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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.

Update:

Update:

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.

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.

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.

I used Moddler for these pieces

http://www.moddler.com/

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.

A bit of asian flavor with a katana. Will also be doing a wakazashi and a two handed no-dachi.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Being that the katana was complete it was a fairly simple job to resize it to get the other weapons.



From top down:

Ogre-Dachi 65mm for 54mm scale models

No-Dachi 40mm two handed great sword for 30-40mm models

Katana 33mm for 30mm models

Wakazachi 26mm for 30mm models

I recieved sprue shots from the printer today and should have the parts onhand in the next couple days. Had the tower shield done finally and I also reprinted the round shield to correct a minor issue with the handle to make it more suitable for casting. I'm anxious to see how the hilt details came out on the katanas and how they cast in resin as the detail is pretty tight compaired to the earlier weapons.

I've been using maya for building which saves uses the maya binary .mb format, and I'm planning to start experimenting with autodesk mudbox as you can port files between the two. When having the final file printed it gets converted into .stl format which is standard for most 3-d programs (same with .obj files) Most CAD programs utilize .stl as do Rhino and Blender. Blender is a free downloadable modelling program which gets some great reviews and from what I understand has simular capabilities to Maya at least for making the wireframes.

Just finished the last details on this model and emailed it to the printers along with the mini-gun and missle launcher.

Will post pics of the parts as soon as they are onhand.







A personal project I'm starting on, got a downloaded model that I need to clean up so it can be printed. (finished taking it apart but tons of work to do still)

The rifleman I'm going to have printed in two sizes, probably 40mm and another version at either 60 or 90mm. I have a few old riflemen from battletech but they have seen better days and finding ones in good condition is pretty tough so I figured I'd see how it'd come out in 3d. I also found several models of the other destroids so I can use them to recreate some of the classic battletech/robotech mechs. They are all going to require a bunch of work as they were modelled for looking nice in renders but are a total mess for printing.

Currently I have the Tomahawk/Warhammer, Defender/Rifleman, Spartan/Longwbow, and the Mac 2 Monster. I've yet to find any models for the Gladiator/Archer, there are some models for the valkyries available but most of them are pretty bad and the 2 decent ones I found aren't very cheap.


I've had one of my friends working on cleaning up a terran marine model, we finished the early test model last week and sent it to the printer. The Marine model arrived today and here's a couple pics.








It came out fairly well but is going to need a bunch of changes in order to be reprinted. The scribe lines on the armor are very weak if they show at all, hoses need to be snugged up flat against the joints in order to cast them properly. Back of the helmet is hollow and broke through while being cleaned, will have to be made completely solid. Thumb on left hand broke during cleaning. Pose will be adjusted once we get the details corrected.

Overall not a bad first run as we didn't really take the time to fuss around with the getting the details set at proper depth for printing. Gave a great test piece for figuring otu what we need to tweak.

Eventually I'd like to do several other pieces, firebat, marauder and some zerg.

I've been insanely busy the last two weeks so I haven't had enough time for models.

Still touching up the terran marine. The rifleman/defender model had way too many problems for printing so I had to scrap it and start from scratch. The upside is that I can use the model for references and measurements so it has been helping speed up some of the work.

Here's a progress shot, still more work to do on the hips before I start on the legs. Details are intentionally on the blocky side as fine details and smooth edges will be lost when printed. About 18 hours or so on build time so far.

The rifleman is about 90% complete now, just a few areas on the back to touch up and it'll be ready for printing

Warflake wrote:any chance you could let me know when you can deliver?

There was an error with the inventory, they should be listed as available again.



In progress shot of a warhammer / tomahawk model.

These are done, they need some cleaning but I'm hoping to have them molded by end of next week. Re-printed the swords, the old ones had great detail but the handles seemed slightly too wide when viewed from the spine of the sword and I figured I'd resize them slightly.

I'm really liking how the mech gun and missle launchers came out.

Yes, those are ammo belts next to the cannons, I don't have an ammo canister done just yet but the cannons and belts are finished.

All of these should be going up in the store once I've gotten the molds taken care of, I'm expecting to have them ready by mid August.

The prices on the printing can vary quite a bit depending on the company and how high of resolution you wnat. A single part can be as cheap as $2-3 and go up well over $200 for an ultra high res print. The starcraft marine I had printed earlier in the thread ran me about $60.

Reproducing the parts in resin is much less expensive, it's the original master parts and the molds that run up the costs.

