“YAZI” - Venator Class Star Destroyer Greebles and Lighting update
So here we are with a new update. Time flies and I knew I had to get going on these two parts very soon.
The reason why the Star Wars ships (and others) look so “real” is because of the scale and the use of Greebles.
Greebles are the little structures and depth variations and shapes you see on the outside of the models.
That gives it the sense of scale and tricks the mind into saying, hey that looks like a hangar, but wait see how small it is compared to the whole ship.
Damn that ship must be HUGE !!
So I started greebling with the help of a friend of mine Mortum. He helped create all the little single structure types that I could combine to form larger structures.
Normally you would do this with parts of styrene from scalemodels and this is called kitbashing. I did it digitally lol.
Once I had the size I wanted, I overlayed it onto the model of the YAZI
And there we have the base structure of the armour panelling.
Then came the hard part. Creating shapes that resemble something that you can (probably) find on a starship.
This 30 cm piece is the result of a couple of hours scaling, cutting, removing, adding, rotating parts and pieces into new shapes.
Here is the end result. I love my 3D printer. Didnt expect it to come out this crisp.
Here you can also see what I mean with “It has to mean something”
This is the mechanism for the 2 Heavy and 3 medial proton torpedo launchers.
From right to left :
You have to have some type of generation apparatus (far right) , then the protons beams have to be aligned and injected into a collection chamber (middle)
Then you need to condense and accelerate the beams into torpedo shape for firing by the launchers on the far left.
So onto the next challenge, how to light the ship properly.
First attempts obviously failed.
Tried cutting into the printed PLA with a dremel but the end result was far from what I wanted.
If only I had some channels into which I can put the fibers for the light.
Oh wait … Lets print that into the design…
In my opinion properly lighting is lighting which you can see when the light is off.
Offcourse you need some light point to accentuate certain parts but …
Getting the holes into the PLA was proving a REAL challenge …
Tried: dremel drill, Dremel with cnc mill, thin tipped solder iron, glowing wire, handdrill all didnt give the quality or speed needed to finish the project on time
PLA is different stuff compared to polystyrene thats for sure!
The answer : Good oldfashioned brute force. Use a very thin (just wider then your fiber) screwdriver and make sure you print the object the right way up.
You have to just break through into the cavity of the internal structure and ou on the other side!
Only took about 3 days of testing methods to figure that one out. lol
But hey, its all fun and games right …
You almost couldnt see the holes in the one of the previous pictures …
Also had to change from 0.75mm to 1.5mm fiber cable as the 0.75 was way to small for this scale.
And i didnt have a 1mm screwdriver
I love that not only you can create beautifull things with the printer, but also practical things.
Here is a fiber to led coupling. with just enough room for the led (0.2mm space left) and room for 20 fibers that will be guided by the tapered internal structure of the coupling
to the exact degrees of the led beam (60 degrees in this case) The result optimal light usage and less power needed!
Well that was it for this one.
Welding the main body tonight so pretty stoked for the next update !
Let me hear your thoughts !