Milady's Sai 3D Print

Another old project I’m uploading long after the fact ‘cause it lived on cohost. I 3D printed and painted Milady’s sai from Soul Hackers 2, including using UV reactive paint to get a glow effect to match the game.

First, I had to take the 3D model I had of the sai and cut it up into parts that could be reassembled, adding pegs and holes to hold it together.

This required measuring the error of my 3d printer and adjusting the model to compensate so the pegs weren’t slightly too big or the holes slightly too small.

In order to cover the gaps where the parts were joined, and remove layer lines without a huge amount of sanding, I used a two part self-hardening clay to fill all the gaps. I was able to basically run a blob of wet clay over any part with layer lines to fill the gaps easily!

Then I just threw a basic black paint on everything to get it most of the way there.

From there, I decided to see if I could use some of the glow in the dark pigment I had to get it to both look red in regular light but glow red in UV light.

This was a pretty tough ask, because the glow in the dark red pigment was transparent off-white and lost its glow when mixed with any opaque paint. So I needed to mix a base color that looked right with the off-white layered over it, and worked as a backing color for the glow.

Eventually I figured out something I was fine with, even though I’d still probably want to futz with it if I had more time and more paint…