I've had an idea simmering in the back of my mind for awhile now. A Moulder/Skyre collaboration as proxy for the Ratling Gun weapon team. The official sculpt is a bit dated and it was one of the holes in the new Skaven range I wanted to fill up with something a bit different. The cavalry base would give enough space to go with something similar to Forgeworld's Wolfrats but with chaingun hooked up to it like the Stormfiends. Had initially thought about using a chaos warhound or similar wolf-shaped mini as a base but it was on the back burner among plenty of other weird ideas.
VERSION 1
A good friend of mine moved back into town and while we were catching up I told him I had recently picked up painting miniatures again. He mentioned he got an Ender 3D printer earlier in the year and how big the scene was for printing miniatures for Table Top and D&D. He pointed me in the direction of Thingiverse to see all the great work people put out and also made the unfortunate decision to offer full use of his printer. He promises he enjoyed the process but I don't think he knew then what he was getting himself into!
He linked me to a channel called 3D Printed Tabletop and a video called Digital Kitbashing. In the video it showed how you could basically convert and kitbash multiple models uploaded to Thingiverse to create something new. He used a free program that comes installed already in Windows 10 called 3D Builder.
Booted it up and messed around a little and figured out the controls. It's very limited and the equivalent of MsPaint in terms of 3D programs but I had zero experience with 3D sculpting or models so a basic version was all I needed really. A night of trawling the models on Thingiverse and slicing and dicing and I had the first version done.
Again I take no credit for the sculpting here, 3D builder lets you spawn in basic elementary shapes like spheres, cylinders and cubes only. The work I did was cutting up other peoples models and shifting them around in a way I described to a friend as "converting with control+Z". It's based on a wolf sculpt by GloomyKid with some rat teeth and a tail added to make it more Skaven like. The main reason I picked it was for the muzzle and face which I felt were similar is aesthetic to those of the new Skaven snouts.
Below is a full list of links to the 3D models used in this version and later ones, they are made by some really talented folks:
Wolf : My scuffed 3D Builder had an issue loading the file, for some reason the area between the teeth and gums had a bunch of voids and they were not connected. I took the opportunity to take the teeth out and rebuild it with some basic shapes into a more rat-like arrangement of gnashers in v2 onward.
Tanks and Tail: Arch-Lord Discordant, I ended up using the 3 tanks with connecting pipes and tail parts from it scaled down.
Armor Plate : Alternate heads for a 40k Bot I believe, Back armor/Chaingun housing
Chaingun: Chopped the gun off a Rubric Marine then rearranged it a little.
Skaven Symbol : Shaved a tiny bit off this Warp Cannon proxy for the symbol on the armor.
Eye Lens : Cybork Eye from an Ork Bust, ended up dropping this part after v1.
Nose Plate : v2 Onward, a suit of armor for a pet rat! Used the helmet part but chopped most of it off.
Skull Armor : v2 Onward, one of the leg plates from a Nurgle Knight upgrade kit.
After knocking it together I sent it to my friend and he printed the first version out above. The first mistake I made was not checking the scale as it was pretty tiny, shorter than a Clanrat. The pipes especially seemed to be a bit of a struggle for the printer to get right. My mate wanted to reprint it with some different settings and a smaller nozzle but I wanted to change some things and separate the parts of the model. Version 1 the gun and tail were separate already but I figured smaller parts would allow for quicker prints when figuring out orientation and print settings.
VERSION 2
I might have taken this idea a little far! Version 2 had 8 parts as I ended up removing the pipes connecting the 3 tanks. My friend came over for the weekend and brought his Ender 3 with him. The multiple smaller parts allowed for more reprints while it was here and being able to watch how the printer actually worked was a big help in understanding how to make the model easier to print.
