Covenanter — finished

I've finished my 1:100 scale Blender model of the Covenanter.

Now I'm trying to get it uploaded to Shapeways for 3d printing, but for the moment there appear to be issues — the trouble is, I have no idea if the issues are with the model, or with Shapeways' servers, which have been known to crap out fairly frequently, especially when somebody has been trying to make "improvements" to them.

EDIT: It's now available for sale at https://www.shapeways.com/product/PJ4PVBAJW/covenanter-15mm

Adjustment

Something was bugging me about the proportions of the tank, and I finally put my finger on what it was — the road wheels were riding too high, so it didn't give the exaggerated gap between the running gear and the track-guards that was seen on the actual machine. So, I adjusted that and now it looks a bit better.

It could be taken a little further still, but then I'd be running into strength issues in the printed model. So, this will do the trick I think.

K-Wagen (1:285)

3-up sprue

Single model

I've re-scaled my model of the K-Wagen to 1:285 for use in 6mm games.

It's available as a single model or as a 3-up sprue.

This would be a real monster on the wargames table; it's about 47mm long and 25mm across the beam. That would make it even more massive than the Soviet WWII T-35.

New and Improved, the One-Man Armoured Steam Battle-Tricycle

Click for enlarged view

Continuing with my present steampunk jag, I've whipped up a one-man armoured steam battle-tricycle in 15-20mm scale. It comes equipped with a state-of-the-art Maxim pom-pom gun.

It's available for sale at http://shpws.me/MOXF. No self-respecting Victorian SF army should be without at least a dozen!

Other views - click to enlarge

Steampunk-Boiler-Tank

I was forcibly off-line for a while when my internet provider had some network issues, and as a result, had to be productive.

Part of the results of that productivity was this: a steampunk tank-thing.

Now that my digital crack is flowing again, I've uploaded it to Shapeways so it can be given physical form and be birthed into the real world.

It's of indeterminate scale, and could be used with 15mm, 20mm or 28mm figures, at your pleasure. The main gun is a separate component and can be installed at whatever angle you want. On a sprue inside the hull are a pair of pintle-mounted Gatling guns that can be mounted poking out through the slot in the front of the hull — realistically, there would be room for only one, along with its gunner and loader and associated clutter, but I've provided two in case you want to make it look fiercer.

The basic form is based on an uncredited photograph I found on the web of somebody's scratch-built model, but I've jazzed it up quite a lot. So thanks, mysterious anonymous modeller.

Guns! Guns! Guns!

These are the first models I've designed specifically for 1:285 (6mm) scale, rather than starting out with a 1:100 scale model and down-scaling it. As a consequence, they're very much simplified in terms of their geometry, and I've had to make no real changes to accommodate Shapeways' 3d-printing material limitations. So, hoorah.

They're available from my Shapeways shop at http://shpws.me/MGqB for $17 ($22 for the super-duper detailed resin).

In the early part of WWII, British medium gun batteries were huge: twelve guns each. That didn't last all that long; though able to bring down a frightening amount of firepower in a very short space of time, the twelve-gun batteries weren't flexible enough in use, and they were split up into more manageable sizes.

However, if you want to represent an early battery, you need a lot of guns, so here they are: twelve early-model 25 pounders with their limbers. The guns are represented in firing mode, and I haven't yet made a model of a quad tractor — when I do, I'll probably make another sprue with the guns and limbers in travel mode. But that may not be for a while; it's not a big priority for me.

A1E1 Independent (15mm)

This is Shapeways' WSF material render,
with all the turrets on sprues.
The model is available now at http://shpws.me/MERL

There were two tanks I couldn't get hold of in 1:100 (15mm) scale, that encouraged me to get into digital design. One was the Vickers Medium Mk.III, which I made my very first project in Blender. The other was the A1E1 Independent.

Now I have designs for them both, and if I can get Shapeways to print this one (they're being obstructive at the moment; I think somebody has "improved" their website again) then I'll have physical examples of them as well.

High port front

High port rear

High starboard front

Plan view

Side view

Austin-Kegresse in 1/285

This is the next on the list of miniaturizations — the Austin-Kegresse half-track, based on the Austin-Putilov armoured car.

This one was a bit of a nightmare to re-scale; it needed a lot more work than usual to make it printable. I think I've got it now... fingers crossed.

The single model is available at http://shpws.me/MD4g

The five-up sprue is at http://shpws.me/MD4i

(I've temporarily withdrawn the five-up sprue until I've had a successful print of the single model).

Honey, I Shrunk All The Things

In response to a request, and coincidentally with my own reawakening interest in 6mm gaming, I've started on a programme of re-scaling a whole bunch of my digital 1:100 models to 1:285.

I've started with this one, the Kfz 3, because it's easy and required minimal redesigning for the smaller scale.

The single model is available at http://shpws.me/MCH9, the four-up sprue (much better value for money if you want more than one) is at http://shpws.me/MCHI.

More to come, imminently.

