Before I begin, I wanted to say that I asked Durandal permission to attempt to 3D print a Discovery Freelancer ship through ShapeWays (a contract 3D printing service). I wanted to try the Bastet, and he pointed me to the creator of such a beautiful ship, MassDriver. Unfortunately, I couldn't reach him, and got the go ahead from Durandal, as well as the go-ahead to post here.
If you're interested in doing this, please be sure you own the rights to the model you're going to attempt with. As this was made by a member of the community, and was not vanilla-FL ship, I went ahead.
ShapeWays needed a .x3d, so I got the .cmp into Milkshape, exported to .3ds, and used Blender to get it to .x3d. I didn't change a single thing; just exported it. Thanks to @Swallow , as his signature has all the links to get the tools to do what is needed.
Uploading it to the site, I resized it to 2 inches in the fuselage direction; it locks the aspect ratio and scales it properly.
Material choice was "Frosted Ultra Detail", as there are some tight tolerances and small details (engine, underside, weapon hardpoints, etc) that were too tight for most plastics. The website tells you, as well, if there are issues, and even generates a HEATMAP of where the problem areas are.
One re-sized one for those too lazy to click-through.
Will be on my desk for a while to come; not bad for a first shot.
If you're interested in a ship that won't rest as porphyry as this one does, the stands used for Star Wars: X-Wing miniatures can be used, though you'll have to add the female side of it to the model, and ensure it's scaled properly.
not bad, 3d printing is still young here i'm from, we can probably print something the size of a computer mouse, anything more detailed will need some richman swag
next step should be to take it to an airspray detailer and show them the model of the bastet with the textures loaded and have them paint it that way, would look pretty cool
2inch... If i ever wanted to make a disco based wargame I'd rather use smaller ships. Like 5, maybe 10 centimeters long battleships, while fighters would be 1 cm or so
And well, sculpting one from something like GW's greenstuff yourself may be even more funny (and cheaper, I think)
I'd love to have an AI Cruiser, but I'm way too dumb for this stuff. Also too lazy.
If someone could get me the model to the required Format and the textures, I'd much appreciate it.
I want this on my desk
actually tempted to try and get a textured nepnhilim or leviathan model from them... doubt it would be the same price though, i kind of want it a little bigger than that xD
The main factors area:
1. Bounding box (how big can the things actually be for the printer, typically limited by input material) and
2. Wall thicknesses / small feature dimensions. Even on this, the tail stabilizers are quite thin, and intricate parts (like exposed rails / antenna) may be an issue. However, the little hardpoints came out perfectly, as did the ribs and engine details.
Honestly, it doesn't take much time to do. From download and install of Milkshape and Blender, dropping the converter .dlls in the right place, and going from Milkshape -> Blender -> upload to Shapeways, it was about an hour.
I had to do ZERO modification to the stock model. If it had kicked back that there were issues, I wouldn't have been able to make it without some serious effort in learning the basics of modeling.
![[Image: cqPhnsE.jpg?1]](http://i.imgur.com/cqPhnsE.jpg?1)
![[Image: ulMElbm.png]](http://i.imgur.com/ulMElbm.png){kind=small}
![[Image: 1XtV5Ss.png?1]](http://i.imgur.com/1XtV5Ss.png?1)
![[Image: 8iWW4WC.png]](https://i.imgur.com/8iWW4WC.png)
![[Image: iytffEd.png]](https://i.imgur.com/iytffEd.png)
(and cheaper, I think)
![[Image: zBEqQfl.jpg?1]](https://i.imgur.com/zBEqQfl.jpg?1)