything shows us VR and 3D printing can play nice with this cool video walk-through of sculpting and printing a mammoth skeleton.

Living up to its name, the popular 3D design Youtube channel Make Anything has made something rather improbable – a full mammoth skeleton encased in ice.

Browser-based file finishing service Make Printable challenged the channel to create a complex 3D file to put to the test on their service. The video is sponsored by Make Printable, but despite all the negative connotations “sponsored video” brings to mind the vid is an interesting watch.

Indeed, with the brief of creating something complex channel host Devon Montes chose to create a full mammoth skeleton, encased in ice. The end result is complex not only in terms of geometry, but also because he creates it in Gravity Sketch. This is a VR program for sculpting and painting, which does not typically export files that are suitable for 3D printing.

With a VR headset on, the creator has an empty room-scale canvas to work within. To begin with Montes places reference images of mammoth skeletons in his virtual work space. These floating pictures are fixed in place, meaning he can frequently look up to check his work against real examples.

Sketching a Mammoth for 3D Printing

Next, comes a general structure guideline around which he draws the skeleton. Drawing in broad brush strokes, the whole video serves as a neat demonstration of the possibilities of VR creation apps.

With the skeleton drawn, he then turns to the next complication of the model – the ice enclosure. Rather than fine brush strokes, large flat planes are drawn to encase this old-school elephant.

Printing on a BCN3D Sigma, he has dual extruders available to him. As a cool twist for the finished print the ice enclosure is printed in water soluble PVA. Meaning the whole print can be thrown in water and the ice “melts”, revealing the PLA-printed mammoth within.

Like a real fossilized skeleton, the final print was fragile and broke apart. But as a proof of concept it serves as an excellent example of a VR-to-3D print workflow.

You can print the mammoth and iceberg yourself, too. Montes has made the files available on MyMiniFactory.