3d Stuff

[mangozac]

Aha ok. Well it's certainly a cool design! The shoulders look a bit odd though - I would expect those giant shoulder pieces to be missile racks...

[paulson games]

For the better part of 25 years I had always thought they were missle racks as well, but when I started the project I was looking through the designer notes and that's actually the ammunition storage area for the autocannons. The ammo belts are an internal feed that runs through the should into the arm.

There's a few sketches of a variant mech that has a set of larger ammo bins that are about the same height but extend further back over the shoulders. Apparently one of the japanese model companies makes a conversion kit that can be used to covert other companies toys into the extra ammo version. They seem to have no issues with companies making aftermarket kits for other product brands.





The Warhammer aka Tomahawk or Excalibur which I'll be doing next has a simular torso design but the arm weapons are energy based so the space is used for missles. The upside is 3 of the mech designs all use the same leg set which allows me to save a significanta mount of work by being able to cut and paste the lower body.






Here is an updated version of that mech which was done about five years ago

[mangozac]

[paulson games]

Started on a warhammer, being able to copy and paste the legs saves a boat load of time. About 5 hours of work time so far, obviously it needs a head. Arms are mostly done and torso is ready for detailing.

[SSB]

Hello,

I am intrigued by this 3D printing. I see an application that would serve me very well but I don't know if it would be doable with 3D printing.

I guess all of you know about the Slater's numbers and letters sprues :
They are quite the only ones to do such things. I would love to maybe produce various ranges of letterings so a choice could be available of sizes and fonts.

Caracters are 2mm high on this one (not to scale on the photo)


Caracters are 3mm high on this one (no to scale on the photo)


Do you think 3D printing could achieve doing sprues like that ?
2mm and 3mm high caracters would'nt be to small for a CNC machine ?
(Off topic question : Would a mold like that be useable for resin casting ?)

[paulson games]

You could do text with several of the 3d programs, although it'd be a giant pain with Maya.

Zbrush however has a stamp making option which works incredibly well, it allows you to design custom brushes in photoshop that you can import into Zbrush. It would allow you to take letters or other items and import them as a stamp which would allow you to add raised or indented lettering anywhere on the model with just a few clicks.

A sprue like that might be difficult for casting as there's a lot of potential trap points for air and it'll take a long time to do the inital set up for the mold. But I imagine it could be made workable with effort.

A real simple way to do letters would be to get rubber stamps at a crafts store and use them to make a press mold. You could use instant mold product to make press mold forms in a matter of minutes instead of hours waiting for a tradiational mold to set up.

[SSB]

[paulson games]

A press mold is like a single face mold, often people make it out of greenstuff or epoxy.

The basic idea is to press the part into the greenstuff so that it makes an impression of the detail you want. Once the mold is cured you can then take pieces of green stuff and press it into the mold so that it copies the detail.

There is product called instant mold which is found here:

http://www.coolminiornot.com/shop/tools ... -mold.html

It has a video that shows how it is used to create a press mold.

[Fleafa]

I just received some prints from Shapeways in their Ultra Frosted Detail material. Pretty sweet. Will chuck some pics up soon.
Keep up the good work learning 3D. I have about 8 years 3D Studio Max experience and 5 or so Zbrush. If you need any help/advice, give me a shout.

[Lane]

[SSB]

Ok...
I'll stop polluting the post. I'll do a WIP post on the subject when I'll get to it...

[cygnnus]

Paulson,

You know, if you made a set of Defender/Rifleman arms that were scaled to fit, say, something like:



Perhaps made so they'd be interchangeable L/R with, perhaps, even the option of putting on a drum ammo feed for each autocannon (A/C 5's as I recall), you might find some interest...

I'm just sayin'

Valete,

JohnS

[paulson games]

These are done, they need some cleaning but I'm hoping to have them molded by end of next week. Redoing 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.

[mangozac]

That looks great! Can we see some closeups of the missile launchers? I'll definitely have to pick up some of those! And the chaingun. And the ammo feeds

[paulson games]

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.