So after speaking with Klavs and getting his blessing that it was okay to manipulate his models for the purposes of creating printable versions, I have been working on creating a printable tabletop gaming miniature scale version of some of his Terran and Kilrathi ships. My workflow has primarily taken the form of importing the .FBX or .OBJ files into Blender and then exporting a clean version as an .stl file. Then I use Blender or 3D Builder to work on making the .stls manifold ("watertight") so they are printable in resin. And in the case of the Kilrathi Drakhri, I have ended great miniature version of his gorgeous model, as released in the "Klavs Kilrathi Models" package I first encountered here on the WC CIC.
This model is an exact duplicate of Klavs original model. The only modification I made was altering the underside slightly to allow for the placement of a 3.375mm diameter hole approximate 4mm deep. (That dimension being the metric equivalent of a 1/8" diameter typical of many widely available flight stand pegs, plus a 0.1 mm tolerance all around to allow the pegs to be inserted and removed easily without damaging the model.
After some carefully manual support placement in Lychee, I came up with this:
(Note that I did discover later this particular support was originally touching the starboard engine intake, hence my mini having a notch there. (Let's call it battle damage. . . <sigh>) This has since been fixed in the Lychee file and exported pre-supported .stl file.
After printing, post-processing, and priming, I got this:
And finally after a little painting (with my moderate painting skills) and my intentions of doing a take on the paint scheme seen on the WC 2 box art, abeit adapted for Klavs highly detailed model, I ended up here. I'm pretty happy with it.
If anyone is interested, I am attaching both a unsupported mini-scaled version (for those that like to do their own supports) and the export of my pre-supported version as originally created in Lychee.
Note that the attached .zip file also contains the same model scaled to what would be a 1/72nd scale version of the Drakhir, if we assume the cited length for the real thing would be 11.7 meters long. So 11700mm / 72 equals a 162.5 mm long model. This version serves in case you want a version you can rescale to any size of your choosing (without the flight stand peg hole in the ventral fuselage).
That leads me to this. I'm also working a printable 1/72 version that can be printed in parts. This means 1. that the largest parts should fit in something as small as a Elegoo Mars. And 2. you won't have to support the entire starfighter as a single printed unit. Which at a larger scale for something shaped like an aircraft or starfighter be both difficult to properly support structurally so it is held in place during printing, would require supported touching a considerable surface area of the model marring many of the surfaces of the resulting print, and finally could be difficult to remove from the supports without risk of breaking smaller detail parts.
I'm still working on refining the parts, but this is what I'm looking at:
becomes this
Note that this time I did slightly modify Klavs original model by increasing slightly the area of ventral side of the fuselage to give more area to allow for my popsicle stick-like "wing spar". And where the "roll bar", engine exhausts, and engine nacelles have been split, I have created tabs and matching holes to ensure parts align correctly. The tabs for the "roll bar" wing are actually structurally valuable, because not only do they assist in getting the part placed correctly, the roll bar serves to help lock the wings in the correct position and reduce the chance of them sagging.
Though my intent is eventually to print a 1/72nd scale version from the parts illustrated above, I did do a quick FDM print as a proof of concept. This was mostly to confirm that my part divisions were clean and everything fits together as intented. I let Bambu Slicer do its thing using tree supports to minimize the contact points, and the result turned out better than expected. Though it was a %*#@! to remove the supports from the fuselage without snapping off the laser cannons. (I might see about trying to make those separately printable parts, or maybe as a gun cluster.) Unsurprisingly the underside of roll bar is very rough, but it was a quick test print where I did not attempt to manually add more supports there. This also is an earlier iteration where I have not made the engine exhausts separate from the wings yet.
So this FDM print is a big rough, but it still looks pretty darn nice, I think!
I have some concerns the wings might be too heavy for the joints when printed in resin, but I won't know for certain. They are actually fairly thin in the miniature size, so perhaps this concern is not warranted.
Again, all credit goes to Klavs himself for all the hours of meticulous work he put into creating these fantastic models, and for his generousity to the community for sharing them with us. He is the artist, and I am merely a technician, haha. If he approves, and there is any interest, I will happily share the Drakhri parts for the 1/72nd scale version once I get them where I'm happy with them, and maybe some of the models of his I am working on making printable versions of.
