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.

Hey all so I just started a brand new Tau army, because I love battlesuits and mechs, yes that's the only reason... oh well.
Anyhow so I was browsing Dakka for ideas and I came across this amazing P&M blog
Bossfearless, the author, has a a really great tutorial for putting LEDs in battlesuits so I thought "Hey that's super cool, I should do that" and so that's what I plan to do.

So to start, I tested putting an LED into my devilfish/hammerhead which was really easy given that it's a tank and I have tons of room to work in








and the finished product


So that's all I have for now, I need to buy more LEDs and some battlesuits before I move forward, but that shouldn't take more than a week or so, in the meantime I have to paint up some fire warriors and I can work on my ethereal who is going to have a white LED in a staff, so that's the soonest we will see more LEDs

Bye for now!
-Nooblet

Hey there, just thought I should update the blog, so I wrote up a plan for how I want the end game to look.

Commander
Blue, Purple, Bronze
Blue LEDs fusion blaster
Red LEDs plasma rifle, jetpack
White LED in head

Ethereal
Blue, Bronze, White
White LED in staff
staff
------------------------------------------
Fire Warrior Squad A
Blue, Bronze, Drab

Fire Warrior Squad B
Blue, Bronze, Drab

Fire Warrior Squad C
Blue, Green, Bronze, Drab
------------------------------------------
Crisis Suit Squad A
Blue, Bronze
Blue LEDs in fusion blasters
Red LEDs in plasma rifles, heads
modernized

Crisis Suit Squad C
Blue, Bronze
Blue LEDs in fusion blasters
Red LEDs in heads
modernized

Crisis Suit Squad C
Blue, Green, Bronze
Blue LEDs in fusion blasters
Red LEDs in plasma rifles, heads
modernized
------------------------------------------
Broadside Squad
Blue, Green, Bronze
Red LEDs in heads
(Not sure where else to put LEDs but I feel like I should put more on such a fantastic model)
possible conversion I might do for the Broadsides
------------------------------------------
Hammerhead A
Blue, Green, Bronze
Red LEDs in railgun, hull

Hammerhead B
Blue, Bronze
Blue LEDs in ion cannon
Red LEDs in hull

Nice work so far! Can't wait to see what other orks you post!!

Great work so far! Personally, I would have left the tank for a later stage. You have all that empty space to work with, so you might want to save the larger models for when you have a really extreme idea. Looking forward to seeing what you do with your suits and the remainder of your forces


Automatically Appended Next Post:
As for the Broadsides, you'll find that an LED slots very well into the small circle inside the Tau symbol on their chest armor. Keep in mind that you will want to test all the different colors of LEDs you plan to combine to make sure they play nice. Minor differences in voltages can lead to certain colors not lighting up when they're on a circuit with certain others.

Okay so unfortunately the LEDs aren't going to get here until like June, so that's really annoying but I will keep my progress with the other aspects updated.


Automatically Appended Next Post:





I stole an LED out of a broken RC Heli, plus a switch.
So yeah I mounted it onto my railgun, I wasn't entirely sure where it should go so I put onto the tip, so I'd be interested to see what you all think about where it should be.
that's all for now!

-Nooblet

I have to say, the LED on the tip is not working for me. You've kind of got yourself backed into a corner with the size of it since it's too big to fit down the barrel. Just take a deep breath and wait for the LEDs to arrive and when they do, fit a amaller LED midway down the barrel and you should get a very good inner glow effect.

So I noticed your hammerhead is already painted. Is it an eBay rescue or are you going back and redoing an earlier project of yours?

 bossfearless wrote:
You've kind of got yourself backed into a corner with the size of it since it's too big to fit down the barrel. Just take a deep breath and wait for the LEDs to arrive and when they do, fit a smaller LED midway down the barrel and you should get a very good inner glow effect.

Yeah I have to say I agree with you, it looks kind of odd with the light only appearing at the end, originally I was going for a kind of laser feel, but that's not entirely feasible. So I guess I'll just have to sit tight until they get here.... on a slow ship from hong kong, then across the entire country, then to my doorstep... but yeah it's going to be easy to take this one out, so that's good! Perhaps LEDs running the entire length of the barrel, ending inside the end bit? We'll see.

 bossfearless wrote:
So I noticed your hammerhead is already painted. Is it an eBay rescue or are you going back and redoing an earlier project of yours?

