Staghound

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I've been occupying my insomnia the last couple of nights with this — it's a British armoured car, the Staghound Mk.I, from WWII, modelled in Blender in 1:100 scale.

It's not completely finished yet, as usual. There are bits that I've forgotten, like the headlights. I'll get around to it.

I've piled it up with a whole bunch of clutter, and there may well be more of that to come. 

 A bit later on...

I like to have human figures in my vehicles, both to give a sense of scale and to make them seem less like an army of autonomous robot vehicles when I'm playing at Toy Soldiers with them. 

To that end I've opened up one of the hatches and bunged a generic AFV commander in the hole. 

NOTE: I've put the STLs up online, and they are available at https://www.wargaming3d.com/product/mojobob_hoochyman_staghound_mk_i 

 

An Indeterminate Number of Days Later...

Here is concrete evidence that I am in the process of printing this model. It's my Mars Pro, printing this model.

I would have got on to it sooner, except that I had to replace the FEP after a misprinting disaster about a week ago, and I'd been putting it off due to my Chronic Procrastination Syndrome (I hear that a cure is years away).

 ...and later that day

The test print went well. No issues at all to speak of.

We see it here with both turrets, closed and open, though I only printed one hull and set of wheels. 

I've given it a brown primer coat, and I'll be painting it in the Light Mud (SCC 5) and Black scheme for Italy.  I already have a Battlefront Daimler armoured car in those colours, so I might as well continue.

 

 

 These are the Vallejo paints I'm using:

• For SCC 5 Light Mud — VMA 71.028 Sand Yellow.
  VMC 70.987 Medium Grey is a good brushable match.
• For SCC 7 Dark Olive Green — VMC 70.888 Olive Grey 

I have, in the past, used VMC 70.988 Khaki for SCC 5, and it looks okay, but in scale I think it's a touch dark, especially when washes and what-not have gone over the top. 

 

 Xmas Day

Shiny! So shiny!

 We're at an intermediate stage of painting now.

All the various bits have their base colours on, along with a few washes here and there to accentuate detail, and now I've given everything a couple of coats of gloss varnish in preparation for some oil washing.

The gloss finish helps to stop the pin washes from discolouring the underlying paint, and it will be mitigated at the end of the painting process with an overspray of matte varnish. 

 Boxing Day

All finished (probably). 

I do have a tendency to discover things I've missed, but I don't think there's too much left undone on this one. 

Next day:
I sprayed on a bit of dust, which I think helps
to tie it all together.

 

Raupenschlepper Ost 1942 - test print

Quite some time ago, I designed this model in Blender. It's a simplified version of the Raupenschlepper Ost, with the cab made from plywood instead of stamped from steel, and with a canvas roof. They went into production in 1942, with the aim of making production faster and cheaper.

But I never did actually get around to printing it. Mainly because its hollow cab would have made printing quite difficult.

Today I filled in the cab and cargo bed with a solid block, but in the cab I kept half of each of two crewmen visible, so that they could be painted in a kind of bas-relief style. It seems to have worked reasonably well, and the model printed on my Ender 3 without any issues at all (except that I initially assembled the running gear the wrong way round, and had to tear it off and re-glue it). 

It means, of course, that there's no interior detail visible, but for a gaming model that doesn't disturb me too much. 

 Several days later...

I've got it painted now, in a post-1943 colour scheme. All in all, I'm reasonably happy with how it turned out. 

Buffalo

I've been tinkering in Blender again, this time building a Brewster Buffalo, ostensibly for my theoretical 15mm WWII Burmese British army that I haven't really made a start on at all.

It's available at https://www.wargaming3d.com/product/mojobob_hoochyman_brewster_buffalo_1_144 

The Buffalo in British service had a largely undeserved bad reputation, but its failures were mainly because the RAF overloaded and underpowered it. The Finns and Dutch both used lighter, more powerful versions of the same aircraft with considerable success.

This is a 1:144 scale model, intended for wargaming, not display, so I've included panel lines and ribs on the fabric-covered control surfaces on the upper sides only. It has a 3mm hole in the fuselage bottom for a flight stand. 

I've started painting an earlier iteration of the model, printed on my Ender 3. This one comes from a time before I added any panel detail at all, when I thought I could just paint in any panel lines I needed. Which I could do, I guess.

I doubt that I'll bother finishing it; I'll just print a new one and paint that instead. 

 Coupla days later....

I did eventually finish it to a usable state.

I haven't done any panel lining or weathering at all (yet). In truth, my heart sinks at the prospect of drawing on all those thin, straight lines.

 

 

 Next day....

 I've added some panel lines with a black 0.05mm Copic Multiliner.

