Oh, I don't know. The impressive part of things like that I think (and by impressive, I mean the part that I can't see myself being capable of, no matter the training or practice), is the artistic design.

Instead of spending their time gluing small plastic things together those artists can now use CAD and have a 3d printer to do grunt work. Less glamorous I suppose, but I think that 3d printers represent a far more modest change to them than CGI (how many physical models were created for the 3 most recent Star Wars films?).

For the lost 'tough innovation opportunity' - yes, too bad.

But those same artists can now create a hundred or thousand individually different Wookies or Tie Fighters or many fully animated Na'avi [or Gungan].

The creativity is not lost - it's now massively leveraged.