A Pumping Station for 15mm sci-fi gaming.

Well after sliding down my stairs like a drunken downhill skier and hurting my neck and back I found I had a little time to do some relaxing painting, I should have seen that dog’s toy on the stairs!! 😣

What I needed was something to paint…

Luckily I had been mucking around with a new 3D program that my son let me have, the program is crazy in that it allows you to use 3D blocks to make up models for use in Games etc, but what it also does is allow you to export them as STL files for a 3D printer.

The program itself is very simple… well the basic placing of blocks is simple it only gets hard and complicated when you need to turn or reposition those blocks in different angles, that’s when you have to use a little of the old grey matter to work out what to adjust and by how much.

Three sets of three numbers adjust each objects position on the screen and it does ( at the moment ) need a lot of trial and error to get the positioning right, but I am getting there.

Well, I thought that I would try something really simple to start with so I thought that I would try and make a sci-fi building of some sort to go with the ones I printed out a while ago.

And so started putting down blocks and tubes and other weird and whacky stuff and came up with something which I am going to use as a pumping station of some sort for my 15mm sci-fi games.

I didn’t want to make it too complicated for my first effort so was happy with just laying out about a dozen or so objects, and was fairly happy with the design, I did have to spin and tip and alter a few objects to make them fit, but after a few minutes of changing numbers I got the hang of it.

Well after a couple of hours on my 3D printer I got this. 😨

I know it’s not great looking but I can work with it.

I then stuck this down to a plastic base and then added sand and cardboard tiles for the floor panels, I also printed out an extra vent for the floor.

Once this was stuck down I then just added sand to the base going all around the model and panels matching the desert bases I have done for all my other sci-fi buildings.

Now as I have said before my printer is old and is not capable of really high quality, but I think this has not come out too bad, yes there are print lines in it, but as it is meant to be old metal pipes and tanks and machines, I think the lines add to the model, giving it texture that when painted looks good.

Next I painted the model with black primer and then painted the sand areas with Dark Sand primer allowing this all to dry.

Then after a quick drybrush of Gun Metal the main model is almost finished, I then hit all the base with a wash of Light Tone giving the sand some depth.

Once this was all dry I gave a drybrush of Buff across all the sand then hit a few of the top edges of the stones and sand with a light drybrush of White.

And then finally I put a couple of light coats of Light Tone around some of the panels in the sand and around some of the rocks.

The last thing I did was add a few areas of Vallejo Desert Dust to dirty up the model slightly, and then added a couple of dry tufts.

And there you have it my first attempt at making a 3D model of my own, not brilliant but good enough to use on my gaming table.

I am not sure what the next model will be, but I have talked about wanting to design my own spaceships, so who knows that might be next…