No I got it from my friend, who is notorious for starting armies and never seeing them through (although his SM are pretty solid) but yeah I got like a busted battlesuit (for the guns and jetpack and head), some FW, a hammerhead, and a slew of Kroot, whom I strongly dislike... I painted it for this army before I began this blog, I may take it off in the end because it's kind of bumpy because he had a paint coat under it. I may also just ditch it and just get a new one if the other options prove unsuccessful.

Okay so here's how you can get that laser feel, and you can experiment with this a little while you wait for new parts. You remember my pimp suit, Upgrayedd? You can use the same technique I did on his staff. Take the acrylic flight stand and drill out the thickest portion of it and slide your LED right in there. Then you'll want to rough up the outside of the flight stand with sand paper or your hobby knife if that's all you can get. The roughing up of the surface will reflect light around and cause the stem to light up a lot better. Then you can slot that flight stand into the railgun barrel so that it's visible along the central gap, which will give you a badass "laser" look.

I think every FLGS has a guy like that who changes armies like the rest of us change pants. Knew a guy who traded a CSM army for a sandwich. Not even a good sandwich. Whenever he would start an army everyone would cheer him on and encourage him to buy all the expensive toys because we all knew that the army would wind up in the hands of another pretty soon.

 bossfearless wrote:
Okay so here's how you can get that laser feel, and you can experiment with this a little while you wait for new parts. You remember my pimp suit, Upgrayedd? You can use the same technique I did on his staff. Take the acrylic flight stand and drill out the thickest portion of it and slide your LED right in there. Then you'll want to rough up the outside of the flight stand with sand paper or your hobby knife if that's all you can get.

Okay that sounds like it will work really well, I have a ton of extra drone stands from my FW kit that I bought, so I should be able to get that to work. Thanks!

 bossfearless wrote:
I think every FLGS has a guy like that who changes armies like the rest of us change pants. Knew a guy who traded a CSM army for a sandwich. Not even a good sandwich. Whenever he would start an army everyone would cheer him on and encourage him to buy all the expensive toys because we all knew that the army would wind up in the hands of another pretty soon.

Lol wish I had an army that I could trade for sandwiches. Yeah he usually ends up giving away parts of it, selling it for like 23 cents, or he stuffs it into his closet and it never sees the light of day again.

Hey there I'm back, still waiting for the LEDs... patience... anyhow so I got my ethereal, he's puny so I can't mount an LED on him, might be able to incorporate one some other way though, here's my wip of him


He needed a nice tall base for his inferiority complex.


Also finished up 6 fire warriors, here's 2, unfortunately my ipod is not focusing and my lighting is horrid, and it's late and I'm tired. So that's life, I'll try to get a squad picture with better lighting and focus.

 DIrtyNooblet wrote:
Hey there I'm back, still waiting for the LEDs... patience... anyhow so I got my ethereal, he's puny so I can't mount an LED on him, might be able to incorporate one some other way though

Actually, take a look at my tutorial for mounting LEDs in 25mm based infantry. You just need to downsize the battery and holder. Then you can drill up from the bottom of his robe, then hollow out his body with a lot of patience. Last thing to do is drill a hole in his chest and mount an Iron Man style arc reactor. Or you could snip the head off, then grab a plastic helmetless tau head (or convert a space marine head as I've done on a few pieces) and hollow it out just like the space marine helmet in my tutorial. Bam, glowing eyes. Or a fire warrior helmet for a single glowing lens.

 bossfearless wrote:

Actually, take a look at my tutorial for mounting LEDs in 25mm based infantry. You just need to downsize the battery and holder. Then you can drill up from the bottom of his robe, then hollow out his body with a lot of patience. Last thing to do is drill a hole in his chest and mount an Iron Man style arc reactor.

that might look cool, I would probably mount it higher more like near his neck, it'll be sketchy and slow to do but it should look pretty good, thanks!