Churchill Mk.VII (-ish)

 

I've been tinkering with the estimable Mr. Bergman's 1:100 scale (15mm) Churchill Mk.IV model to make a Mk.VII.... almost.

The front end of the track sponsons could do with some more work, but I think this will be good enough for tabletop use, especially as the amount of remodelling of the mesh that would be required is fairly substantial.

If challenged, I could always claim that it's an earlier model that had been upgraded to Mk.VII standards. A lot of them were.

Aichi D3 "Val"

 

I've been working for the last little while on a 1:144 scale digital model of the Japanese Aichi D3 "Val" dive bomber of WWII. They were extensively used by the Imperial Japanese Navy, both from carriers and from land, against both naval and land targets.

Now that it's finished, and test printing has successfully completed, it's up online at https://www.wargaming3d.com/product/aichi-d3-val-dive-bomber/

This is a model intended for wargaming, so panel detail is minimal, and underneath it is entirely absent. I've put a socket in the bottom of the fuselage for a flight stand.

Blender Viewport Settings

 

I've been experimenting with the Blender viewport settings to see if I can come up with something a bit more attractive to work in than my usual.

This one uses Flat shading with Shadow and Cavity, with the object colour set to Random. I've reset the viewport background colour to a pale blue, which could perhaps be a bit less saturated to make it a bit less overpowering.

This one uses a pale grey MatCap shading with a slight sheen, but otherwise all the Shadow and Cavity settings are pretty much the same. The viewport background is set to a dark blue, which I think is a bit easier to look at. The colours are overall not as bright as the Flat shading model, and the geometry is displayed a bit better I think.

Note: I'm pretty sure that the Random object colour is just an overlay, so the underlying colour of a MatCap will affect it quite substantially. The pale grey alters the overlay colour very little, but you can see that other MatCap colours look quite different.

These screen-caps have been taken against my usual default dark grey viewport background.

You can click on any of the images to see them larger, and I've left the settings flyout open so that the individual settings are visible. They've been screen-capped from my 1920x1200px monitor, though the three comparison screens to the left have been resized to make them a bit more manageable.