The model was similar to v1 though I swapped out the Armor plate models as I was having issues when merging and subtracting the first one. The face was a pretty big rebuild for me.. I used cones and the smooth and simplify functions to warp them till I got lucky and they were teeth shaped. Some ovals in the gum line for the new teeth to sit in and the mouth was a bit more rat-like.
The eye lens on version one leaned the model too close towards 40k for me so tried to make a Skaven-like helmet for it. The eyes and skull plate were both from the Nurgle Knight kit. The eye guards being parts of a shoulder-pad symbol and the skull plate was one of the leg armor options. There is also a chopped up pet rat helmet underneath with the cheek guards just being some edited shapes spawned in.
Above is the FDM print in its raw form, missing the tanks and tail. You can see where the detail was a little too small for the printer and it overcompensated on the eyes. The supports also left the bottom texture a little rough. Had a bunch of changes I wanted to make to the model for a 3rd version but wanted to use this version to see what it would take to make the FDM plastic surface and print lines smooth enough to paint on top of.
The experiments began with a blasting of Rustoleum rattle-can 2x Primer. The first thing I learned was the semi porous nature of FDM plastic prints as it drank up the spray paint and took forever to dry up correctly. I replaced the missing pipes with some paper clips bent and drilled into place. The Skaven symbol also didn't come out great so we reprinted it pretty tall then I sanded it down and glued it on top. The picture above was taken after these steps but it also had a pretty thick double coat of Gloss varnish.
Had learned about using varnish to fill gaps from Vincent Venturella's excellent Hobby Cheating series and gave it a try as the primer had done nothing for the FDM texture. The gloss varnish did a great job filling in the micro print lines but not completely.
Had picked up a cheap bottle of Artists Acrylic Gesso while at a local art store and remembered an old Dakka Dakka post about using it as a primer. Watered it down and slapped it on pretty thick. My thought was it would flow and shrink up and help smooth out the more stubborn FDM textures. It worked a little too well though and alot of detail got lost during this step.
Hit it with the rattle-can again after just to see how it looked. A lot of the sharper details and intentional crevasses were lost or blurred but the general texture of the model was as smooth as I could ask for it to be. At this point I switched back to working in 3D builder on version 3.
VERSION 3
The plan with version 3 was to shift around how the model was cut up into parts, after watching the printer work in front of me I also wanted to try and simplify the shapes as much as possible. Areas on the model where I assumed the change in detail would be to small for the printer to register it was trying and overcompensating. Places like the tail and the eye plates were giving issues when printing version 2.
Swapped out the tanks with some simple circle and cylinders shapes aligned in the same position with the idea that I would do the piping using more traditional modeling techniques after. Replaced the eye plates on the helmet with more circles and cylinders to drill the holes out myself. On reflection the gun housing didn't need to be its own piece but being able to reprint the head, gun and tail separately was the right move. The gun in the picture above would also get swapped out as my friend remodeled it completely with deeper grooves between the barrels. The tail as well got smoothed out using the simplify and smooth options a few times.
This is the print in its raw form after support cleanup and some light sanding in places. Was really happy with how it came out! My friend suffered through many reprints and edits for me as he had taken to the challenge of trying to get it as close as possible. At the end I probably had 8 extra chaingun parts alone!
Assembled it up and started filling in the gaps between the parts and a little bit of greenstuff work joining the tail. Bent up some paper clips to act as the pipes between the tanks and some greenstuff connectors for the pipes.
The picture above is after 2 coats of Gesso and then a layer of gloss varnish over it. The print lines and imperfections were pretty much gone at this point but needed to give it a prime to see how much detail had been lost. Also put in a second pipe on the left side.
And here it is after the prime. Did lose a little more detail than I wanted from the filling process but on the bright side the surfaces were smooth and solid enough to paint on top of like a normal model. Overall was a really enjoyable and rewarding deep dive into the worlds of 3D modeling, printing and basic miniature design. Wouldn't have been possible without the help of my good friend who did all the printing or all the artists sharing their work for use on Thingiverse.
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