I think a warm grey liner would have been a better option, but I don't have one to hand. 

Marder 1 (Lorraine)

 

I started work on this model, a German WWII Marder 1, quite some time ago. But then I forgot all about it, until I happened upon the beginnings of the project a few days ago, and finished it off. Working on the digital file zoomed in all the time, it was easy to lose track of how small these vehicles were.

I've put the STLs online at https://www.wargaming3d.com/product/mojobob_hoochyman_marder_1_lorraine_ 

I did a test-print this evening, which was mostly okay, though there are a couple of things that I think might need attention.

 

The main issue is the gun shield:  printing at the angle I did meant that it was lying pretty flat to the platen, and I got some delamination and distortion at the corners. I think it might be best to detach it and print it as a separate component.

Making Tracks

 

PzIII J-N running gear

This project has been on my back-burner for quite some time now.

I decided to make a set of decently detailed running gear for a 15mm (1:100 scale) Panzer III.

The hull is from an old PzIII model by Zac Kuvalich.

I haven't yet done a test print, because it's currently winter in New Zealand, and my workroom, where the printers are, is bloody freezing. 

PzIII E-F running gear

PzIII G-H running gear

The style of both the sprocket wheel and idler changed as the Panzer III was developed. I've done a couple of running gear modules that reflect those changes.

To a certain extent, it's possible to use an earlier style of running gear on later models, as existing vehicles were upgraded to later specifications. 

Easy Tracks in Blender

 

There's an add-on for Blender called BagaPie, which adds a whole lot of functionality in various arenas (scattering etc.). The one that is most useful for me, as a WWII tank modeller designing for 3d printing, is its Array On An Object feature.

All I have to do is create an object the shape of the track run, and create one track link.

I put the track link at some point on the surface I want to array it along, shift-click the track-run profile shape, and hit J to invoke the Bagapie  menu and select Array On An Object.

Then it's just a case of adjusting the spacing and number of iterations, and bingo! A track run. Then I just hide the profile object.

Now, all this could have been achieved in native Blender by arraying along a curve object. But that inevitably involves faffing about with object origins and rotation, and often introduces distortion into the iterations going around curves. The Bagapie version is just simpler and easier.

The only thing this method doesn't do (as far as I know) is automatically count the number of iterations required to go completely around the profile, and it doesn't adjust the scaling of the link object for a seamless start/stop connection. However, in the small scale I'm modelling in (1:100) I can usually live with an overlap of the first and last iterations — I just put it somewhere inconspicuous.

Because it's all non-destructive and updated in real time, I can modify the profile object and/or the track link object after the fact, and have everything update automatically. 

This is (or will be) a set of running gear for a Panzer III, which will be useful for any number of WWII German vehicles.

Tiger 1 (late production)

 

I've finished painting my 3d printed 1:100 (15mm) late production Tiger 1.

The airbrushing caused me to make some sweary noises — I'm getting a bit frustrated with Vallejo ModelAir, but it's pretty much all I have access to locally.

 This would be a vehicle of 1944-45, the type of Tiger that would most likely be encountered during and after the Normandy landings, or during Bagration. Except that apparently those late vehicles didn't use the smoke launchers, so I've deleted them from the current version of the model.

The STLs are available at https://www.wargaming3d.com/product/mojobob_hoochyman_tiger_1_late_production_

Tiger Time Again

After I'd finished off my Afrika Korps Tiger 1, I thought it might be handy to have some running gear for the later production vehicles, with the corrugated steel wheels. So I made some in 1:100 scale.

 The later production turrets changed a bit too, with a new low-profile commander's cupola like that used on the Panther and Tiger II. I don't know precisely when they first appeared, but I have seen a photograph of a Tiger with this turret in Tunisia, dated 1943. Anyway, I thought I'd better make one of those too. In fact, I made three, since I like to add crew figures where possible, as I think they add life and a sense of scale to the model.

I wouldn't be surprised if this cupola and those for the Panther and King Tiger all came off the same production line. Maybe not though; the Germans did seem to quite keen on bespoke re-engineering of elements for new vehicles.

 

And of course the hull of the beast changed as well, since the Feifel air cleaning system disappeared. So I had to make a new body as well. And now I have a whole new late-production Tiger 1 to print and paint and send into the Normandy bocage.

Test printing on my elderly Mars Pro confirms that everything prints and assembles as expected, which is always a relief.

The STLs for this model can be purchased at https://www.wargaming3d.com/product/mojobob_hoochyman_tiger_1_late_production_, all proceeds going to fund my modelling/3d printing/roleplaying/wargaming hobbies.

