Sony/ Playstation Counterspy Released!

Finally, the Counterspy game from Sony/ Playstation has released! Not that I'm a video gamer at all, it just means that the NDA on that build is over, and I can post about it!

This is a brief synopsis from the Playstation Store:

 Combining the spy mythology and bold aesthetics of the 1950's and 1960's and set during the Cold War, CounterSpy™ focuses on the rogue third spy agency, C.O.U.N.T.E.R., that keeps the world's super powers at bay. Just as each side of the ongoing conflict gets close to unleashing a blow of earthshaking proportions, C.O.U.N.T.E.R. jumps into action, stealthily sabotaging their dastardly plans and deceptively maintaining world peace.

Sounds kinda cool to me!

We were actually sent a hi-poly 3d model of the main character "Agent Chevalier"

I was totally pumped to build this! I have a love affair with the "low-polygon" style, so this was right up my alley. It was pretty sweet that they supplied the 3d model already in his final pose, saving us the workload of posing the character!

One of my other closet passions is finding the right software that can make our lives easier! I spend a great deal of time online, downloading software, running trial versions, blah, blah. All in attempts to find packages that will ultimately serve us for the better. One amazing little gem is "STL Slicer" This originally came as a plug-in for the Carvewright cnc software. But I feel single hand-idly responsible for contacting them, relentlessly, and getting them to release it as a standalone application. Which they did! WOO-HOO!

The beauty of this simple application, is that it lets you slice 3d STL files with a cut plane. Ultimately making a model like this better suited for 3d CNC machining. The best part of this package is the drag and drop model tree. Simply meaning, that if I slice a model incorrectly, I can drag the parts together, and they self-heal, like it was never cut at all!

The software is dead simple to use, and the interface isn't crowded with features most people would never use.

Another well thought out feature, is that the software will highlight in blue, any surface that becomes an undercut after the slice. This would be based off 90 degrees to the giant green cutplane. They also allow you to adjust this undercut display from 0 to 9 degrees. This is important when using tapered ball nose cutters. I used a straight ballnose cutter for machining, so I just left this setting at 0. I cant stress what a great feature this is, as it let's you decide if you might be better picking a new slice location. However, if you mess it up, you can just drag the pieces together in the model tree, and start over!
As great as the software is, it still doesn't do it for you! So this meant a full day of slicing for me. I fancy myself as being a pretty smart cat, but sometimes I would get myself backed into a proverbial corner. Ultimately having to re-think my slicing strategy, to allow the most efficient, and cleanly machined parts at the cnc end. We had to stay true to the geometry, and this means as little hand shaping as possible after the routing!

As Sony wanted to see a sample finish of just the head, it was the first part of the model sent to the guillotine! Both the sample and the final head were sliced the same way. I was able to get the head down to 3 pieces, the face, and two halves. This was the smallest amount of pieces, with next to no undercuts.

All said and done, there were 23 final pieces, ready for import into Aspire. We're making 2 of these guys, so it was actually 46 pieces to machine!

8)
JWO