Lanchester Mk.II (15mm)

I've just finished this new model: the Lanchester Mk.II of 1930 in 1/100 scale. It was a much more capable successor to the WW1-vintage Lanchester.

It's up at my Shapeways shop, but at the moment the page just shows a big banner saying "This model is no longer publicly available", which is entirely false, and apparently due to some bug introduced during their most recent systems-tinkering.

The Lanchester Mk.II wasn't nearly as rivet-studded as some other vehicles of the era, and it came as a bit of a wrench to me not to sprinkle them all over the place as is my wont. I do like plenty of rivets.

Land Dreadnought (6mm)

As a change of pace, and as a bit of relaxation, I whipped up this ludicrous imaginary land-dreadnought with far more guns than would ever be feasible. It's scaled (theoretically) for 6mm gaming, but it's about 65mm long, so it could quite easily make its way into a 15mm game too.

I've composited in an ancient 1/285 scale GHQ Jagdtiger, roughly to the same scale.

It's quite fun not having to worry about getting angles and measurements right, and just go berserk.

I think that maybe it needs some rivets. Rivets make everything better.

It's available to buy, as usual, from Shapeways at http://shpws.me/LQIC

Ignorance is Bli... Nope, Just Ignorance

My next project, while I'm waiting for my Big Boy's Big Book of Big Plans to arrive from bookdepository.com, is a Lancia armoured truck of about 1921.

It's all pretty straightforward, except in one respect: I have only the haziest notion of what goes on underneath a truck.

The drawings I'm working from show front, rear, and side elevations, with no details at all of the chassis, suspension or steering linkages. I have a photograph of a restored vehicle that gives me a glimpse of the front suspension, but that's it.

I guess the thing to do is to fake it.

More digital armaments

Port

The Carden Loyd Light Tank Mk.VIII from the mid-1920s. Now available from Shapeways in 1:100 scale and 1:56 scale.

This is the vehicle on which Vickers based their enduring line of light tanks, after they bought out Carden Loyd in the 1920s..

Starboard

It's tiny. At full size, it's less than three and a half metres long, which is a little bit smaller than my car — although it would have been a lot heavier than my car, and also much slower and less fuel-efficient. Though my car doesn't have a machine-gun mounted, which I sometimes regret when I'm in traffic

Yet another Vickers

I'm waiting on a book full of scale drawings of interwar military vehicles to arrive from bookdepository.com, and I thought while I wait, I'd whip up a quick Vickers Medium Mk.II. It would be simple and easy, I thought.

I was not entirely correct.

However, it's more or less done now; there are just a few more bits and bobs to add and then it'll be another one off to Shapeways.

It would be nice if I could actually afford to buy the stuff I'm designing. That would be really nice.

NOTE:
It's now available in 15mm (1:100) scale on Shapeways for a measly twenty yankee dollars.

My digital legions increase!

Since I'd already gone to all the effort of building the running gear for the Birch Gun, I thought I might as well make my next model the Vickers Medium Mk.C, from about 1925, which uses basically the same chassis.

I don't have scale drawings for this one, so I'm working by best guess from some very old, grainy photographs. This particular one is designed at 1:100 scale for 15mm; I'll probably do a redesigned version for 1:285 (6mm).

I don't believe it saw service with the British army, but Vickers supplied some to the Irish, and to  the Japanese who modified it and turned it into the Type 89.

Birch Gun for sale, one owner, low mileage

I don't know why the starboard running gear is bright white
while everything else is grey.

But not the port side, which was just mirrored from
the starboard.

Looking down into the fighting compartment

The view from behind.

I've built a 1:285 digital model of a Birch Gun from 1925, and put it up for sale in my brand new shop on Shapeways.

The limitations of the printing process means that things like the gun shield track guards and tracks are hugely over-thick in scale, but most of the model can just be resized upwards to form the core of a 15mm model.

On the plus side, this is the first model I've submitted to Shapeways that passed all their automated pre-acceptance tests first time, so I'm clearly getting a handle on how to design for the materials.

Digital Modelling (again)

I finally figured out (with the aid of the internet) how to fix the issue that was preventing me from importing the running-gear file, so I could put together this mock-up assembly of all the components.

For 3d printing purposes, the colour is really irrelevant. I thought I'd give it some though, because why not? In the process, I discovered that the turret and sub-turret files really need a bit of refinement. They were my first attempts in Blender, and it does rather show.

Now it's on to 3d printing the thing. I don't have local access to a printer, unfortunately. Even a relatively low-resolution printer would be useful for testing purposes, since the alternative would be to get Shapeways or one of those companies to do it, which would likely end up costing me an arm and a leg before I get a successful product.

Digital Modelling

Vickers Medium Mk.III c.1930

Back in the far distant past, I got pretty good at writing PovRay scene files in a text editor. Then a graphical front-end for PovRay appeared, called MoRay, and it was really good until it no longer worked with the new version of Windows (Vista), and the guy who originally wrote it lost interest in updating it. I believe he passed it on to the PovRay Foundation, but the last time I tried it, things hadn't really got any better.