The ammo belts will be able to be shaped in whatever posistion you want. You can soak resin in hot water and it becomes very flexible which would allow you to add a more natural sway or loop shape to the linkage. That will allow people to adjust it to fit the individual models they want to attach it to.

This particular version is designed with vehicles and mechs in mind, at a late rpoint I will also be doing a smaller version that could be used by infantry scale minis which will have hand grips scaled down belts and likely an ammo pack.

You can reproduce just about any part by making a mold out of RTV Silicon, once that's done you can use resin or pewter to make cast copies which if done correctly should be identical in detail to the original part. There's lots of online tutorials of how to do casting. www.tapplastics.com has some videos. IMO the best place for casting material is www.smoothon.com

I make a range of resin add-on parts, my store link is in my sig.

Here's some close ups, these have not been cleaned yet so they are pictured as they arrive from printing. Photographing soild white pieces seems to give my camera fits so they are a bit blurrier than I'd like.

The large missle launcher is quite a bit bigger than I had anticipated, will work great for tanks and really large robots but I think I am going to need another launcher scaled in between the current two sizes.

The smaller missle launcher will fit on a 54mm tall model quite nicely, same with the gatling guns.

They might be able to be fit onto a 28mm model but they'd be really oversized, it might work for 40mm based stuff depending on how massive you want the weapons. (probably a "truescale" type weapon)

The large missle launcher is pretty big and will work best on 28mm scaled tanks. The gatling guns could be turret mounted with some work and creativity. Placed side by side it looks quite good as a chin mount on a VTOL craft or placed under the wings. I'm debating about making a turret housing for it and future weapon designs I have planned. I'm also going to make a variation of the gatling gun without the large ammo feeder mechanism on the sides so that it can be wing mounted more easily.

The mini gun measures 35mm from tip of the barel to the rear of the gun and is about 12mm tall fron the top to the underside of the ammo feeder. (Main body is maybe 8mm tall)

The small launcher is 23mm long counting the targeter and rear exhaust and it's about 10-11mm high and 10mm wide.

The large launcher is 35mm long, 16mm tall and 15 mm wide.

I did an inital set of test casts tonight, the individual casts came out fairly well but I'm spotting a couple problem areas for production which may require reprinting the models. I may need to detach the missle launcher faces and make them a seperate piece, same with the gun barrel tips as those areas are pinching the silicon and causing minor tears. Very simple modifications though.

Provide I can get them fixed and resent this week I expect to have them ready for order around the middle of August. (fingers crossed)

I'm also redoing the long and medium guns, so those will be out of stock until the next batch of models is ready, but it'll be worth the wait as they will get their details cleaned up considerably.

Sent a new file out for printing which has corrected/updated versions of most all of the parts. The key differance on the min-guns and missile launchers is that I detached the faces of the barrels and missle tubes that way it will help eliminate the silicon pinching and tearing in areas.

I did two new launchers, one launcher is smaller and should hopefully fit on 40mm based infantry the other is half way in between the two previous versions I did so it's somewhere between a 54mm scaled launcher and a large vehicle sized one so it should fit lighter vechicles much better.

The assault rifles I am printing in 54mm scale as well. Additionally I've cleaned up the various railgun models so that they will more detailed than the original casts.

Parts were modeled in Maya, the rest is just raw talent and innate awesomeness

There's a free ware program called Blender which is quite good for modelling. The rest is reading tutorials and lots of practice.


Here's a shot with a couple of the parts sticky-tacked in place to give a sense of scale on a Dark Age or N-Scale battlemech. Obviously not a proper conversion

The Thunderbolt measures 70mm to the top of his should pads, 80mm when you count the missle launcher.

I set up a shop on shapeways, as it'll let me get my parts out immediately rather than waiting on the resin.

More parts will follow as soon as I can get them built and uploaded.

For material options I suggest white or black detail, or any of the frosted detail options.

All of those options will be cheaper and more durable than resin, they will likely need a bit of sanding or careful scraping to get the printing fuzz off.

http://www.shapeways.com/shops/paulsongames



I will still be producing the parts in resin as well, but more options are a good thing

I'm in the process of getting all the master molds done, going to be a bit before they are finished but thought I'd share a couple WIP shots.

This is the long rail gun, currently it is the only part that is completely finished, production pieces will be of this quality.






These still need some additional cleaning in areas and then they will be remolded. It was very difficult to see the detail on the printed parts so I needed resin copies to work from.




Testing fitting the rifles