MIT VisiPrint tool gives 3D printing users accurate visualization before production

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and collaborating institutions have developed a preview tool for 3D printing that generates appearance-first renderings of objects before fabrication, in an attempt to reduce a common issue of material waste caused by repeated reprints.

The system is called VisiPrint and it takes two inputs from the user: a screenshot of a digital design from slicer software — the program used to prepare files for 3D printing — and a single image of the intended print material. From those inputs, VisiPrint can produce a rendering that accounts for color, gloss, translucency, and how the fabrication process itself affects the finished object’s appearance.

“3D printing can be a very wasteful process. Some studies estimate that as much as a third of the material used goes straight to the landfill, often from prototypes the user ends up discarding,” stated Maxine Perroni-Scharf, an Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) graduate student at MIT and lead author of the paper on VisiPrint.

“To make 3D printing more sustainable, we want to reduce the number of tries it takes to get the prototype you want. The user shouldn’t have to try out every printing material they have before they settle on a design.”

How VisiPrint works

VisiPrint was built around fused deposition modeling (FDM), the most common form of 3D printing, in which filament is melted and extruded through a nozzle to build objects layer by layer. The system uses two AI models working in tandem: a computer vision model that extracts appearance-relevant features from the material sample, and a generative AI model that computes the object’s geometry while incorporating the nozzle’s slicing path.

A depth map preserves shape and shading, combined with an edge map which reflects internal contours, and guides the output. “If you don’t have the right balance of these two things, you could end up with bad geometry or an incorrect slicing pattern. We had to be careful to combine them in the right way,” Perroni-Scharf said.

In a user study done by the MIT team, nearly all participants rated VisiPrint as providing better overall appearance and greater textural similarity to printed objects than competing methods. The preview process took about one minute on average — more than twice as fast as any alternatives they tested.

Broader applications and future work

The researchers identified potential uses in dentistry, where accurate color matching for temporary crowns and bridges is important, and in architecture, where visual assessment of scale models is needed. VisiPrint is intended to complement rather than replace functional previews from slicer software.

“‘What you see is what you get’ has been the main thing that made desktop publishing ‘happen’ in the 1980s, as it allowed users to get what they wanted at first try,” said Patrick Baudisch, Professor of Computer Science at the Hasso Plattner Institute.

“It is time to get WYSIWYG for 3D printing as well. VisiPrint is a great step in this direction.”