Anyway, that was some years ago, and although I've dabbled from time to time I haven't really made the effort to come to grips with newer software.

As may have become apparent, I have an interest in the clunky rolling boilers that passed for AFVs in the inter-war period. Unfortunately, in my preferred gaming scales of 15mm (1:100) and 6mm (1:285 - 1:300), that period is very poorly served by manufacturers. However, now that 3d printing is beginning to mature, and reasonably high resolutions are now becoming available from companies like Shapeways, I thought I might see what I could do about the paucity of tanks from between the World Wars by building some digitally.

Machine-gun sub-turret

My software of choice is Blender, which is both very capable and free. I've tried it out before, when I was looking for a replacement for MoRay, but back then its UI was excruciatingly bad — it had clearly been designed by and for severely autistic engineering nerds, with little or no account taken of the needs or limitations of normal people, and with some truly unique assumptions about what was intuitive. Happily, it has been vastly improved since then. It's still not very straightforward to learn, but it's so much better that it might almost be a different program altogether.

Main turret

I decided to teach myself how to use Blender by building a Vickers Medium Mk.III, which (as far as I know) isn't manufactured by anybody anywhere in either 15mm or 6mm scales. So far, all I've got is the main turret and a front machine-gun turret, but it's a start.

I am learning a lot, but there's a lot more still to learn.

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Cupola

Turret with imported OBJ cupola in place

Here's a bit of progress for the morning.

I separated out the commander's cupola to its own file, and added some detailing to it. Then I exported it from Blender as an OBJ file, and imported it back into the turret file.

I don't know why the imported object is so much brighter than the native Blender stuff; I guess they use different default material settings. I haven't yet delved into any of that; it's not really relevant for the purposes of this particular model, which is 3d printing. However, I'll have to take account of it eventually.

I realised that I'd actually created the  main turret and mg turret at about 1:50 scale, not 1:100, so I had to do some resizing so that all the components would be consistent when I come to put them all together.

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This will be about as far as I get today, I think. I've got the main shape of the hull complete, now it's just a case of adding all the bits.

Interestingly, the files size for the MG turret is much larger than for the main turret. I'm wondering if that's because I used UVSpheres instead of IcoSpheres for the rivets? I don't really know.

So far, modelling has been pretty straightforward — it's all primitives really, messed about with to one degree or another with Boolean sculpting. The side frames will be a bit trickier, I think; I might have to investigate some more advanced construction methods.

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A little bit more fiddling about before I go to sleep. So many rivets.

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February 3rd

Very slow progress today — most of my time was spent flailing about just trying to make that little grab-handle on the front of the driver's cupola. It turned out to be ridiculously simple once I found out how to do it, but the Boolean unions I was originally trying were driving me up the wall.

Apart from that, now the driver's cupola is also covered in rivets, and we have some track guards. It's progress, if slow.

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February 4th

I've made a start on the rather complicated running gear, which has been an opportunity to try out importing and extruding SVG curves. It's not an entirely straightforward task, but it's really not terribly difficult either.

I created the form for the framework in CorelDraw, exported it to SVG and it went into Blender without a hitch. For some reason, Blender ignores the scale in the SVG file, and it appears in Blender's stage very, very tiny — it would be easy to assume that the import had failed unless you're prepared for that. You have to zoom right in to find it, and resize it a lot to get it up to its proper size. Also, the origin point for the curves is set way off to the side and needs to be reset. I have no idea why either of these things happen, but it does.

Since the finished model is intended for moulding and casting from a 3d printed master, it meant that I could simplify the framework a bit and make it solid, rather than the sandwich construction the original vehicle had.

Next up, wheels and tracks. That should be interesting. Once I've got this whole side finished, I should be able to just duplicate and mirror the whole thing to get the port side.

Running wheels and return rollers added. The drive sprocket and front idler will be ore candidates for an SVG extrusion I think. They could be built up within Blender, but it would be a chore.

Oh yes, and I'll be needing a track tensioning screw as well.

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Well, putting the tracks on was a lot easier than I expected. The Array modifier saved a lot of time and fiddling around, though being able to set an offset value for simple duplications would have been almost as quick, and a bit more flexible as regards individual link rotation — it would have been easier to emulate track sag, for example.

The view from the front...

...and from the rear.

These things start getting a bit complex.

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February 8th

I've gone back to the hull for the moment, to add all the clutter on the engine deck.

The exhaust pipes are going to be an interesting learning experience. I'm not really sure how to go about them, though I know that bendy pipes is something Blender can do.

Apart from the pipes, pretty much all that's left to do is the storage boxes that run along the track guards amidships. That and trying to work out what's wrong with my running gear file that makes it unimportable, and how to fix it.

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As it turned out, the exhaust pipes were easier to build than I had expected, since I could just build them up from a filled, bevelled bezier curve transformed to a mesh.

On to the last leg. This has proven to be rather an enjoyable project.

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The storage boxes have been added, and that is about that for the hull. No doubt there are more bits of detail that could go on, but essentially, it's done.