Pushing the Limits of 3D Color Printing: Error Diffusion with Translucent Materials

TL;DR

This paper introduces an error diffusion halftoning method for 3D color printing using multi-jet printers with translucent materials, enabling full color reproduction with detailed gradients and textures.

Contribution

It presents a novel traversal algorithm for voxel surfaces that adapts 2D error diffusion techniques to 3D printing, overcoming previous technical limitations.

Findings

Faithful color reproduction including gradients and details

Effective handling of translucent materials in 3D printing

Enhanced color accuracy over existing methods

Abstract

Accurate color reproduction is important in many applications of 3D printing, from design prototypes to 3D color copies or portraits. Although full color is available via other technologies, multi-jet printers have greater potential for graphical 3D printing, in terms of reproducing complex appearance properties. However, to date these printers cannot produce full color, and doing so poses substantial technical challenges, from the shear amount of data to the translucency of the available color materials. In this paper, we propose an error diffusion halftoning approach to achieve full color with multi-jet printers, which operates on multiple isosurfaces or layers within the object. We propose a novel traversal algorithm for voxel surfaces, which allows the transfer of existing error diffusion algorithms from 2D printing. The resulting prints faithfully reproduce colors, color gradients and fine-scale details.