3D Printed Privateer ships.

[st3lt3k]

Every ship has its own challenges.
First of all, a standardized scale should be defined.
It should be decided whether the spaceships should be with or without landing gear.
Cockpit interior yes or no?

My fleet should match in size and all be equipped with landing gear and cockpit interior.

For the four flyable ships I try to adapt the original cockpits.

For other ships you can let your creativity run free. I haven't found any concrete specifications for the landing gear and interior.

Only my 3D filament printer shows me limits in terms of printing area (250x250x250mm) and level of details.
Cutting the CAD model into the right pieces and reassembling them later after printing is not so easy either.
Especially if you want to add various extras to the basic model.

I think that focusing on the cockpit/pilot size might be the best approach.

In case it helps, I did my best to do that to come up with a size for the Centurion
https://www.wcnews.com/chatzone/threads/centurion-privateer-length.31611/post-415720
and came up with
Wingtip to wingtip = 67.98 feet (20.72 meters)
Length, nose to exhaust = 71.15 feet (21.69 meters)

I doubt that sizes are consistent throughout Privateer. Still, these New Detroit Landing Platform screenshots can help provide a sense of intended scale.

 

[kingmakeress]

Only my 3D filament printer shows me limits in terms of printing area (250x250x250mm) and level of details.
Cutting the CAD model into the right pieces and reassembling them later after printing is not so easy either.
Especially if you want to add various extras to the basic model.

Sounds like a lot of work. Well done for carrying it out!

 

[rap1983]

Isn't there a model of the New Detroit Landing Platform with ships?

I have to say goodbye to the idea of being able to use one platform size of a location for all four ships.
I have roughly scaled the New Detroit Landing Platform so that the Galaxy fits on it.
I put the other ships on the same platform.
If you compare the views with the ingame images from the post by “st3lt3k”, you can see that it is not possible to reproduce the images exactly.
The Galaxy is simply too huge.

 

[kingmakeress]

I have roughly scaled the New Detroit Landing Platform so that the Galaxy fits on it.

I think the platforms are good in providing ship details as well as the relative proportions of the ships up to a point. The Galaxy is too bulky and the Tarsus a bit too long, but not too much, to fit on most landing pads. Maybe the Orion, although a bit too tall, would be a better basis for comparing ship dimensions.

 

[st3lt3k]

I have to say goodbye to the idea of being able to use one platform size of a location for all four ships.

I think it's great that you're trying this. Your 3D printed ships look amazing!

I saw that your Tarsus model has what looks like a loading ramp on the back. Does that lead to the cargo area? Could you post a picture?

How these ships get loaded and unloaded is not fully clear to me.

There's also the issue of why the Galaxy, which is so much bigger than the other ships, doesn't hold more cargo.
Cargo Hold Units
Centurion 50
Orion 50
Tarsus 100
Galaxy 150

 

[kingmakeress]

There's also the issue of why the Galaxy, which is so much bigger than the other ships, doesn't hold more cargo.

Maybe the cargo expansion makes the difference as it adds 50% more space (if I remember correctly), so in Galaxy this is considerable. Also, the top and bottom turrets make Galaxy look bulkier.

Did you fit Tarsus with plasma guns? This is interesting.

 

[Bob McDob]

Isn't there a model of the New Detroit Landing Platform with ships?

Sadly not! I found static images for the ships however, which makes me suspect that they simply prerendered them and then composited them on, rather than rendering them as one image.


Edit: That said, I had a suspicion that if you put the ships from the dealer into the landing pad, they would come out looking pretty similar. And I was right!

I didn't even have to scale them at all! Strange how nothing else is to scale, but this is. I guess the artists were practical above all else.

You're right about the Galaxy being huge though. When I first rendered this out, I did the Galaxy first and then wondered why I couldn't hide it and enable the other ships in the render. It turns out that I hadn't hidden the other ships at all: they were all being rendered but the Galaxy was so big it hid all of them!

 

[rap1983]

I can make pictures of the cargobay and the hatch. I am currently printing the parts of the Tarsus in the best possible quality. Pictures will follow when my Tarsus is finished.
Yes, the Galaxy has about 225 units with expansion.
The two templates of the Tarsus from thingiverse that i used first have Laser or Plasma as armament.
The rendered images Look good.
The Galaxy is not quite in position like in the game.
Which files were used for rendering?

 

[Bob McDob]

DD_FIGHT, DD_TUG and DD_MERCH and the landing pad is ND-LPAD.
I noticed the Galaxy issue after I posted, here's a revised version.

