Project Hail Mary’s 3D print campaign turns Rocky into a desktop phenomenon. AMAZE

Amazon MGM Studios embedded a 3D printing campaign into the official marketing of Project Hail Mary, the Ryan Gosling-led sci-fi film adapted from Andy Weir’s novel, offering fans free downloadable STL files directly from the film’s official website. The studio released a 3D printable model of Rocky, the five-limbed Eridian engineer at the heart of the story, making the character available as a downloadable file through its Amazon MGM Studios hub. A second model—the xenonite Grace sculpture, the figurine Rocky crafts of human protagonist Ryland Grace as a communication tool between their two species—was also made available for download on the official site.

The dual release proved remarkably well-timed. Project Hail Mary opened to strong box office performance, and both files spread rapidly across the major 3D printing communities, including MakerWorld, Printables, Cults3D, and Sketchfab, and on social media like Facebook, where fans began sharing prints, optimizing settings, and producing remixes within days of the film’s release.

Rocky takes over MakerWorld and Printables

Rocky’s design—a pentaradially symmetric creature roughly the size of a Labrador, with a central pentagonal carapace and five multi-jointed limbs each ending in a triangular-fingered hand, and no visible face or front—presented a genuine technical challenge for filament extrusion printers. Community members quickly identified the best approaches: ASA or PETG with a textured build plate and organic supports produced the most reliable results, while the utility belt required heat-molding to fit the body. Multiple designers produced independent variants — static figures, posable action figures with articulated shoulders and wrist joints, and resin-optimized editions with recommended material mixes for elasticity and strength. The model can also be 3D printed in resin using stereolithography for improved precision. The image at the top of this page shows my own attempt, using Formlabs’ T2000 resin on a Form 4 (maybe I overdid it a bit).

The official xenonite Grace sculpture, printable at approximately 2.75 inches tall at 100% scale, was confirmed to have been downloaded directly from projecthailmary.com, with at least one community member re-uploading it to Printables as a preservation measure in case the official file was later removed.

The in-film significance of the Grace figurine—Rocky sculpts it from xenonite, a material from his home planet, to bridge communication between him and Grace—gave the object narrative weight that resonated with fans beyond its simple collectible appeal.

A distributed commercial micro-economy

The campaign generated something the studio almost certainly did not plan for: a distributed, seller-driven market for finished printed figures. On Etsy, sellers began offering Rocky figures printed in brown PLA on xenonite-style bases, complete with engraved quotes from the film. At least one seller offered a fully poseable articulated Rocky in two sizes—a large version with a 90 mm body section and a smaller desktop edition—with five movable limbs and interchangeable hands, described as sold out shortly after listing.

The licensing terms attached to the official files technically prohibit the commercial sale of printed copies, which has not stopped the secondary market from developing across multiple platforms. Whether Amazon MGM Studios intends to enforce those restrictions remains to be seen.

For the 3D printing industry, the campaign offers a tangible data point on what enthusiast-driven demand looks like when a major entertainment property releases production-quality files to the public. The volume of community-generated variants, print guides, material recommendations, and finished-product listings that appeared within weeks of release suggests the Project Hail Mary drop functioned less like a standard marketing asset and more like an open design brief—one that the maker community answered at scale.