@Peter_Parnes i use blender giude and recive more soft object later publish my try.
I can’t help, but I’ve gotta commend you on the cool idea…I’m torn betwen showing my Minecraft addict this and keeping it carefully hidden away, lest I run out of filament.
By the way, he is using the servers run by http://www.printcraft.org/
My son, Levi, loves minecraft and it has translated into an effortless skill of understanding 3d space. He was watching me design a quadcopter in sketchup the other day so I quizzed him about what I was doing. I asked him some hard questions about symmetry and joining parts. To my surprise he was manipulating pieces in his mind and fitting them together. He would then instruct me how to make the part. Maybe he’s a natural, but I couldn’t help but think that building in minecraft has helped him visualize the finished product and work out the steps to achieve it. It’s time to start pushing him with specific problems to solve and printing the results!
You could use meshlab, preform smoothing on the surface, just need to play with the settings.
Edit: also there is some very big benefits to gaming in general: reaction time, spatial awareness, problem solving, and finger dexterity to name a few.
@Nick_Kloski2 Here is the ship in the pictures: https://www.dropbox.com/s/wjgrzm7nn97j34j/OliverShip.stl
I still occasionally dip my toe into minecraft. There’s a bunch of research out there that shows it doesn’t just improve spacial awareness and 3d skills but also helps with attention problems, teaches kids to cooperate, delay gratification and understand that you have to work (dig) to allow you to have fun (build). I’ll not even get started on the red stone electronics and logic stuff. I’d recommend any parent of a minecraff addict to play the game, I’m really looking forward to playing it with my nipper once he’s old enough.
@Tim_Rastall , do you have any pointers to good research into this area?
@Peter_Parnes
Now I’m looking, I can’t find any. I know they exist as one of the Mojang guys linked to them in a twitter post but I’m dammed if I can find them now. Anyway, here’s a great article on why parents shouldn’t think of minecraft as a computer game in the conventional sense:
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/15/minecraft-an-obsession-and-an-educational-tool/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
I’ll keep looking for those papers in the mean time.
Thanks.
if anyone is interested I fixed a STL from @Peter_Parnes - fixed some redundant points and lonely faces (Slic3r stopped whining about errors)
I created another version with detachable mast - it’s much faster to print as 2 pieces than 1 (1 hour faster according to “prining time” from RepetierHost)
I think it will be my test model for printing with support - never tried that before 
You could consider opening up the build in mesh mixer (it’s free) and smoothing just the bottom half and manually adding support where necessary.
Cooool. Thank you all!!! Amazed at the help 