And here is the blend file I used to make it:

 

[Bob McDob]

By the way, this made me curious to see if the ships in the ship equipment scene were to the same scale. It seems that they are?

Also, it seems like I was wrong: the landing pad is not scaled to the ship dealer ships, my importer was rescaling them and they're actually 10x too big. Once they're rescaled to 10% they match the pad almost exactly, as the previous renders show. The equipment screen ships are scaled to the hangar properly. The yellow truck also seems to be the same size.

 

[rap1983]

I used my CAD programs to recreate Bob McDob New Detroit suggestion.
I got the same result as he did when I used the same files.

Which model of the Tarsus did you use in your last picture BoB McDob?
I use B_REPLAN.ZIP to scale all four ships to one level.
New Detroid -> Mining Pad = same scale.

Below the models adapted to my 1:72 scale. Scaled down by a factor of 0.8373 compared to the original files above.

I scaled the mining base pad with the same factor as the Tarsus.
Now all ships fit very well on it.
Should be fixed now.

When porting the models I noticed that there are different model versions.
For example, the Orion with landing gear has different dimensions than the Orion without landing gear.
I have used the width (yellow markings) as a scaling reference.

 

[Bob McDob]

All of the ships in that post are from the equipment dealer screen, so CLNKGEAR, TUGGEAR, FIGHTGER and MRCHGEAR. They're also in scale with the dealer hangar.

The Orion z-axis distortion is interesting and I don't think anyone has ever noticed that before. I wonder if it was to fit the art on one of the screens.

 

[Cybot078]

Privateers human figures OBJ files

 

[rap1983]

I have compared the Mining Base Pad models and the New Detroid model.
The width of the bow of the Tarsus (60mm) served as a scaling reference.
The dimensions of the Tarsus are identical.
There are differences in the height of the Orion.
The centution of the Mining Base is visibly larger than that of the New Detroit Pad.

I will use the larger models of the Orion and Centurion so that I can use as much of the original cockpit equipment as possible.

Here is my final overview of the proportions.

I hope I haven't mixed up any data with all the trial and error.

What do you think? Can we go into the race like this?

 

[kingmakeress]

What do you think?

I think that the Orion should be a big bigger, say 10%. After all, it can host really big generators. Besides that, I like the proportions!

To be clear, my suggestion is based on the game lore, not the game data themselves --it is obvious you have done lots of research in this direction.

 

[rap1983]

Yes, I would like the spaceships to look like they do in the game.

At the alien base DRCLITE, all four ships are in one area.
Briefly scaled and measured.
Tarsus and Orion fit. Centurion and Galaxy are slightly larger than my reference models.
At Source Models the file B_REPLAN is listed but I can't find a Galaxy.

Are there any models from Engine Upgrade 6 and 7?

 

[kingmakeress]

Yes, I would like the spaceships to look like they do in the game.

This is nice. By any chance do you plan to do other ships like the Kamekh?

 

[rap1983]

I started working on my Galaxy cockpit last evening. The cockpit has been redrawn based on the original data.
Here are a few pictures of the second test print.
Still missing are the nose glass pane, the radar change point, chairs and computer.
The insertion of the canopy glazing works. The exchange point on the bow for changing the armament still needs to be optimized.

 

[Bob McDob]

EDIT: My original post was me saying that you were totally right, until I was looking through the Orion models and saw that one of them (TUG-TO) used the smaller, squashed version from the ship dealer. This doesn't necessarily mean anything (in the first place we don't even know what most of the models were used for, if they were used in the game at all) so I looked through all of the other scenes in which the Orion appears and confirmed that none of the others used the squashed model.

Unlike the other ships the Orion doesn't have a clear model with a name that indicates it's the main in-flight one. My best guess is that it's probably 37TUG which again uses the B_REPLAN proportions. I looked at the in-game sprite and it's hard to tell. It might be the case? The perspective probably throws it it off. It's worth remembering that the ship dealer models were only ever meant to be viewed from above (and you don't even see the full ship), unlike the equipment dealer and landing pad models which were viewed from close up

I tried comparing the inflight models to see if I could work out a scale but no luck, they aren't scaled to each other at all. I did manage to get the Tarsus and Talon side by side since they're together in the opening scenes (this is from S3)

 

[rap1983]

Thank you for your support.
The exchange of knowledge here is very helpful, even if we will probably never find the 100 percent solution.

So that I don't keep going round in circles and can make some progress, I will think back to the past. The main thing is that it looks good, regardless of whether it is logical and works in reality.

Here are my two mockups side by side for comparison.