Printed Armies - 3D printed CnC stuff

[moonsense715]

Nice, can't wait for the printed model

[ClearyMonkey]

 Wow Kalle Bowo! Impressive work! I wish I had a 3D printer to do this. You have done great work! Especially the Construction Yard. Very impressive!

 

I use to love Micro Machines and this totally reminds me of them. When I was younger my buddy had a ton of the army micro machines.

He had so many and different playsets. We use to spend an hour just organizing and setting up all the vehicles all over the place just to have a massive battle.

 

I remember being so into C&C that I wrote Westwood studios and Micro Machines about one another and how I thought it would be an awesome idea to have Command & Conquer Micro Machines. Though it never happened, your 3D printed armies are looking pretty close to that dream. Well done. 

 

 

Will you be setting up Polls to get an idea of which model to build next? If your excepting votes, I would say, the original C&C MCV. You built the Construction Yard. Now you just need the vehicle so you can "repack" it and move it around.

[Kalle Bowo]

Thank you very much, Monkey! For me it's an absolute nobrainer, making all that CnC stuff. I mean, I grew up with it, built a board game version, modded on Reborn, dressed as a Nod soldier at the GamesCom, it's just a part of me. Doing this stuff brings back so many great memories of childhood, friends and youth. Plus I practice 3D modeling and people appriciate that stuff. CnC still got a huge fan base out there.

 

Making polls about the next model might be an idea. At the moment I'm simply taking notes when people are requesting stuff, for example the RA2 Soviet Missle Silo or the Nod Crawler from TT. Lot of people want to see the Mammoth Tank from TW. I think making an actuall poll wouldn't work. the "fans" of printed armies are scattered too much. Some follow me on Instagram, some on Facebook, in different forums ... I guess it would be easier to just ask on all those different platforms straight out "Hey suckers, tell me what you want, pronto" and then I just add their suggestions to my list.

 

But yep, I thought about the TD MCV as well, I mean it's super iconic and I totally like the look ^^ the cutscene where the MCV unfolds and transforms into the ConYard is permanently burned into my brain ^^ I mean it was super cool back then, wasn't it?!

 

cheers

[Kalle Bowo]

Meanwhile the Titan isn't done, here's an old photo

 

 

Remembering the time when it was still warm enough to take that photo out on the balcony

[MartinMb]

That's amazing!

Are you going to paint these models?

 

I know that there are 3D printers that do print in colour, but they're expansive stuff.

[Kalle Bowo]

That's amazing!

Are you going to paint these models?

 

I know that there are 3D printers that do print in colour, but they're expansive stuff.

 

Thank you yes, I'm planning to paint the stuff. I already got a good airbrush pistol and a couple of colors from a friend of mine but I'm still kind of avoiding to touch that stuff but yes, I want to paint it! Maybe when the Tiberian Dawn base is completed, we'll see ^^

 

I know the printers you are talking about, but they are not affordable for a person like you and me. I'm talking like 100.000€ or something, Plus the color actually doesn't look so nice, it's always kind of pale.

[Kalle Bowo]

GDI Guard Towers are ready

 

[NodGuy]

Pesky guard towers! Where's a flame tank when you need one?

Nice work as always, Kalle Bowo.

[Kalle Bowo]

On 14.2.2017 at 0:29 AM, NodGuy said:

Nice work as always, Kalle Bowo.

Thanks!

Here's another photo of the GDI Guard Towers + Mammoth, just to give you an impression of how tiny all the stuff gets. It still baffles me that the Ultimaker can print those delicate details. 

 

[Timeaua]

Good work Kalle! You really need smooth the surfaces with sandpaper or acetone vapor chamber and paint some of these models.

At my work we have a 3D printer, too. You can create really cool stuff with it.

 

[Kalle Bowo]

4 hours ago, Timeaua said:

Good work Kalle! You really need smooth the surfaces with sandpaper or acetone vapor chamber and paint some of these models.

I thought about this as well. But I believe that I would rather decrease the quality because I would lose a lot of those tiny details instead of gaining quality due to a smoother surface. I mean, just look at it, the Mammoth Tank without its antennas is 8 freakin milimeters high ^^ (with antennas 14mm). There won't be much left after the chemical smoothing but a small deformed blob. I mean, I will surely give it a try at some point when I start printing with different materials (at the moment I use PLA and I think I've heard that this acetone smoothing doesn't work with PLA) but it's not my prio one.

As I said, keep in mind just how small this stuff is. It might seem on the photos as if the surfaces are super rough since you can see the layers quite clearly due to the immense zoom, but believe me, holding them in your hands in real life it's far from that. Some friends actually told me after holding this stuff in their hands "man, i'm impressed, I thought 3D printers make ugly surfaces, but yours is quite fine". To put it in perspective again, here's a photo of the last photo displayed at 100% true pixels as seen on my flatscreen monitor with the actual model in front of it ^^ I would say EVERYTHING looks rough if you zoom that much in on it

 

Edited February 15, 2017 by Kalle Bowo

[Timeaua]

haha imagin 20 years ago, when we were kids and had fun with army men. Suddenly your father says "hey you want some cool tanks for your army? Star Wars? C&C tiberian dawn? You want to design your own little tanks?"

I would have been the happiest kid on the world... Lego? Who the fuck needs lego

 

What 3D printer model are you using? Its really good quality. Maybe I will buy one, too^^

Edited February 16, 2017 by Timeaua

[ChopBam]

I'm guessing the turrets don't swivel? All the same, really cool stuff with the small details.

[Kalle Bowo]

4 hours ago, Timeaua said:

haha imagin 20 years ago, when we were kids and had fun with army men. Suddenly your father says "hey you want some cool tanks for your army? Star Wars? C&C tiberian dawn? You want to design your own little tanks?"

I would have been the happiest kid on the world... Lego? Who the fuck needs lego

That would have been awesome, indeed but at least now I get to feel the same happiness as a grown man again

 

4 hours ago, Timeaua said:

What 3D printer model are you using? Its really good quality. Maybe I will buy one, too^^

I am using the Ultimaker 2+. When I bought it about a year ago it costed aroun 2.300€. From my experience I have to say if you want to have a good quality, you really need to spend a lot of money. Before settling for the UM2+ I ordered a couple of test prints from different websites made with different printers, basically the same scale model over and over again (which somehow happened to be the Hand of Nod). And the UM2+ really had the best quality. Sure, by now there are also cool machines like the Formlabs Form 2, which use stereolithography instead of fused deposition modeling, which gives even nicer results (and are also much faster!) but they are also a couple of thousand bucks more expensive

3 hours ago, ChopBam said:

I'm guessing the turrets don't swivel? All the same, really cool stuff with the small details.

Sadly, no, even though the body and the turrets are printed seperately, they are glued to the body. I haven't come up with a way to make them rotatable at this small scale. But I always have to print 2 tanks at once because this gives the molten plastic more time to cool down (printing on that small scale is really tricky, I can tell you) so there's basically always the possibility to glue one turret straight looking forward and the other one looking to the side, to give the whole thing more variation.

Plus I also plan an making a larger scale Mammoth Tank which will indeed have a turret that can be rotated, even barrels that can go up and down. I already made some sketches about the functionality, but I still need to work on that.

 

Edited February 16, 2017 by Kalle Bowo