 2025-04-26

I've added some separate track armour modules. They can be printed separately and be glued in place, or else they can be added in the slicer and be printed in place.

Dingo

 

Here's a spot of recce capability for my 15mm North Africa / Mediterranean WWII Brits, a cute little Daimler Dingo armoured car.

The base model, as is so often the case, is by Bergman. I've just added a couple of crewmen and some more detailed wheels. I don't think there would be much point in any further refinement than that for my purposes.

As always, all the 3d modelling has been done in Blender. 

Printing went well enough, though one of them had an incomplete starboard-front wheel for some reason — I have no idea why, because all three were identical on the build-plate. Hey-ho. I just printed some spare wheels and glued one into the space I chopped out of the incomplete model.

I'm not all that happy with the colour these have ended up; it's rather too dark for North Africa, and completely wrong for Normandy. Maybe they'll do for Italy.

Fokker D-II and D-III

 

The Fokker D-II was a fairly mediocre and uninspired successor to the E-III monoplane responsible for the “Fokker Scourge” of 1915-’16. The D-III improved on it, but not enough to make it competitive with the Allied aircraft then coming into service, and it very nearly lost Fokker all the credit he had garnered with the German air services.

Visually, there is little to distinguish the two. There were very minor differences in dimensions, the main difference being that the D-II had only one machine-gun, while the D-III had two.

The models are supplied in 1:100 scale (above) and 1:200 scale (left). The wings and struts on the smaller scale models are thicker, to make them less fragile in play.

For 1:144 scale, either re-scale the 1:100 model to 69%, or the 1:200 model to 138%. If printing in FDM, I recommend scaling up from the 1:200 model, but in resin scaling down from 1:100 will work fine. I have printed the 1:100 model scaled down to 1:200 without problems in resin, though the struts are extremely thin and fragile.

The models can be bought at https://www.wargaming3d.com/product/fokker-d-ii-and-d-iii/ 

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December 20th

I've finally got my FDM printed 1/144 version of the D-III painted. The print is okay for FDM, but because it was printed nose-down, the front of the cowling and engine are pretty rough. It may be necessary to detach them and print them separately, at a different orientation.

However, this will do for gaming purposes.

Schupo Sonderwagen 1921

 

I have finally managed to finish my 15mm (1:100) Weimar Republic Schupo Sonderwagen of 1921. At least one of these armoured cars was still trundling around Berlin when the Soviets took the city in 1945.

The STLs are available at https://www.wargaming3d.com/product/daimler-schupo-sonderwagen-1921/

 

Later on...

Unditching ramps

I've added a separate STL for the wooden unditching ramps that could be carried over the port rear wheel.

However, due to the limitations of the STL format's floating point calculations, it will probably come into the slicer ten times too large. It should be only 14mm long. Rescaling it to 10% should do the trick.

Stubborn as a Maultier

 I've uploaded some 1:100 (15mm) models of variants of the German WWII half-tracked lorries they called "Maultier" (Mule). These ones are all based on the Opel Blitz truck.

Here's the base model, with a canvas tilt cover.

The files include an open-backed version as well, plus STLs for a cargo of fuel drums or two strips of seated passengers.

These are all available at https://www.wargaming3d.com/product/opel-maultier-15mm/

Open-topped cargo bay

With fuel drum cargo module

With passenger modules

There are two other versions available:

Office body front

Office body rear

The plywood "office" body. This was used as a command and/or radio vehicle, or for various other purposes.

This one is at https://www.wargaming3d.com/product/opel-maultier-15mm-office-body/

Ambulance front - closed up

Ambulance rear - doors open, steps down

A variant on the "office" body was the ambulance version, which included a roof extension with windows for light and ventilation, and a wide set of fold-down steps at the back for stretcher access.

You can get the ambulance at https://www.wargaming3d.com/product/opel-maultier-15mm-ambulance/

Churchill Mk.VII (again)

 

The state of the track sponsons nagged and nagged at me, so I girded my loins and redid them.

I also took the opportunity to separate the sponsons from the hull, both to ease modelling (so I could just do one and then mirror it), and also so that they could be printed separately from the hull, which often gives better results than printing everything in one piece.

Then, in a spasm of enthusiasm, I did another turret with the hatches open, for those who might want to add their own crew figures. And then another one with a couple of crewmen already in place, for those who don't.

Because all these modifications are on top of Bergman's original work, this is a freebie. I've put it up on Thingiverse at https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6733584

Matilda 1 (15mm)

 

I've finally finished my 1:100 (15mm) A11 Matilda 1.

I abandoned it for a long time, but came back to finish it over the last couple of days.

It's online now at https://www.wargaming3d.com/product/a11-matilda-1/