Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I've started working on Maya to design some new parts. The learning curve is pretty steep but I'm starting to get a grasp on how to put things together.

Here's a render of my first ever model:



I'm very happy with it being a first attempt, I need to fix a few minor things and it'll be off to printing.

Good to have you back on the scene.

that gun looks very good, maybe a version with scope?

Oooh, that's a pretty nice looking rifle you've made.

That is one sexy looking rifle

Keep up the good work, man

S_P

Are the 3-engine jump packs going to be produced? I'm not complaining... but need to know so I can make other arrangements if necessary.

Thanks.
Gits

Gun looks good dude.

Maya can be tricky, but well worth it. I recommend 3d buzz tutorials, gnomon and digital tutors also have some handy stuff in that order of quality.

Make sure you check out sub-div approximation, and learn how smoothed geometry interpolates. Most importantly, make sure you work in quads and that all your vertices are merged.

There is a lot more to go into, but the best place to start will be the 3D buzz pistol modelling tutorial!

Look forward to watching your progress, and honestly, it's looking pretty good!

Looking cool man.

Stay away from the dirty tri polys!

Like MajorTom, I'd recommend Gnomon - they have awesome tuts

p.s if you wanted to texture your stuff to 'sex it up' for presentation purposes, headus uv is your friend . And if you get used to Maya, go with Mudbox not Zbrush, trust me!

Update:

I would put inscriptions on the blade of the axe, and put a spike on the flat head of the axe.

BTW, great work. I hope to see more.

very nice looking stuff I applaud your efforts. I'd leave it fairly plain to be honest you can add detail with green stuff to make them unique once you have our hands on them

Update:

Awesome

Update:










All of the parts that I posted have gone off to the printers and I'm hoping to have them available on my site by the end of the month (or possibly sooner)


I'll continue adding more parts as I can get the models pieced together.

WIP shot:

Got Missles?








Starting on some battlemech styled weaponry, the missle launcher is the first model I have in a (almost) complete state. I have some lasers in the works as well. If you guys have any suggestions for the model before it's printed feel free to fire away.

This will measure about 10mm tall and wide and about 20 mm long.

The axes shields and such will hopefully be ready by the end of the month, had a couple set backs with the printing time. Working to get those available as quickly as possible.

Awsome stuff!

There were some issues with the printer which caused a pretty heavy delay. Additionally the parts didn't come out as cleanly as I'd hoped, the rivets came out really soft and there's some pretty heavy layer markings due to the lower printing resolution.

They aren't quite a lumpy as the pic indicates a lot of that is due to reflected light, useable but would need lots of clean up and sharpening up the rivets.






I wanted the cleanest parts possible so I switched companies, they sent me pics before dropping it in the mail today and the first batch of parts are looking great:




I am totally impressed with the results.

I post updates with close up shots and pics of the final resin casts as soon as I'm able.

A good old fashioned mech autocannon (wip):








I'll be doing a mirrored version so that there'll be a cannon for both the right and left arms with the ammo feed belts on the outside.

Going to work on the ammo belt tomorrow and cleaning up the panel lines some more, also probably making a large ammo box that'll go on the mech's back.

sweet!

The second company looks a lot better

Looks hot what did you switch from / to? I had some parts for a 12" figure SLAd at uni and the resolution was awesome but the cost not so much :-(

Amazing. Simply put.

It makes me curious about what the future of miniatures will be if anyone can make something up in Blender (way worse than Maya, I know, but... free), and then just get it turned into resin.

A brave new world indeed.

The Modelmaking company i used to work for had a box of rapid prototype parts sent to them by a company (stupidly i cannot remember the name) that included a nut and bolt that had been produced at the smae time already half way threaded, the nut actualy unscrewed from the bolt meaning.... it should be possible to have the cannon barrel's spin straight from the maunfacturer, it'd be a lot more effort programing wise because your'd have to create and internal space but the possibility of including a tiny motor would be aewsome.... I shall go and try to find this company name with random google searches..


Automatically Appended Next Post:
It was 3t web address www.3trpd.co.uk they're more into the high end architectural and engeniering stuff but I don't see why they couldn't do hobby related stuff aswell

Although higher quality may mean higher prices you never know?

The parts from Moddler showed up yesterday, I did a mold of the shield last night and here's the first casting which I'm quite pleased with.

(shield is 20mm in diameter)



The mold was made direct from the printed part so no sanding or other clean up work was done. Needless to say it's incredibly clean and there's no visable stepping or laying marks. The printed underside surface (the back of the sheild ) has no discernable differance in quality. I was blown away with how much better this came out than the shapeways version.

The very slight ridges on the shield face are part of how the model's wireframe is constructed (not the printing), I'll be tweaking that a bit so that it'll be completely smooth on the next print.

The handle is a little clumpy looking due to my messing with it and over applying superglue, the printing was really clean but I messed it up while trying to fill the small gap behind the handle with styrene so that it could be cast as one part. With such a tiny bit It was an exercise in frustration and I think I will be having the shield reprinted with a seperate handle (when I submit the tower shield) that way it'll be two parts. Which will improve the molding step and won't wear on the production molds as much.

Totally blown away with how clean these came out and will definately be using moddler again.

I have both axes molding at current and will hopefully have an update later tonight.

So Mr Paulson which 3D rapid prototyping company are you using for these parts???

looks nice so far although the original part looks like it could have done with a tiny amount of sanding before you created a mould

I used Moddler for these pieces

http://www.moddler.com/

Thanks very much for the info, some of those models on thier website look oh my god amazing... have you considered the minigun barrel rotation yet?

Interesting stuff, and the prices, based on their estimator script are not that bad. While I'll probably never learn how to use any 3D modeling software to the extent of making complete miniatures with it, weapons and equipment wouldn't be out of my league. Thanks for the link.

I finally got off my lazy butt and got all the master molds finished. I'd wanted to get these done about a week ago but I've been in kind of a slump, casting for orders is tedious at times which makes it tough to get new stuff cranked out at the same time.

Here's a shot of the casts, I have to run a bunch more off give them a good cleaning under magnification to get rid of all the ridges left by the printer's stepping. They look fine to the naked eye but they have tiny ridges particuarly on the rounded surfaces which might show up when using ink washes on the parts. So before I can make the production molds I need to run off 5-10 copies of each weapon clean and them all individually. As long as I don't get too bogged down I plan on having them ready to post up my site within the next two weeks.