3D printing is a technology that seems to have gotten a little ahead of itself—we have more 3D printers than we know what to do with, yet they often serve little purpose beyond making sad versions of model dinosaurs and pizza wedges. But the tactile art seems to have found an unlikely home in movie special effects, even amid all of the CGI.

In a piece at LiveScience, Andrew Clement of Creative Character Engineering describes how 3D printers have filled in when creating models by hand would have been too time-consuming. Clement told LiveScience that using 3D printers is “an extremely fast way of sculpting and doing concepts.”

These concepts for special effects are normally created out of a clay material and then shown to a film’s decision-makers. But if the model is not ideal and needs some tweaks, that often means starting over from scratch. 3D printing allows Clement to keep a model in digital form, make any needed changes in a CAD program, and then reprint it, turning intensive work into hands-off time.

Clement said that when his studio had to create a smaller model of a spider for a Harry Potter film, the larger model was scanned and 3D-printed. Another example is 3D printing's use in Iron Man 2: the special effects studio scanned Robert Downey Jr.'s hands and printed models of his appendages to make a more comfortable version of his Iron Man suit. 3D printers are also being used to create props and set pieces for the second installment of The Hobbit trilogy. 3D printing stands to get a more central role in films themselves, Clement said, if studios could start printing entire costume pieces like monster heads.