Modelling bits for 3d printing

[mangozac]

What scale are you intending? 10 or 15mm?

[Malika]

It's a rather chunky 6mm tank. One thing that always bugged me about the Rhino tank in 40k was that it never really looked as if it could fit 10 power armored giants in its hull...

Here two more shots:


Next to a 6mm human and in front of my building designs. Note that the dozer blade is still a very early WIP.


I also modified the turret somewhat, allowing gun elevation of depression on each gun individually. Not sure if it's fully realistic, rule of cool I guess.

[TomG]

Interesting design for APC. Rhino have only problem, that GW make different scale for miniatures and for vehicles. Not mention the scale disproportion betwen miniatures itself. Space Marine vs Imperial Guardsmen.

[Fleafa]

The argument with GW's 'scale' is that it isn't one; not really. This has been the same, at least until recently, for most scales where the height of a man is used for the name. More confusion comes from whether the height is measured to the eyes or the top of the head.
In all these cases, true proportions have made way for the 'heroic XXmm' approach; enlargement of the features which our brains use to recognise a shape as human, i.e. head, feet and hands. Within that, even the head is exaggerated with larger nose, eyes and mouth.
As we all know, true scales are always defined as their ratio to real life. Often, they don't look that cool and parts are often scarily thin, especially for wargames. GW infantry are probably somewhere around 1:48 and the vehicles, like those of Warlord's Bolt Action, somewhere around 1:56.

[Malika]

Hmm, at the moment I imagine my stuff to be 1:300 scale. 6mm model is a 1,80m tall human.

EDIT: the vehicles would probably have another scale, or be unrealistically huge. A 3cm long tank would in real life be 9m when using that same scale. I haven't seen any 9m tanks in real life yet, at least not APC's, which tend to be around 6m long generally.

Hmm, time to resize the tank!

[Malika]

Here's another update on the tank. Big 'change' is that I shrunk the whole tank a bit to make it more 'realistically' scaled compared to a human human. I also tweaked the turrets a bit so they would be castable in 6mm scale. Some of the detailing on the barrel would be too small and frail to work.

[Malika]

I've been building some variant components for the buildings. They are not necessary to put the standard buildings together, but they're extra bits that add a bit more character. I've added my tank model in between to give you a sense of scale:

[Malika]

Little experiment, expect more in the coming days...

[Malika]

Started experimenting with hexagonal buildings. This one is pretty easy, as you can see it only consists of two different parts: 6 wall components and a single roof component. They can also easily be stacked up, enabling you to build really high towers.

[Malika]

A little failed experiment...



Reason it failed is that I can't get the model to be water tight. In order to 3d print models, there shouldn't be any holes in them. But since SketchUp isn't really made for this kinda thing, it messes up the geometry. So when I try to ensure everything is water tight, it totally messes up the model, basically removing most of the hull. I guess I'll leave this one for what it is, for now at least...

[Fleafa]

[Malika]

Two things that are holding me back regarding other software:
1) money
2) learning curve

Most other suitable software costs money to use, I don't have the luxury to buy new stuff (yet). Software that is free, like lets say Blender, have a rather high learning curve. I've tried several times to get into Blender, but all it does it confuse me and piss me off to such an extent that I run back to SketchUp.

[mangozac]

You really need to use a better tool and since money is a restriction then Blender is your only option. Blender works very well for this kind of stuff - check out what . I understand that the learning curve for Blender is high, but the bottom line is that you're wasting your time by continuing to use an inadequate tool. The sooner you learn to use the right tools the sooner the quality of your models will increase. It's that simple

It's the age old product triangle. There are three characteristics: cheap, quality and ease of use. You can choose two of the three.

[Fleafa]

http://www.wings3d.com/
http://www.mirye.net/shade-3d
http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/25-free-3d ... -not-miss/

[Blindhorizon]

That tank looks pretty darn good malika, i think it needs a vision slit in the front though unless i missed it. Your 3d skills have improved a lot man i like the stuff your coming out with.