Bring your Minecraft creations into the physical world with FigurePrints, a service that combines digital data and 3-D printers. Minecraft has the buzz, but World of WarCraft statues are still the biggest seller for Figureprints. There are millions of permutations of World of WarCraft characters. The open ended nature of Minecraft created some design challenges for the software that preps models for 3-D printing. A creative technician reviews each model to ensure it is printable. This model was a bit too complex for the FigurePrints system, but with a little tweaking, most models are printable. Want to print out your Xbox Live avatar? Act fast — Microsoft is getting rid of the exporter at the end of November. FigurePrints uses 3D Systems’ ZCorp technology to create full color 3-D prints. These 3-D printers are the only tools that can print high resolution, full-color models.

One of the fun things about traveling to a distant land is bringing back a souvenir to remember the journey. That's easy enough when visiting France or China, but what about trips to the World of WarCraft? Or time spent creating your own land in Minecraft? Those digital provinces were once resigned to verbal description, or at best, screenshots emailed to friends. But now, FigurePrints has figured out how to use 3-D printers to create a gift shop for electronic explorers.

FigurePrints is a service that allow gamers to convert videogame characters and settings into 3-D printed statues. With it, a statue of an undead warlock or a cityscape of creative digital urban planning can be immortalized in colored plaster.

The service got started just over five years ago when founder Ed Fries, then a VP in charge of gaming publishing at Microsoft, saw an opportunity to combine his passion for videogames with the emerging technology of 3-D printing. He wasn't alone, but unlike his competition, who primarily focused on using low-cost, low-resolution 3-D printers, FigurePrints leveraged wildly expensive ZCorp technology that uses inkjet technology to build higher resolution models in full color.

While it seems simple enough on the surface, converting models from games to physical goods isn't easy. FigurePrints' competitors that serviced RockBand fans and Spore creators didn't survive long, because both demand being low, and also from lackluster processes. Custom software is one of the key differentiators that has helped FigurePrints thrive. Fries says "I wrote the the program that let us view the Minecraft world – it can detect anything that is floating and that solves a lot of problems, it can fill in parts that are completely enclosed and it can shell parts to make it less expensive. There's a lot that's automated into the tool itself."

Technology isn't enough to deal with the challenges posed by these models. Fries employs creative technicians to evaluate the CAD files as well. He says "For World of WarCraft figures there's always an artist that reviews the models. There are things that work in a game that don't translate well to 3-D printers. With World of Warcraft models, if a cape is near the ground we'll make it touch the ground." Little changes like this would hardly be noticed by gamers, but can make the difference between successful prints and failed lumps of plaster.

Even with great tech and talented operators, there are still some limitations that 3-D printers can't overcome. Fries says "Somebody sent in a ship that had these great sails and used trapdoors as covers for the cannons. We couldn't print it because there were lots of barely connected blocks and the trapdoors were too thin." Even though that model was a challenge, Fries is committed to pushing the boundaries of these tools. He says "Sometimes we see these challenging models and just try to print them. It costs us money. With Minecraft what we decided to do was review each model and accept or reject it. If it's rejected we give the creator some feedback." Fries says that almost everything can be printed with a little ingenuity and effort.

Prices vary by game and the size and complexity of the model, but hover around the $100 mark. However, if you're considering a surprise holiday gift for your favorite MineCrafter, you better order now – the FigurePrints site warns Minecrafters about the time it takes to produce a model: "While our goal is to complete each print in less than one month, it can take several months in cases where we are printing something for the first time. This is a new technology that's being applied on a mass scale for the first time."

Photos courtesy FigurePrints