(I can neither confirm nor deny that the complex wing and stablizer arrangement, coupled with its size, makes the Jalthi a punishing model to support in resin, or that it looks great next to the Sabre.)
This model is an exact duplicate of Klavs original model. The only modification I made was altering the underside slightly to allow for the placement of a 3.375mm diameter hole approximate 4mm deep. (That dimension being the metric equivalent of a 1/8" diameter typical of many widely available flight stand pegs, plus a 0.1 mm tolerance all around to allow the pegs to be inserted and removed easily without damaging the model.
After some carefully manual support placement in Lychee, I came up with this:
(Note that I did discover later this particular support was originally touching the starboard engine intake, hence my mini having a notch there. (Let's call it battle damage. . . <sigh>) This has since been fixed in the Lychee file and exported pre-supported .stl file.
After printing, post-processing, and priming, I got this:
And finally after a little painting (with my moderate painting skills) and my intentions of doing a take on the paint scheme seen on the WC 2 box art, abeit adapted for Klavs highly detailed model, I ended up here. I'm pretty happy with it.
If anyone is interested, I am attaching both a unsupported mini-scaled version (for those that like to do their own supports) and the export of my pre-supported version as originally created in Lychee.
Note that the attached .zip file also contains the same model scaled to what would be a 1/72nd scale version of the Drakhir, if we assume the cited length for the real thing would be 11.7 meters long. So 11700mm / 72 equals a 162.5 mm long model. This version serves in case you want a version you can rescale to any size of your choosing (without the flight stand peg hole in the ventral fuselage).
That leads me to this. I'm also working a printable 1/72 version that can be printed in parts. This means 1. that the largest parts should fit in something as small as a Elegoo Mars. And 2. you won't have to support the entire starfighter as a single printed unit. Which at a larger scale for something shaped like an aircraft or starfighter be both difficult to properly support structurally so it is held in place during printing, would require supported touching a considerable surface area of the model marring many of the surfaces of the resulting print, and finally could be difficult to remove from the supports without risk of breaking smaller detail parts.
I'm still working on refining the parts, but this is what I'm looking at:
becomes this
Note that this time I did slightly modify Klavs original model by increasing slightly the area of ventral side of the fuselage to give more area to allow for my popsicle stick-like "wing spar". And where the "roll bar", engine exhausts, and engine nacelles have been split, I have created tabs and matching holes to ensure parts align correctly. The tabs for the "roll bar" wing are actually structurally valuable, because not only do they assist in getting the part placed correctly, the roll bar serves to help lock the wings in the correct position and reduce the chance of them sagging.
Though my intent is eventually to print a 1/72nd scale version from the parts illustrated above, I did do a quick FDM print as a proof of concept. This was mostly to confirm that my part divisions were clean and everything fits together as intented. I let Bambu Slicer do its thing using tree supports to minimize the contact points, and the result turned out better than expected. Though it was a %*#@! to remove the supports from the fuselage without snapping off the laser cannons. (I might see about trying to make those separately printable parts, or maybe as a gun cluster.) Unsurprisingly the underside of roll bar is very rough, but it was a quick test print where I did not attempt to manually add more supports there. This also is an earlier iteration where I have not made the engine exhausts separate from the wings yet.
So this FDM print is a big rough, but it still looks pretty darn nice, I think!
I have some concerns the wings might be too heavy for the joints when printed in resin, but I won't know for certain. They are actually fairly thin in the miniature size, so perhaps this concern is not warranted.
Again, all credit goes to Klavs himself for all the hours of meticulous work he put into creating these fantastic models, and for his generousity to the community for sharing them with us. He is the artist, and I am merely a technician, haha. If he approves, and there is any interest, I will happily share the Drakhri parts for the 1/72nd scale version once I get them where I'm happy with them, and maybe some of the models of his I am working on making printable versions of.
(I can neither confirm nor deny that the complex wing and stablizer arrangement, coupled with its size, makes the Jalthi a punishing model to support in resin, or that it looks great next to the Sabre.)
