This has become quite a topical discussion at the moment but is something that has been around in the model horse community for many years.
Many artist and sculptors have been using it as a way to scale their models up and down to produce them in different scales. There have been resins that are digitally sculpted around for a good few years now and this year for the first time you can now buy a resin of a 3D scanned horse (although the amount of work done to it post production has been amazing).
There are also an assortment of tack and prop makers out there who 3D print an assortment of different things for use with model horses, from little buckets to jump blocks to horse balls.
And if you happen to own your own 3D printer you can head along to websites such as Thingiverse and find all kinds of horse shaped objects to have a go at printing: https://www.thingiverse.com/search?q=horse
But of course it wasn't long before questions started to be asked.
Should 3D scanned horses be shown with other sculpted models? Was the question of a rather heated debate recently.
But I think more concerning to artists and to the community is the ease of use with which one can use a 3D printer to produce a copy of an existing model.
Click on this link: https://www.thingiverse.com/search?q=horse
And tell me how many items you recognise. They tend to be Schleich but there are a LOT on there and on other websites.
One plus point is that when you 3D print an object it does not look perfect. If you hate prep work you do not want to try and prep a 3D printed model! You'll be sanding and fixing until your hands fall off. It would be a lot easier to go out, buy the Schleich and repaint it (and probably a lot cheaper too).
